Public Relations and Social Marketing

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MARKETING 4(1+3)

Lesson 8 : Concept and Philosophy of Social Marketing

Example of a Marketing Mix Strategy

As an example, the marketing mix strategy for a breast cancer screening campaign for elder women is presented.

• 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 work sites, 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, policy makers, 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 and 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. Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing. But, it is exclusive in following terms.

• Like commercial marketing the objective of social marketing is also to influence action, highlighting the benefits which the target audience perceive as greater than the costs they incur.
• Programs are based on an understanding of the target audience's 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.
• Recommended behaviors always have competition which must be understood and addressed.

Being social good is the product of social marketing a clear perception in the mind of the social marketer is required of what is sociaml marketing and what is not social marketing.

Social marketing is	Social marketing is not
An approach to thinking about and structuring a social change programme –one that is consumer driven.	A theory. It does not tell us how to change a person’s behaviour.
A social or behaviour change strategy.	Just advertising.
Most effective when it activates people	A clever slogan or messaging strategy
Targeted to those who have a reason to care and who are ready for change	Reaching everyone through a media blitz. An image campaign
Strategic and requires efficient use of resources	Done in a vacuum
Integrated and works on the’’ installment plan’’	A quick process