The Critical Contribution of Social Marketing

This paper examines the symbiotic relationship between social, commercial, and critical marketing thought. Marketers seek to influence consumer behaviour. Much ill health and many social problems are caused by human behaviour. Social marketing puts these two phenomena together and uses marketing insights to address social behaviours. In the processboth arms of the discipline can benefit, and this paper illustrates this using the examples of exchange theory and relational thinking. Social marketing also recognizes environmental influences on behaviour and that commercial marketing can be an important part of this influence. The case of tobacco is used to show that this influence can be malignant, and that as a result marketing has come under unprecedented scrutiny. Social marketing’s understanding of both the commercial and social sectors puts it in a unique position to provide realistic critiques of marketing and identify intelligent solutions. The paper concludes that socialmarketing will flourish by exploiting its twin understanding of the good and the bad that marketing can bring to society.

Guide to Small Budget SEO Strategy

The cheapest search engine optimization service strategy is to do it themselves. This is much easier said than performed. If you are on a budget, the thousands of dollars you are able to save in consulting fees & services will be worthwhile for your original strategy. As the Website up the search charts, you must either hire an expert or outsource to a consultant. The goal is to make it affordable over time.

If you want to be a successful and booming, you must follow each step!

Here are the ways as well as steps you will have to perform.

a) Make certain your Website is clean -no broken links- is hosted by a prestigious company, or by yourself with a static IP address, and quickly.
b) Optimise your keywords and keywords-phrases
c) Submit to search-engines (SEs) and also on directories
d) Increase your Page Rank (PR)
e) Upload more selected and quality content

Step a: Make certain your Website is clean
A clean start with a clean site hosting. Affordable SEO servicedoesn’t mean free or even cheap. If you want to host the Website you have a static IP address. A dynamic-IP-address and a DNS redirector will allow search engine robots problems.

Now that you are correct host be sure the Website itself is clean. This consists of two primary components. Make certain you’ve no broken links, and be sure the Website loads quickly. This does not unnecessarily graphic. You should also try the site that scales and at different resolutions and with different browsers. It does not help with affordable SEO, but it will ensure the visitors you drive to your Website will have a pleasurable experience.

Step b: Optimise your keywords and keyword-phrases.
Always keep your keywords for each page to a minimum of two/three. Once you have selected on your keywords to do a search with a keyword tool (you can search the webpage or website, there are few, all pretty good) and see how many searches are done for each sentence.

Step c: Submit your Website to search-engines.
Critical comments! Don’t use search-engine submission software to submit the Website. Google’s terms of service clearly state that this is a violation. Most quality search-engines will see this as spamming the Website and penalise you for it. These products are good to work on your page, they’re not good for actually doing it. You will discover that the road to affordable SEO, and even professional SEO service, offers no shortcuts.

Step d: Work and increase your page ranking.
Remember Page-Rank (PR) is the critical metric that boosts you extraordinary of your competitors when everything else is equal. To increase your PR you require to get elsewhere linking back to you. There are many ways to do this, some of them will contribute to a strong, others will do evil. Link exchange programs was the old way of increasing page-ranking. Some of them till now offers value, but it is limited. You will have links back to your Website to be quality, not just a page with links to a thousand people trying to increase PR. Your best two choices are writing-articles that are published, and requesting links from suppliers and other business partners.

Step e:. Upload more selected and quality content.
Steps d and e can work together. As you write the content for your website you can submit a part or the whole page to the article-directories to increase your page ranking. By adding content or niche to your Website, do not go overboard. If you have written a really great piece that does not add to your website, you must use it to make the PR. If you just add page after page of your site, you will end up with something that is difficult for visitors to use, frustrating them and cost you sales.

Example of a Marketing Mix Strategy

As an example, the marketing mix strategy for a breast cancer screening campaign for older women might include the following elements:

• The product could be any of these three behaviors: getting an annual mammogram, seeing a physician each year for a breast exam and performing monthly breast self-exams.
• The price of engaging in these behaviors includes the monetary costs of the mammogram and exam, potential discomfort and/or embarrassment, time and even the possibility of actually finding a lump.
• The place that these medical and educational services are offered might be a mobile van, local hospitals, clinics and worksites, depending upon the needs of the target audience.
• Promotion could be done through public service announcements, billboards, mass mailings, media events and community outreach.
• The "publics" you might need to address include your target audience (let's say low-income women age 40 to 65), the people who influence their decisions like their husbands or physicians, policymakers, public service directors at local radio stations, as well as your board of directors and office staff.
• Partnerships could be cultivated with local or national women's groups, corporate sponsors, medical organizations, service clubs or media outlets.
• The policy aspects of the campaign might focus on increasing access to mammograms through lower costs, requiring insurance and Medicaid coverage of mammograms or increasing federal funding for breast cancer research.
• The purse strings, or where the funding will come from, may be governmental grants, such as from the National Cancer Institute or the local health department, foundation grants or an organization like the American Cancer Society.

Each element of the marketing mix should be taken into consideration as the program is developed, for they are the core of the marketing effort. Research is used to elucidate and shape the final product, price, place, promotion and related decisions.

Additional Social Marketing "P's"

Publics--Social marketers often have many different audiences that their program has to address in order to be successful. "Publics" refers to both the external and internal groups involved in the program. External publics include the target audience, secondary audiences, policymakers, and gatekeepers, while the internal publics are those who are involved in some way with either approval or implementation of the program.

Partnership--Social and health issues are often so complex that one agency can't make a dent by itself. You need to team up with other organizations in the community to really be effective. You need to figure out which organizations have similar goals to yours--not necessarily the same goals--and identify ways you can work together.

