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What is social marketing?
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Who can do social marketing?
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Why is social marketing important?
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Basic principles of marketing: The "4 Ps"
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Stages of a successful social marketing effort
Community groups use many strategies to address health, social, environmental, and community priorities. A group working to reduce child food insecurity, for example, might advocate for school meal access, strengthen enrollment in nutrition programs, support family economic security, work with food providers, and communicate with policymakers and community members.
Some of these efforts involve influencing individual behavior, but community change rarely depends on individual choices alone. Behaviors are shaped by relationships, organizations, policies, access to resources, physical environments, economic conditions, culture, trust, and other social and structural factors.
Social marketing can be one part of a broader community-change strategy. It uses marketing concepts together with research, behavioral and social science, community insight, communication, partnerships, and other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities.
This section introduces social marketing, explains why it may be useful, discusses the traditional "4 Ps" of marketing, and outlines major stages in developing an ethical and effective social marketing effort.
What is social marketing?
Social marketing applies marketing concepts and other evidence-informed approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities and contribute to the greater social good.
Social marketing is not simply advertising, public education, or persuading people to do what an organization thinks is best. Effective social marketing begins by understanding people’s experiences, goals, motivations, barriers, environments, and competing priorities. It also considers what organizations, institutions, policymakers, businesses, and other actors may need to do differently to make beneficial behaviors realistic and accessible.
Ethical practice is essential. Social marketing should respect autonomy, privacy, dignity, cultural differences, informed choice, and the perspectives of the people affected by an intervention. It should avoid stigma, manipulation, stereotyping, coercion, and blaming individuals for conditions that are strongly shaped by social or structural barriers.
What is the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing?
Commercial marketing generally seeks to create value for customers while advancing an organization's commercial objectives. Social marketing adapts some of the same concepts to influence behaviors in ways intended to benefit individuals, communities, or society.
That distinction creates additional ethical responsibilities. The people whose behavior is being discussed should not simply be treated as targets or consumers to be persuaded. Their priorities, knowledge, experiences, and concerns should inform the strategy.
What is involved in social marketing?
A social marketing effort will often include the following activities:
- Define the behavior or decision you hope to influence. Be specific. For example, rather than saying "improve prenatal health," you might focus on increasing timely access to prenatal care, supporting use of recommended preventive services, or reducing barriers that keep people from obtaining care.
- Understand who is involved and affected. Identify the people whose behaviors or decisions are directly relevant, as well as partners, service providers, policymakers, organizations, family members, or others who influence the conditions surrounding those behaviors.
- Conduct formative research. Do not assume you already know why people behave as they do. Interviews, surveys, focus groups, listening sessions, observation, existing data, community-engaged research, and other methods can help identify motivations, priorities, benefits people value, barriers, trusted sources, competing behaviors, and environmental conditions.
- Identify meaningful audience segments when useful. People within a broad population may differ in their experiences, readiness, barriers, motivations, access to resources, trusted messengers, or preferred communication channels. Segmentation can help tailor strategies, but it should be based on relevant evidence rather than stereotypes or demographic categories used without a clear reason.
- Understand barriers and enabling conditions. Ask what makes the desired behavior easier or harder. Barriers may include cost, transportation, clinic hours, childcare, discrimination, language access, disability access, mistrust, policies, workplace requirements, social norms, limited information, or competing responsibilities.
- Address barriers rather than relying only on messages. If people cannot reasonably act on the message, communication alone is unlikely to succeed. Solutions might include changing service hours, improving transportation, reducing cost, making services physically and digitally accessible, providing interpretation, changing organizational policies, improving staff communication, or bringing services closer to the people who need them.
- Identify the benefits people value. The benefit promoted by a campaign may not be the one professionals initially assume is most important. Research can help determine what matters to people and what would make a behavior worthwhile from their perspective.
- Consider competing behaviors and influences. The desired behavior may compete with convenience, cost, habits, social norms, misinformation, distrust, commercial marketing, time demands, or alternative choices. Understanding those competing influences is important when developing the strategy.
- Develop and pretest strategies. Test messages, materials, service changes, incentives, outreach methods, and other elements with people from the intended audiences before implementing them broadly. Use what you learn to revise the approach.
- Use communication as part of a larger strategy. Let people know what opportunities, services, or supports are available and communicate benefits in ways that are relevant, accessible, accurate, and respectful.
