What we do
| Article Index |
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| What is social marketing? |
| Key Features & Benchmark Criteria |
| Key Stages |
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Social marketing is an approach used to achieve and sustain behaviour goals on a range of issues.
While definitions vary, three key elements commonly appear:
- Its primary aim is to achieve 'social good' (rather than commercial benefit), with clearly defined behavioural goals.
- It is a systematic process used to address short, medium and long-term issues.
- It uses a range of marketing techniques and approaches (a marketing mix). In the case of health-related social marketing, the ‘social good’ can be articulated in terms of achieving specific, achievable and manageable behaviour goals for improving health and reducing health inequalities.
Originally defined as:
"...the design, implementation and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution and marketing research."
(Kotler and Zaltman, 1971)
The NSMC has refined this definition further:
"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, 2006)
