What is social marketing?
Social marketing is a systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques intended to achieve specific behavioural goals for common good. Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of the book Social Marketing by marketing experts Philip Kotler and Edurdo L. Roberto. Speaking of so-called "social change campaigns", Kotler and Roberto introduced this notion by writing, "A social change campaign is an organised effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behaviour".
While social marketing initially developed with the intention to employ commercial marketing techniques, it has in the last decade matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing. Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having ‘two parents' - a ‘social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a ‘marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches.
In recent years there has been an important development in terms of making a distinction between ‘strategic social marketing' and ‘operational social marketing'. Much of the literature and case studies focus on ‘operational social marketing', using it to achieve specific behavioural goals in relation to different audiences and topics. However, there have been increasing efforts to ensure that social marketing goes ‘upstream' and to use it to influence both ‘policy making' and ‘strategic development'. Here the focus is less on specific audience and topic work but on the use of marketing strategies to influence effectively development and conducting of policies and strategies.
Difference between social and commercial marketing
Although ‘social marketing' is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an over-simplification. The primary aim of ‘social marketing' is ‘common good', while in ‘commercial marketing' the aim is primarily ‘financial'. This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to the achievement of common good.
It is important not to confuse ‘social marketing' with other types of ‘commercial marketing' where there is a contribution to common good, but where this is not a primary objective. For instance, ‘societal marketing', ‘cause-related marketing' or ‘pro-social marketing', all represent aspects of commercial marketing which can contribute in a variety of ways to ‘common good', but the difference between them and ‘social marketing' is that in their case ‘common good' is not primary, but secondary objective as part of support for commercial or financial objectives of the companies - taking advantage of work for ‘common good' in order to ensure and maintain loyalty of consumers.
It is sometimes felt that social marketing is restricted to a particular spectrum of client - the non-profit organisation, the health services group or the government agency. Indeed, 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 organisations; it may be argued that corporate public relations efforts such as funding for the arts are an example of social marketing.
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