Social Marketing

Social Marketing is a communication approach, is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for the social good, and seeks to make health-related information, products and services easily available and affordable to low-income populations and those at risk while at the same time promoting the adaption of healthier behavior.

Social Marketing can be applied to promote:

· Merit goods.
· Make the society avoid demerit goods and
· Considers society well being as a whole.

Social Marketing is being described as having two parents:

A Social Parent=Social science and social policy and a marketing parent= Commercial and public sector marketing approaches.

Different Approaches/models to social marketing:

Community-based systems of product promotion and distribution approach.
An innovative and promising variant of the CBD approach.
The manufacturer’s model
The targeted service delivery approach.

The four ‘P’s of Social Marketing:

With each social marketing program, the concept of a target population is constant. They are:

The product being promoted: The product is the knowledge, attitudes or behavior you want to target audience to adopt.

The price: The price is usually something more abstract than money.

The promotion: The promotion is the means for persuading the target audience that the product is worth this price. It may include a publicity campaign through the mass media.

The place or channels were by the information reaches the consumer: The place refers to how the message is disseminated. Channels could include mass media, schools, churches and workplaces etc.

Price is less and benefit is larger.