Social Marketing

If you think people will always act in their best interest, you're wrong. Often times, people arent even aware that their actions are not in their own best interests.

If you wanted to change someone's behavior, you can try telling them their behavior is harming themselves. Unfortunately, that's probably not going to work. People don't like to change their habits.

If you really, really want to change someone's behavior, you need to show them the benefits they will get in exchange. Social marketing may seem easier than traditional marketing, because they is no competitor business trying to compete for attention, but it is actually quite difficult to change someone's behavior. Just like traditional marketing, social marketing must be value-based to be effective, and clearly frame the behavior change in terms of audience benefits.

The social marketing mix is similar to the traditional marketing mix in many ways, even in terms of price. This may seem counterintuitive, because social change from the audience's perspective is free. Even though behavioral change doesn't have a dollar price, it does still come with with an opportunity cost. If you change from behavior A to behavior B, you are giving up all the benefits you had from behavior A. Social marketers must make the audience see that the benefits of switching to behaior B is greater that the benefits they already have with behavior A. In this way, the audience still perceives a "price" associated with behavioral change and must be convinced that the price is worth the benefits.

The above example demonstrates that behavioral change not only has a price, but also competition, with the competition being the status quo. In this sense, social marketing is similar to what I think of as "number two" marketing, or "David Marketing." Social marketers, like upstarts, are trying to get people to change behavior, competing against "number one," the "Goliath" company, the company that simply needs to get people to continue doing what they're doing, buying what they're buying. Social marketers are constantly competing against the status quo, the "Goliath" of behaviors, and need to prove that they have something better to offer, something that's worth changing behavior. Social marketers audience need to be convinced.