Download Social Marketing

Sheridan Clemson
Geog 456 – Issues in Natural Resource Management
Don Alexander
WHAT IS SOCIAL MARKETING?
“Social Marketing is the use of
marketing principles and techniques
to influence a target audience to
voluntarily accept, reject, modify, or
abandon a behavior for the benefit of
individuals, groups, or society as a
whole.”
(Kotler, Lee and Roberto 5)
WHAT SOCIAL MARKETING IS NOT
 Communications and Public Education campaigns




alone are not social marketing
Unaided these kinds of campaigns are ineffective
Faulty Logic involved: Simply educating and telling
people they should change is enough to cause
change
This approach fails to adopt a consumer mindset and
understand public attitudes and values
It promotes a product the public is not enthusiastic
about and spends a lot of time convincing the public
of its value
WHAT IS EFFECTIVE SOCIAL MARKETING
 Approach that puts great effort to understand
consumers’ actions, perceptions and values of a
product
 Undertakes extensive research - Observing potential
consumers, surveying, and creating focus groups
 Does not spend all of its resources trying to educate
 Becomes educated by its potential customers which
helps to create and offer something that is perceived
as valuable
THE “FOUR P’s” OF MARKETING (PLUS 0)
0. People (Who is the ‘customer’?)
1. Product (What are we ‘selling’?)
2. Price (What is the cost?)
3. Place (Where are we marketing?)
4. Promotion (What channels and tools are we using?)
CASE EXAMPLE
• Public Transit
• Promoting the use of public transit to and
from Malaspina University-College
0. PEOPLE (What are the market segments ?)
• Social Marketing seeks to
induce changes in people’s:
• Values
• Attitudes
• Behavior
• Examples:
• Refraining from drinking
and driving
• Recycling
• Taking public transit
MARKET SEGMENTATION
Segmentation of People into Target
Markets
 Mass marketing is ineffective
 Marketing must target
specific segments
(categories) of people
MARKET SEGMENTATION (CON’T)
 Think of all people involved
Malaspina Transit subgroups:
 Identify appropriate
 Students
audience – be precise as
possible
 Each subgroup requires
different marketing
strategies
 Tailor approach to target
group
 Faculty
 Support staff
 Board of Governors
 Executive
 RDN Transit
 City council and planners
Segmentation by demographics, lifestyle, attitude,
geography, etc.
GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
•Malaspina Transit:
• City of Nanaimo
• Nanaimo campus
• Regional campus
communities
• Downtown or suburban
residents?
DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
Focus: gender, education, income, age, etc.
General environmentally friendly behavior:
• Weak or unclear correlation with gender, education, income and age
• Demographic are normally poor predictors of actual green behavior
Malaspina Transit:
•
•
•
•
Average age of students 27
Majority female
Low income (poor students)
Highly educated
PSYCHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
Focus: Class, lifestyle, or personality
Malaspina Students
 Middle class
 Auto-dependent
 Hectic Lifestyle
 Personality?
WHO, THEN, ARE THE TARGET AUDIENCES?
What are the Market
Segments at Malaspina
for promoting Public
Transit again?
Students and
Faculty
City Council &
Planners
RDN - Transit
RESEARCHING MARKET SEGMENTS
 What audiences should the campaign target?
 Subgroups?
 Demographic, psychographic, geographic?
 Choose what to focus on
 Students! – Biggest group performing behavior
 Therefore tailor approach to student segment
 What do we know about this segment?
 Analyze behavior, knowledge, attitudes, beliefs
 Analyze perceived benefits, barriers, and costs of
behavior
1. PRODUCT (What is the product for this behavior change?)
A product comprises of an Actual Product and a
Core Product
 In a social marketing
campaign:
• An Actual Product is a
New Behavior
• Stopping smoking
• Riding bicycles
• Taking Transit
• A Core Product is a
Benefit to the consumer
of the product in the
consumer’s mind
• Why is the Core Product
important?