- Evaluate implementation and results. Assess not only whether behavior changed, but also who was reached, who was not reached, whether barriers were actually reduced, whether benefits and burdens were distributed equitably, and whether any unintended consequences occurred.
Social marketing and advertising
Advertising and communication may be important parts of social marketing, but they are not the same thing as social marketing.
Imagine an anti-litter campaign that uses a memorable slogan but does nothing about the lack of trash and recycling containers in heavily used public spaces. The campaign may increase awareness, but it has not addressed an important barrier to the behavior it is promoting.
Similarly, a campaign encouraging people to attend preventive health appointments will be limited if appointments are unaffordable, transportation is unavailable, services are not accessible to people with disabilities, clinic hours conflict with work schedules, or people have experienced disrespect or discrimination when seeking care.
Social marketing considers both communication and the conditions that make the desired behavior possible.
Promotion alone is therefore not social marketing. A comprehensive effort combines audience insight, exchange, barrier reduction, service or environmental changes, appropriate communication, partnerships, and evaluation.
Who can do social marketing?
Social marketing requires planning, research, and skill, but its principles can be learned and adapted for organizations of different sizes.
Large public agencies and national organizations may have dedicated researchers, communication professionals, behavioral scientists, designers, and marketing specialists. Smaller community organizations may use the same principles on a more modest scale through partnerships, existing community data, listening sessions, pilot projects, and direct engagement with the people they hope to reach.
The most important requirement is not a large advertising budget. It is a willingness to understand the issue from the perspectives of the people involved, define the desired behavior clearly, address meaningful barriers, use evidence appropriately, and revise the approach as new information emerges.
Partnerships can strengthen the work. Depending on the project, social marketing efforts may involve community members, people with lived experience, health and human service organizations, schools, businesses, government agencies, communication specialists, researchers, designers, community health workers, advocates, and other partners.
Why is social marketing important?
Community organizations sometimes develop programs or messages based primarily on what professionals believe people need. Social marketing provides a more systematic way to understand the people involved and design strategies around their actual experiences, motivations, environments, and barriers.
Social marketing can help you:
- Define specific behaviors or decisions that matter to the community goal
- Understand the people and groups involved rather than assuming they are all alike
- Identify barriers and enabling conditions that influence behavior
- Understand what benefits people value
- Recognize competing behaviors, messages, incentives, and environmental influences
- Tailor strategies and communication to different audience segments when appropriate
- Combine communication with service, environmental, policy, organizational, or other changes
- Test ideas before investing heavily in them
- Evaluate whether the approach is effective, equitable, and sustainable
Social marketing is not appropriate for every community challenge. Problems caused primarily by policies, discrimination, unsafe environments, inadequate services, poverty, or other structural conditions cannot be solved simply by persuading individuals to behave differently.
In those situations, social marketing may still contribute by influencing the behaviors of organizational leaders, service providers, employers, policymakers, businesses, or other people with the ability to change those conditions. It can also be combined with policy, systems, environmental, community-organizing, advocacy, and service-delivery strategies.
Basic principles of marketing: The "4 Ps"
One traditional marketing framework is known as the 4 Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. The framework can help organize a social marketing strategy, but it should not be treated as a complete description of modern social marketing.
Effective social marketing also draws on concepts such as audience insight, behavioral goals, exchange, competition, segmentation, theory, partnerships, ethics, and a mix of methods.
Product
The product is the behavior, practice, service, opportunity, or benefit being offered.
In social marketing, the product is not simply what an organization wants people to do. Consider what people believe they receive in return.
For example, an initiative promoting use of a community walking trail is not only promoting physical activity. People may value social connection, stress relief, transportation, time outdoors, safety, or enjoyable recreation. Understanding those benefits can shape how the initiative is designed and communicated.
Price
Price includes what people believe they must give up, risk, or overcome to adopt a behavior.
Price may involve:
- Money
- Time
- Effort
- Transportation
- Inconvenience
- Social consequences
- Stigma
- Loss of privacy
- Physical discomfort
- Uncertainty
- Emotional or psychological burden
- Giving up something people currently value
Social marketing seeks to reduce unnecessary costs and increase meaningful benefits.
For example, if an organization wants more people to participate in a health program, reducing the "price" might involve offering evening or weekend appointments, transportation support, childcare or dependent-care assistance, language access, accessible facilities, telehealth options, or simpler enrollment.
