Social Marketing Concepts and Principles

Professor Jeff French

Social Marketing has two defining features:

1. A driving concern with developing robust understanding and insight into the customer/
patient/ citizen

2. A clear focus on achieving and sustaining specific measurable behaviours associated

with promoting a social good.

Social marketing is : ‘The systematic application of marketing ,alongside other concepts and
techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals, for a social good.’ French Blair Stevens 2007, Big Pocket
Book of social Marketing NSMC. London

Customer focus
All social marketing is based on a robust understanding of the target audience it is trying to help;
this understanding is developed from observational data, demographic and epidemiological data
together with market and consumer research. Consumer research is used to identify audience
characteristics and needs, and key stakeholder intelligence and understanding. A range of
different research analyses, synthesis and data fusion approaches are used to develop a robust
and rounded understanding of people’s motivations, needs, wants, and the enabling factors that
exist and the barriers they face in adopting targeted behaviors.

Strategic and Operational Social Marketing

To date, the most common way social marketing has been used and applied is operationally, as
a specific process to achieve a behavior change with a particular audience in relation to a
specific topic. However, it is increasingly recognised by DH (Ambitions for Health Strategy 2008)
that social marketing, can and should be applied at the policy level. For example rather than
assuming a mass media campaign is required, it is helpful to use a social marketing approach to
inform policy formulation and strategy development. Strategic social marketing seeks to
examine all of the potential interventional options and assess them based on what customer
insight indicates would be most beneficial and effective in terms of a programme of action.

Social marketing’s ‘customer triangle’

The Social marketing ‘customer triangle’ was developed by French and Blair-Stevens in 2006 as
a diagrammatic way to highlight the key features of social marketing. In many respects, it
has been used to ‘market’ social marketing across government. Rather than simply listing the
features, the triangle provides a pictorial guide to social marketing’s three key concepts and
three key principles.

Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed

Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
 Behaviour

Insight,
Exchange /
Choice
Architecture
Competition

Intervention
Segmentation
Mix

The customer triangle model of social marketing

The three concepts and three principles:

Social Marketing concepts and principles are not of themselves a process or recipe for success;
rather they are the ingredients necessary for successful social programs that seek to influence
behavior. It is important that they are not confused with ‘process planning models’ i.e. how to
plan and deliver or do social marketing. There are specific process planning models for this
purpose (see the STELA Model and the TTP Model). Instead, the concepts and principles are
essentially the key elements that indicate if a programme is applying a social marketing
approach. It is also important to recognise that these concepts and principles are not a random
or arbitrary collection; rather they are derived from an evidence and experiential base about
what works and what does not in the development and delivery of public sector programmes
designed to deliver measurable change in behavior.

Concept 1: Insight Driven

Social marketing is based on the development of a deep ‘insight’ into people’s lives, with a clear
focus on what will and will not move, motivate or enable people to change in any given situation.
Insight drills down from a wide understanding of the customer (customer orientation) to focus on
identifying key factors and issues relevant to influencing particular a behaviour. The approach is
focused on identifying and developing ‘actionable insights’ based on all available relevant data
to make considered judgments about what will help, these insights are subsequently tested
through pilots and refined or rejected according to their utility.

Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed

Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
Concept 2: Exchange and Choice architecture
Consists of understanding and developing interventions that make it more likely that people will
adopt a particular behaviour. This core concept involves developing one of three approaches or
a combination of them:

1. A compelling positive ‘exchange’ proposition based on customer analysis, about what a

person will perceive as a value that outweighs the cost of change, i.e. an incentive
based approach
2. The development of a system, service or product that assists or ‘nudges’ a person
voluntarily towards a socially beneficial behaviour.
3. The development of a system, service or product that requires a person to behave in a
particular way or face a negative consequence i.e. a disincentive.

Concept 3: Competition
A robust competition analysis is a key principle of social marketing programmes. Competition
analysis examines both internal and external competition and seeks to address these forces.

● Internal competition (e.g. psychological factors, pleasure, desire, risk taking, and addition)

● External competition (e.g. wider influences and influencers competing for the audience’s
attention, time, and behaviour, promoting and reinforcing alternative or counter behaviours)

Strategies are then developed to minimize the potential impact of competition.

Principle 1 : Behavioural goals

Social marketing has a clear focus for achieving impact on people’s behaviour, and is based
on the setting out of SMART behavioural goals. A broad behavioural analysis is undertaken to
develop a rounded picture of the current behavioral patterns and trends, making sure to
examine both, the ‘problem behaviour’; and the ‘desired behaviour’. Interventions are then
developed to focus on specific behaviours (going beyond just focusing on addressing
information, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs).

Interventions seek to address four key behavioural issues not just the ‘behavior change’:

1 Formulation and establishment of the behaviour—understanding what helps trigger and

establish the behaviour in the first place (making sure to look at both the problem and the
desired behaviour)

2 Maintenance and reinforcement of the behaviour—understanding and sustain the behaviour

over time (again making sure to look at both the problem and the desired behaviour)

3 Behavioural change, understanding what will move and motivate or assist people to make
changes
and what barriers need to be addressed

4 Behavioural controls—understanding where voluntary approaches may not work and where
ethical criteria can justify the use of requirements or controls to influence the behaviour in
the given context

Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed

Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
Social marketing is also distinguished by its explicit embrace of theory. Theory drawn from
many disciplines to inform and steer the development of programmes. Theory is used to inform
and guide development, with theoretical assumptions being tested as part of the developmental
process. An open integrated theory approach is applied to systematically examine which form of
theory offers the greatest utility in a given context, while avoiding the tendency to simply apply
the same ‘preferred’ theory to every situation and context.

Principle 2: Segmentation
Social Marketing applies a segmentation approach, going beyond demographic and where
relevant epidemiological and service uptake data by adding data about people beliefs, attitudes,
understanding and behaviours. Target audiences are segmented using this data into sub sets
that share common beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Interventions are directly tailored to
specific audience segments rather than relying on ‘blanket’ ‘spray and pray’ approaches.

Principle 3: Methods mix

Social marketing examines and uses an appropriate mix of methods to achieve the goals of the
programme: A range of different approaches are examined and used to establish the most
effective, efficient and cost effective mix of methods :

● Educate—to enable and empower

● Support—to serve and practically assist
● Design—to alter environment
● Control—to require, regulate, and enforce
● Inform—to communicate facts and attitudes
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Social Marketing planning models need to be applied alongside the concepts and principles set
out above.The STELA model is one such planning process.

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Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed

Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org