LET’S MAKE A DEAL!
 For people to give something up, they have
to feel they are getting something in return
 Also, people must first feel that they have a
genuine problem and that the product offers
a beneficial solution
GENUINE PERCEIVED PROBLEMS
Malaspina Transit Concerns:
• Effects on climate change
• Minimal parking available
• Pollution
• Cost of vehicle and
upkeep
• Others?
BARRIERS TO MALASPINA TRANSIT USE
 Perceived Consumer Effectiveness –
Addresses sense of competency and effectiveness
 Feeling alone with the concern – no one else is doing
anything
 Lack of efficient and speedy transit services
 Safety
 Time crunch
 Hectic schedules
 Others?
PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS
What can we do to strengthen the transit behavior
product?
Highlight attractive
features
Positive or Negative
Advertising
Feedback explaining
progress (Important for PCE)
2. PRICE
(What is the price components of this behavior?)
 What does public transit cost the consumer?
 Monetary Costs
 Bus tickets/U-Pass
 Non-Monetary Costs
 Time, effort, energy, discomforts, freedom,
convenience
 Academic Costs
 Loss of studying/work time to riding bus
Goal: to reduce cost of public transit relative to
driving a car
PRICE STRATEGIES TO CONSUMERS
What can we do to reduce costs or increase benefits for
customers?
 Increase parking fees to subsidize bus pass and
tickets
 Tuition bursary for non-auto-users – Reflecting
infrastructure costs of parking
 Lobby for government funding for increased
transit infrastructure and new buses
 Others?
3. PLACE
(Where and when consumer contacts this behavior?)
 Place is about distribution channels – Where is the
behavior available to the target audience
 How transit gets to students
 Helps to determine where to put systems in place
that facilitate adopting the behavior
Goal: to make using transit as accessible and
convenient as possible
WHERE AND WHEN IS TRANSIT OFFERED TO
STUDENTS?
Campus
Main Streets
Not Often
Malls
More Malls
4. PROMOTION
(How to get message to target audience)
 Promotions are persuasive communications
conveying awareness, knowledge, benefits, and
inspiration
 Includes advertising, sales, publicity, public relations,
endorsements, packaging, etc.
 Promotion Strategies involve:
 Creating key messages
 Selecting Media – What media target watches and
where get information
Goal: to motivate people to change behavior and to
continue the actions
PUBLIC TRANSIT PROMOTION
 Information/education tools
 Branding/Slogan – “A more human way to travel”
 Credibility
 Information must be credible to be effective
 Source important – What sponsors are credible?
 Create public recognition – package behavior as
social norm
 Example: Recycling
 Timely prompts and reminders
 Feedback to improve PCE
Craig Lefebvre's
Five Keys to Changing Behavior
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Know and understand the target audience’s
perceptions of barriers
Focus on changing behavior rather than knowledge
or awareness
Make the desired behavior more attractive than the
current behavior
Try to remove the barriers so that the audience can
try the new behavior – and sustain it
Engage the audience in relevant attention - getting
ways to tap into existing motivations and inspiring
action
• Social Marketing is only one strategy to use for
Natural Resource Management
• To be effective marketing tools should be utilized
with other approaches
Weaknesses:
• Can not be expected to solve every type of
environmental problem - especially not as
effective for complex problems
• Needs major commitment to follow through
research
Works Cited
 Bird, Tom. "We Have Ways to Make You Green." Alternatives
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Journal 34(2008): 28-31.
Gardner, Gerald, and Paul Stern. Environmental Problems and
Human Behavior. Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon, 1996.
Kotler, Philip, Nancy Lee, and Ned Roberto. Social Marketing:
Improving the Quality of Life . '2nd ed'. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publishing, 2002.
McKenzie-Mohr, Doug, and William Smith . Fostering
Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based
Social Marketing. Gabriola Island : New Society Publishers,
1999.
Weinreich, Nedra Kline. Hands-On Social Marketing.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999.