Social marketing is one that applies commercial marketing techniques in the study, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of the target audience, in order to improve their social well-being and that of their community. It is characterized by its constant process and because it is focused on the recipient.
The main objective of social marketing is to transform habits, behaviors and thoughts in favor of a particular population, for example to persuade young people not to have sexual relations at an early age; smokers to stop smoking, etc.
The elemental piece of social marketing is the receiver, since they are part of the process constantly, that is why the techniques to be used must begin with research, to analyze what are the needs, desires and perceptions of the target audience.
Social marketing is nothing more than the sales of social ideas, however not for this, it should be relegated or ignored, since it involves the same steps and efforts to achieve the final objective which is to sell a specific idea or philosophy, in a consuming public. At present there are many companies that are applying social marketing, in order to create awareness and acceptability among their consumers about certain consumer products, of course, without taking advantage of the customer, much less forcing him to a certain consumption.
Besides the receiver, another important factor in social marketing is the product. The design of the social product is materialized after previous research and analysis that detects the needs of consumers in order to satisfy them.
Each social product handles certain types of demand:
Harmful demand, is when the recipient has a socially harmful behavior, for example through excessive consumption of alcohol, reckless driving, etc. To get this audience to leave behind these harmful behaviors; social marketing should provide an idea or practice to replace this behavior.
Irregular demand, can be defined with an example, blood donors, these generally collaborate occasionally, that is why through social marketing, the voluntary blood donation is promoted through awareness campaigns.
Finally, the five steps to follow before starting a social marketing campaign are described:
Product is the behavior that you want to encourage.
Price, is the cost that the target audience has to pay for changing their way of thinking (time, money, etc.)
Promotion, what is the message you want to spread and what are the channels or channels that should be used for this purpose.
Policy, determine what are the rules or policies, that collaborate or prevent, the actions applied to change behavior in the population.
