Commercial marketers look to social marketing

Mark Stuart, head of research at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, has explained social marketing and how commercial marketers can learn from their colleagues in the public sector.

Social marketing, broadly speaking, is the application of techniques from commercial marketing (and to an extent social sciences) for social good.

Currently, the UK government is recognising its importance to the extent that considerable investment is being allocated to social marketing, particularly with the NHS - for example, witness the number of campaigns recently for responsible drinking, smoking cessation, and diet and exercise.

The aim is to use techniques that understand how and why people behave in certain ways and then to influence them to make positive choices that will be good for them, for the people around them and the environment.

Rather than a doctor telling you not to do something because it is bad for you, social marketing illustrates why it is in the person's interests to change their behaviours.

For example, in smoking cessation programmes social marketing approaches can identify why smokers act the way they do, what the barriers to them changing their behaviours are, and offer solutions that will achieve 'buy-in' from the patient.

This is like the way commercial marketing offers a process of exchange that shows people it is to their advantage to make certain choices, rather than others.

Social marketing is more about communicating something that you will buy into, agree with, and identify with, and be able to change behaviour with a minimum of inconvenience; not just giving you a message.

Social marketing has been shown to be highly successful in responsible drinking campaigns, anti-crime initiatives, environmental behaviour schemes, obesity, and many other projects.

It fits strategically with the government's desire to focus on prevention rather than cure, and its successes are widespread.

Look at the NHS adverts now running on television - they are very different in tone and scope from how they used to be, and much more effective for their usage of social marketing techniques.

The smoke alarm 'pull your finger out' campaign, for example, is a textbook piece of social marketing - especially clever scheduling, which adds a reminder that comes at the end of the ad break.

Communication, however, is only part of a social marketing campaign - the process is essentially about a dialogue with the customer, which builds a trusted relationship over time.

Social marketers do not take an agenda to the people they are trying to help; they build up an understanding of their behaviour, discover what their needs are, understand the barriers to change (for example, smokers living in areas where smoking is the norm) and work out strategies to motivate people to voluntarily change by making the process easier for them, engaging to adopt and offering further support when needed further down the line.

A significant amount of social marketing is carried out in health areas, but it has other applications too.

Social marketing can be used for environmental schemes, for example, to influence public transport initiatives, because it can show why people do not use public transport, what they would like to see instead, and how to improve the plan.

Historically, social marketing has tended to take its cue from commercial marketing - but the discipline is now reaching the point where commercial marketers can learn from social marketers.

Marketers want to know how customers think, and how to best influence them to make one set of choices over another.

That's not necessarily to drive up consumption, or for manipulative purposes, but to identify that where a choice is going to be made, the customer can choose your product or service over a competitor's.

Social marketers have become experts in behaviour change because they often deal with people whose behaviours are the hardest of all to change - whose norms are influenced by their cultural and situational surroundings and the attitudes of their peers.

Often they have near-insurmountable barriers to change, or are simply not motivated to change.

The fact that social marketers are so successful in creating behavioural change in difficult areas such as obesity, drug abuse and antisocial behaviour is testament to their mastery of building relationships, innovating effective marketing practices, and developing a true understanding of psychology and decision-making; both at individual and broader segment levels.

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