Social Marketing : An approach to individual level change

What is social Marketing?

Social Marketing is the systematic approach of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Generally marketing means the business approach to promote any product to the consumer. Actually the steps in between the production and the product to be consumed by a consumer are basically marketing. But in social marketing the main objective is not all the time a product, but also promoting a new thought process, may be some time backed by some physical product issues. But obviously it has to be for any greater good of the society.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)'s awareness program against drunk driving

How it is different to Media Advocacy?

Both of them are obviously same by their objective. But the difference is in their systematic approach. Media Advocacy works to bring any change in policy level when Social Marketing works in grassroots level to bring the change in individuals.

Social Marketing: Objectives
Bring Merit Good To bring any positive change in the society. To promote the change in individuals behavioral or habituation level to make the society better for living, eg. "Gachh Lagan, Poribesh Bachan" tree plantation campaign by Bangladesh Government, "Sunday ho ya Money roj khao andey" to include at least an egg in daily meal as the cheaper source of nutrition by Indian Governement.
Avoid Demerit Good By the same way social marketing can play role in the society to promote awareness against any harmful activities like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)'s campaign against drunk driving, "Bachte hole Jante hobe", AIDS awreness Campaign to protect the nation from AIDS in Bangladesh.
Change in a whole Another vision of Social Marketing is the bring the change in whole and to do this working in the grassroots to access the core of the society to make the change effective for most of the society members. And this is also make social marketing significant from media advocacy.

4 Ps of Social Marketing

Price | The cost, not only the financial one, but also the social, material, physical, behavioral, habitual psychological, that the audience is being asked to give up to achieve the betterment through the Social Marketing Program.

Product | In terms of behavior, beliefs, information, or services, the change is being achieved through the Social Marketing Campaign.

Promotion | The process through what target audience will be made aware of the product and its availability, and how the awareness will make the society members intend to accept the product.

Place | The use of media to disseminate the information to the people. The media is the place from where mass people can get the detailed information about what to do, how to do, what to change, why and so on. Most of the time the success of any social marketing campaign’s success depends upon the choice of proper media to disseminate information. Moreover the choice of placing information also effects on the mass audience that how much cost they has to sacrifice for achieving the betterment.

A Media Advocacy Guideline ::: Hand Wash Program

Identifying the Issue
The rural people and urban under-privileged class people of our country are seriously facing health threat from water contaminated diseases and infections like diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, skin irruption, and hook worm. Though they drink safe drinking water, but they are not safe from the disease threat.
Identifying the Policy Solution
The mass I have said about in the previous section have common phenomena, they are not aware about washing their hands before taking meals or after using the toilet, which results this sort of infection or infective diseases through the germs contained dirty hands.
Identifying the Primary Audience
In our case the first level audience will be the local government authority and local health department officials who can play a vital role to inform and educate the targeted mass if motivated properly. Here we have chosen them as they have directly involvement regarding the topic we have planned about.
Identifying the Secondary Intended Audience
The political leaders, Religious and intellectual opinion leaders whose word have a big influence on the target community can play a important role as the secondary intended audience in our case.
Research about the Policy to be adopted or not
A prior research about the issue has to be done before whether it will work on our focused issue or not. Is more or less like designing a prototype before the commercial production of any new innovation.
Research the audience is notified about the issue or not
It is very important to know about whether the targeted audience is prior-informed about the issue or not. If yes, then why they are not aware about it. To get the information its necessary to conduct a survey to gather the information from them.
Review Data to show the targeted mass
To make the people aware about hand-wash program it’s highly recommended to show some real life examples in front of them about its impact on daily life health. And for that reason it’s also necessary to go through a study that if the proposed example is viable for the audience or not.
Which Media to choose
In this case we have to understand that in which media the targeted audience has the access most. For example in case of our targeted audience Newspaper Editorials, Satellite TV Bulletins or Awareness E-Mails will not work out when radio announcement or BTV Public Service Announcement might work more effectively.
Choose the best way to deal with Media
Getting rich knowledge of communication skills to make the media work more powerfully to work for achieving our goal. This process also defines how effectively I can deal with the media to make my issue more attracted to the audience as well as the media representatives.

:: MEDIA ADVOCACY and it's ELEMENTS ::

Media Advocacy
Media advocacy refers to the strategic use of mass media along with direct participation of the members of civil society and opinion leaders, with the vision to bring any significant positive change in mass lifestyle or policy level. Actually media advocacy means, the use of media as a powerful tool in development communication’s process.

Elements of Media Advocacy
To make a media advocacy process to be fruitful in its working process, the strategy planner has to be aware about Media Advocacy’s element, which means some key-factors to keep in mind when someone is dealing with Media Advocacy.

Communication Goal
Define clearly the goal. That means what is our objective by applying the media advocacy in the specific area.
Target Audience
Finding out the key-audience is the second most important duty. Target mass might be of a huge number but there might be a limited number of people who can perform better in message conveying process to achieve our goal.
The Message
Clearly define the message what I want to convey to the target audience. The message will consist of the information which will focus on our goal.
Key Stakeholders
Determine the most effective communication stakeholders through whom message could be conveyed to the target audience most effectively.
Targeting the Media
To identify which part of mass media will perform more effectively on the target people and use that particular media in the media advocacy is a vital element. Because wrong choice of it might turn the advocacy planning worthless.