Genius Advice

Using the benefits of doing 'social good' to secure and maintain customer engagement. In 'social marketing' the distinguishing feature is therefore its 'primary' focus on 'social good', and it is not a secondary outcome. Not all public sector and not-for-profit marketing is social marketing.

Public sector bodies can use standard marketing approaches to improve the promotion of their relevant services and organizational aims, this can be very important, but should not be confused with 'social marketing' where the focus in on achieving specific behavioural goals with specific audiences in relation to different topics relevant to social good (eg: health, sustainability, recycling, etc).

As the dividing lines are rarely clear it is important not to confuse social marketing with commercial marketing.

A commercial marketer selling a product may only seek to influence a buyer to make a product purchase.

Social marketers, dealing with goals such as reducing cigarette smoking or encouraging condom use, have more difficult goals: to make potentially difficult and long-term behavioral change in target populations.

In the UK companies like The Campaign Company have demonstrated the synergies between social marketing and political cause related marketing. These can become apparent when a public sector body such as an NHS Primary Care Trust is promoting a lifestyle change which may be in an area which is politically or culturally contested and where there may be well-funded opponents to such a change.

It is sometimes felt that social marketing is restricted to a particular spectrum of client -- the non-profit organization, the health services group, the government agency.

These often are the clients of social marketing agencies, but the goal of inducing social change is not restricted to governmental or non-profit charitable organizations; it may be argued that corporate public relations efforts such as funding for the arts are an example of social marketing.

Social marketing should not be confused with the Societal Marketing Concept which was a forerunner of sustainable marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility into commercial marketing strategies. In contrast to that, social marketing uses commercial marketing theories, tools and techniques to social issues.

Social marketing applies a “customer oriented” approach and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.

Social marketing confusion

In 2006, JupiterMedia announced its "Social Marketing" service, with which it aims to enable website owners to profit from social media. Despite protests from the social marketing communities over the hijacking of the term, Jupiter decided to stick with the name. However, Jupiter's approach is more correctly (and commonly) referred to as Social Media Optimization.

History of social marketing

Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing by marketing experts Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.

Speaking of what they termed "social change campaigns," Kotler and Roberto introduced the subject by writing, “A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior." Their 1989 text was updated in 2002 by Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee.

In recent years there as has been an important development to distinquish between 'strategic social marketing' and 'operational social marketing'.

Much of the literature and case examples focus on 'operational social marketing', using it to achieve specific behavioural goals in relation to different audiences and topics. However there has been increasing efforts to ensure social marketing goes 'upstream' and is used much more strategically to inform both 'policy formulation' and 'strategy development'.

Here the focus is less on specific audience and topic work but uses strong customer understanding and insight to inform and guide effective policy and strategy development. Quote this article on your site

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