What is social marketing
and
How to apply social marketing in health interventions
Dr Ray LowrySenior Lecturer
University of Newcastle
Marketing? Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives."
What is Marketing?
Most people think that marketing is only about the advertising and/or personal selling of goods and services. Advertising and selling, however, are just two of the many marketing activities.
What is Marketing?
In general, marketing activities are all those associated with
identifying the particular wants and needs of a target market of customers, and then going about satisfying those customers better
than the competitors.
What is Marketing?
……Involves doing market research on customers,
analysing their needs, and then
making strategic decisions about product design, pricing, promotion and distribution.
What is Marketing?
"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives."-Contemporary Marketing Wired (1998) by Boone and Kurtz. Dryden Press.
Business philosophy:“Producing what you can sell, not selling what you can produce”
Voluntary behaviour change:Purchase; repurchase; switching; foot fall
Techniques:Objective setting; segmentation and targeting; market research; mix; strategic vision
What is Social Marketing?
Borrowing from commerce;
“Can you sell brotherhood like soap?” (Weibe 1951)
The Meaning and Importance of a Social Marketing Approach Social marketing challenges the view that when a health promotion campaign fails, the defect resides in the people targeted by the campaign rather than in the campaign itself. Often in public health, when a …….. campaign fails to produce the desired change in knowledge, attitudes, or behaviours, the assumption is that these desired out-comes are essentially intractable or that people are just not ready to change.
A social marketing approach has a strong formative component, meaning that the interpretations, reach, and impact of a social marketing campaign are analysed on a continual basis as the campaign is developed and implemented, with the results fed back to campaign designers and implementers. This is in contrast to most public health marketing campaigns, which typically are implemented in a one-shot fashion, without much market segmentation and without collecting information along the way to feed back to the campaign designers and implementers.
Barriers to the social marketing of public health include difficulties in identifying and classifying narrow audience segments, obtaining appropriate "consumer" or behavioural data on the targets of the intervention, developing strong yet simple product concepts in reaching vulnerable populations (including those most negatively oriented to the marketing message), and implementing and maintaining long-term strategies.
Social Marketing: Basic Principles
Voluntary changeConsumer orientationMutually beneficial exchangeThe joint creation of valueMuch more than advertisingFocusRelationships not transactions
1.Voluntary change
2.Consumer orientation
3.Mutually beneficial exchange
4.The joint creation of value
5.Much more than advertising
6.Focus
7.Relationships not transactions
What is social marketing
and
How to apply social marketing in health interventions
Plan
The problem
Results
The solution
The problem
The impacts of smoking in pregnancy are well documented
higher rate of miscarriage, perinatal mortality, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome
Approximately 30% of women who smoke in Great Britain continue to smoke during pregnancy
April 2001-March 2002 around 19 women set a quit date and 8 successfully quit smoking at the 4 week stage through the mainstream service.
Progress
PCT A
PCT B
PCT C
PCT D+E Sunderland
North East
Set quit date 18 10 26 6 47 107
Success quit 4 weeks self report
2 3 10 2 17 34
Not quit 4 weeks self report
8 5 10 4 19 46
Not know / lost 8 2 6 0 11 27
Quit 4 weeks validated CO analyser
2 3 9 0 15 29
Activity Sunderland smokers cessation support April-June 2002 compared to control areas (other Primary Care Trusts in North East England)
What we found
They feel awful
Information poor
Womb with a who?
Body language professionals
Don’t want to be nagged
Barrier
Difficulty recruiting women
Poor existing information
Health professionals lack of enthusiasm
No nagging/make them feel worse
Barrier
Difficulty recruiting women
Poor existing information
Health professionals lack of enthusiasm
No nagging/make them feel worse
Intervention
Proactive recruiting, dedicated worker, home visits
Design and pre-test new marketing/Information material with target population
Role play to engage health professionals
Consumer friendly cessation support (including dedicated worker)
Role play
05
101520253035404550
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Month
Nu
mb
er
Referred Pregnant
Set quit Pregnant
Quit Pregnant
Role play sessions with midwives
Sunderland smoking cessation activity (pregnancy) by month (referral to service, quit date and 4 week quit rates)
well established Pregnancy Service(April 2002 – June 2003)
541 pregnant women have been referred to the service
316 pregnant women have set a quit date
131 pregnant women remain quit at their 4 week follow up(42% quit rate)
And the good news isIntervention transferableTechnology transferable
Prescriptions for sugar-free medicines before (1995) and after
(1997) social marketing intervention
Amoxycillin
0
20
40
95 96 97
Year
% p
resc
rib
ed
test
control
Erythromycin 125
05
1015
95 96 97
test
control
Erythromicin 250
0102030
95 96 97
test
control
A CREATIVE BLUEPRINT FOR SOCIAL MARKETING INTERVENTION
Objective: What are you trying to do?
Target Audience: Who are you trying to reach? primary and secondary
Current Attitudes: What does your target audience currently believe to be true, regarding your issue?
Desired Action: What do you want the audience to DO as a result of your message?
Primary Selling Proposition: What's in it for them?
Support: What research, proof, other successes or evidence exists to support your message?
Personality: What kind of tone do you want to utilize? Humour? Suspenseful? Everybody's On Board? Educational? Sombre? Non-condescending?
Success Indicators: How will you know you have succeeded?
Interventions now Interventions now possible:possible:Oral hygiene Cervical cancer screeningBreast cancer screeningSmoking cessationAlcoholSugar free medicinesPrescribing wasteVaccine uptake
What is social marketingand
How to apply social marketing in health
interventions
Dr Ray LowrySenior Lecturer
University of [email protected]