Place
Place refers to where and how people can perform the behavior, obtain the product or service, access information, or receive support.
Ask whether the opportunity is available where and when people need it.
For example, an adolescent sexual and reproductive health initiative might consider whether young people can obtain accurate information, confidential counseling, and contraception in settings that are affordable, accessible, culturally responsive, and realistically available around school, work, transportation, family responsibilities, and privacy concerns.
"Place" may include physical locations as well as websites, apps, telehealth, mobile services, schools, community organizations, workplaces, homes, and trusted community settings.
Promotion
Promotion refers to the ways people learn about and engage with the opportunity, behavior, service, or benefit.
Promotion may include:
- Interpersonal communication
- Community outreach
- Social media
- Websites and digital communication
- Text messaging
- Print materials
- News and community media
- Events
- Peer communication
- Trusted messengers
- Health care, education, faith and spiritual, workplace, and community networks
Choose channels based on research about how the intended audience actually receives and uses information. More communication is not automatically better. Messages should be accurate, accessible, relevant, and delivered through sources people trust.
Beyond the 4 Ps: exchange, competition, and methods mix
Three additional concepts are especially useful in social marketing.
Exchange asks what people believe they gain and give up by adopting a behavior. A strategy is more likely to be meaningful when the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs from the audience's perspective.
Competition refers to anything competing with the desired behavior. Competition may come from another behavior, limited time, social expectations, commercial marketing, distrust, convenience, cost, misinformation, or existing habits.
Methods mix means using more than communication alone. An effective effort may combine communication with service improvements, environmental changes, partnerships, incentives, policy changes, community organizing, training, or other strategies.
Stages of a successful social marketing effort
People do not all begin with the same knowledge, experiences, motivations, opportunities, or readiness to act. Behavior also does not always change through one predictable sequence.
Instead of assuming that everyone should move through the same linear stages, understand the different circumstances people are in and provide support that is relevant to those circumstances.
A social marketing effort may involve:
- Understanding the context. Define the issue, behavior, community conditions, and people involved.
- Conducting formative research. Learn about motivations, barriers, benefits, competing behaviors, trust, access, and community perspectives.
- Setting clear behavioral goals. Identify specific, realistic, measurable behaviors or decisions the strategy seeks to influence.
- Segmenting audiences when useful. Determine whether different groups need different strategies because their circumstances, motivations, barriers, or communication preferences differ.
- Developing an exchange people value. Strengthen the benefits associated with the behavior and reduce unnecessary costs or burdens.
- Addressing structural and environmental barriers. Change services, access, policies, systems, or environments where those conditions make the desired behavior difficult.
- Developing and pretesting the strategy. Test messages, services, materials, channels, and other components with intended audiences and partners.
- Implementing a coordinated mix of approaches. Combine communication with other interventions needed to make the behavior realistic and worthwhile.
- Supporting people's ability and opportunity to act. Provide the information, resources, services, relationships, and conditions necessary to carry out the behavior.
- Reinforcing and sustaining beneficial behavior. Consider what ongoing environmental, social, organizational, or policy supports are needed for change to last.
- Evaluating and adapting. Assess implementation, behavior, reach, equity, unintended consequences, and sustainability, and revise the effort based on what is learned.
Evaluation should consider more than whether the overall behavior rate changed. Ask who benefited, who encountered barriers, whether some groups experienced unintended burdens, whether people felt respected, and whether the effort changed the conditions that influence behavior.
In Summary
Social marketing uses marketing concepts together with research, theory, community and audience insight, partnerships, communication, and other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities.
Effective social marketing does not simply tell people what they should do. It seeks to understand why people behave as they do, what benefits they value, what barriers they encounter, what other choices compete for their attention, and what environmental or structural changes may make beneficial behaviors more realistic.
The traditional 4 Ps - product, price, place, and promotion - remain useful planning concepts, but they work best alongside behavioral goals, audience insight, exchange, competition, segmentation, ethics, partnerships, and a thoughtful mix of interventions.
Above all, social marketing should be ethical, evidence-informed, respectful, equitable, and responsive to the people and communities affected by the work. Behavior change can be part of community improvement, but it should not be used to place responsibility on individuals for barriers that organizations, institutions, policies, or social conditions also need to address.