Social Marketing

6
The Basics
Social Marketing
Eat your vegetables. Wear your seat belt. Forget your car; take the bus.
These are the kinds of actions that can benefit an entire community. If people are safer and
healthier, they will put less of a strain on the health care system. If people use mass transit, the
highways will not be clogged and the air will be cleaner. But, if these things are ever going to
happen, society needs some help.
Individuals have to change their behavior. And behavior change is what social marketing is
all about.
Social marketing is the utilization of marketing theories and techniques to influence behavior in
order to achieve a social goal. In other words, social marketing is similar to commercial marketing,
except that its goal is not to maximize profits or sales; the goal is a change in behavior that
will benefit society – such as persuading more people to use efficient lighting.
Of course, there are thousands of ways to work towards social goals, not all of which involve
social marketing. Attempts to accomplish social goals can be divided into two categories:
behavioral and nonbehavioral. For example, to prevent highway fatalities, one could install air
bags in cars (nonbehavioral) or one could persuade more people to wear seat belts (behavioral).
Nonbehavioral solutions tend to be in the area of technology. Behavioral solutions, on the
other hand, often require social marketing. 1
So how does social marketing work? Take a look at figure 1 on the next page. Everything above
the dotted line is involved in changing behavior; this is social marketing. The behavior is the
goal – the specific action you want a specific audience to undertake. Whether people engage
in a behavior is based on how they view that decision, or their perceptions: What are the
benefits? Does it seem difficult to do? Can someone like me do it? Are other people doing it?
Will people laugh at me if I do it?
1 Although this book addresses social marketing and behavioral solutions to social problems, it is important to note that
nonbehavioral solutions are also effective and should be considered every time we work for social change.