Policy--Social marketing programs can do well in motivating individual behavior change, but that is difficult to sustain unless the environment they're in supports that change for the long run. Often, policy change is needed, and media advocacy programs can be an effective complement to a social marketing program.

Purse Strings--Most organizations that develop social marketing programs operate through funds provided by sources such as foundations, governmental grants or donations. This adds another dimension to the strategy development-namely, where will you get the money to create your program?

Promotion

Finally, the last "P" is promotion. Because of its visibility, this element is often mistakenly thought of as comprising the whole of social marketing. However, as can be seen by the previous discussion, it is only one piece. Promotion consists of the integrated use of advertising, public relations, promotions, media advocacy, personal selling and entertainment vehicles. The focus is on creating and sustaining demand for the product. Public service announcements or paid ads are one way, but there are other methods such as coupons, media events, editorials, "Tupperware"-style parties or in-store displays. Research is crucial to determine the most effective and efficient vehicles to reach the target audience and increase demand. The primary research findings themselves can also be used to gain publicity for the program at media events and in news stories.

Place

"Place" describes the way that the product reaches the consumer. For a tangible product, this refers to the distribution system--including the warehouse, trucks, sales force, retail outlets where it is sold, or places where it is given out for free. For an intangible product, place is less clear-cut, but refers to decisions about the channels through which consumers are reached with information or training. This may include doctors' offices, shopping malls, mass media vehicles or in-home demonstrations. Another element of place is deciding how to ensure accessibility of the offering and quality of the service delivery. By determining the activities and habits of the target audience, as well as their experience and satisfaction with the existing delivery system, researchers can pinpoint the most ideal means of distribution for the offering.

Price

"Price" refers to what the consumer must do in order to obtain the social marketing product. This cost may be monetary, or it may instead require the consumer to give up intangibles, such as time or effort, or to risk embarrassment and disapproval. If the costs outweigh the benefits for an individual, the perceived value of the offering will be low and it will be unlikely to be adopted. However, if the benefits are perceived as greater than their costs, chances of trial and adoption of the product is much greater.

In setting the price, particularly for a physical product, such as contraceptives, there are many issues to consider. If the product is priced too low, or provided free of charge, the consumer may perceive it as being low in quality. On the other hand, if the price is too high, some will not be able to afford it. Social marketers must balance these considerations, and often end up charging at least a nominal fee to increase perceptions of quality and to confer a sense of "dignity" to the transaction. These perceptions of costs and benefits can be determined through research, and used in positioning the product.

Product

The social marketing "product" is not necessarily a physical offering. A continuum of products exists, ranging from tangible, physical products (e.g., condoms), to services (e.g., medical exams), practices (e.g., breastfeeding, ORT or eating a heart-healthy diet) and finally, more intangible ideas (e.g., environmental protection). In order to have a viable product, people must first perceive that they have a genuine problem, and that the product offering is a good solution for that problem. The role of research here is to discover the consumers' perceptions of the problem and the product, and to determine how important they feel it is to take action against the problem.

Types of social marketing

Using the benefits and 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.

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

Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing.

Among the important marketing concepts are:

• The ultimate objective of marketing is to influence action;
• Action is undertaken whenever target audiences believe that the benefits they receive will be greater than the costs they incur;
• Programs to influence action will be more effective if they are based on an understanding of the target audience's own perceptions of the proposed exchange;
• Target audiences are seldom uniform in their perceptions and/or likely responses to marketing efforts and so should be partitioned into segments;
• Marketing efforts must incorporate all of the "4 Ps," i.e.:
  • Create an enticing "Product" (i.e., the package of benefits associated with the desired action);
  • Minimize the "Price" the target audience believes it must pay in the exchange;
  • Make the exchange and its opportunities available in "Places" that reach the audience and fit its lifestyles;
  • Promote the exchange opportunity with creativity and through channels and tactics that maximize desired responses;
• Recommended behaviors always have competition which must be understood and addressed;
• The marketplace is constantly changing and so program effects must be regularly monitored and management must be prepared to rapidly alter strategies and tactics.

These key concepts can be abbreviated as follows:

Action is the objective The target audience is the focus The exchange is critical Segment markets Use all four Ps Analyze and beware of competition Monitor and be flexible

What is Social Marketing?

by Nedra Kline Weinreich

The health communications field has been rapidly changing over the past two decades. It has evolved from a one-dimensional reliance on public service announcements to a more sophisticated approach which draws from successful techniques used by commercial marketers, termed "social marketing." Rather than dictating the way that information is to be conveyed from the top-down, public health professionals are learning to listen to the needs and desires of the target audience themselves, and building the program from there. This focus on the "consumer" involves in-depth research and constant re-evaluation of every aspect of the program. In fact, research and evaluation together form the very cornerstone of the social marketing process.

Social marketing was "born" as a discipline in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Kotler and Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society." This technique has been used extensively in international health programs, especially for contraceptives and oral rehydration therapy (ORT), and is being used with more frequency in the United States for such diverse topics as drug abuse, heart disease and organ donation.

Like commercial marketing, the primary focus is on the consumer--on learning what people want and need rather than trying to persuade them to buy what we happen to be producing. Marketing talks to the consumer, not about the product. The planning process takes this consumer focus into account by addressing the elements of the "marketing mix." This refers to decisions about 1) the conception of a Product, 2) Price, 3) distribution (Place), and 4) Promotion. These are often called the "Four Ps" of marketing. Social marketing also adds a few more "P's." At the end is an example of the marketing mix.