Social Marketing: Principles and Applications

Social Marketing

• It employs marketing principles to influence target audience behaviors for societal and individual benefit.
• It focuses on creating, communicating, and exchanging offerings with positive value for individuals, clients, partners, and society.
• It primarily focuses on selling a behavioral change rather than a tangible good or service.
• Examples include: "Dumb Ways to Die," a safety campaign for trains in Melbourne.
• It can improve public health.
• It can help prevent injuries.
• It helps protecting the environment.
• It contributes to communities.
• It enhances financial wellbeing

Similarities to Commercial Marketing

• Exchange theory is fundamental.
• Customer orientation is critical.
• Audiences are segmented.
• The 4P's (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) are considered.
• Market research is key to success.
• Results are measured for improvement.

Differences from Commercial Marketing

• Financial gain is the goal in commercial marketing, while societal gain is the goal in social marketing.
• In commercial marketing, competitors are similar organizations, but in social marketing, the competition is the alternative behavior that won't lead to the desired change.
• Downstream social marketing focuses on influencing individual behaviors.
• Midstream social marketing focuses on influencing those "closer" to the target audience like friends, family, teachers, and healthcare providers.
• Upstream social marketing focuses on influencing policy makers, media, corporations, and other influencers.

Personal Selling

• It involves direct interaction between a company representative and a customer, with a two-way flow of information.
• It has the advantage of immediate feedback and is quite persuasive.
• It has the disadvantage of being expensive per exposure, and the message may differ.
• Transactional selling is a form of personal selling that focuses on making an immediate sale with little concern for developing long-term customer relationships.
• Relationship selling involves building long-term customer relationships by developing mutually satisfying, win-win situations, building trust, and commitment.
• Inside sales involve sales reps working from a desk, providing personalized service.
• Outside sales involve sales reps visiting locations, selling products into retail stores, and setting up displays.
• Order takers are salespeople who collect orders without attempting to find new customers or increase order sizes.
• Order getters are salespeople who increase a firm's sales revenue by acquiring new customers and more orders from existing ones.
• B2C sales include items such as vacuums, solar panels, and investments.
• They also include services from cosmetologists, dentists, physicians, realtors, attorneys, and entrepreneurs.
• The presentation stage in the personal selling process involves converting a prospect into a customer.
• Stimulus-response presentation is also know as suggestive selling: given the appropriate stimulus, the customer will buy.
• Formula-selling presentation provides information in a step-by-step, thorough, and accurate manner and is also known as canned sales presentation.
• Need satisfaction presentation focuses on probing and listening to identify needs and interests, also known as adaptive selling.
• Consumer generated media (CGM) Value: Consumers publish their thoughts, opinions, reviews, and product discussions on blogs, vlogs, social media, and retailer sites
• Digital media is more interactive than traditional marketing media.
• Consumers tend to trust their friends and other consumers over corporations.
• Many-to-many communication model relies on consumers talking to one another.
• Enhanced credibility and efficiency are benefits of the communication model.
• Businesses and consumers rely on online reviews.
• Devastation can be caused by false reviews

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

• IMC is the coordination of promotional efforts, including advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing, to influence awareness, attitudes, and behavior.
• IMC includes synchronization of promotional elements and the use of more precisely targeted promotional tools.
• Advertising is paid, non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media.
• PR is critical when a firm's image is at risk due to negative information and is common for crisis management
  • There are 4 PR requirements: acknowledge, apologize, rectify, and have a leader deliver the message.
• Direct marketing uses strategies that use direct communication with consumers to generate a response: an order, a request for information, or a store visit.

Advertising

• Advertising has advantages such as reaching large numbers of people quickly and low cost per person.
• Advertising has disadvantages such as high absolute cost and no immediate feedback loop.
• Product advertising includes pioneering advertising, used during the introductory stage of the PLC to provide information.
• Competitive advertising promotes a specific brand's features and benefits.
• Comparative advertising shows one brand's strengths relative to competitors.
• Reminder advertising emphasizes previous knowledge of a product.
• Reinforcement advertising assures current users they made the right choice.
• Advocacy advertising states a company's position on an issue.
• Goals of advertising includes: creating intrigue, stimulate chatter, raise awareness, inform/educate, and strengthen buyer preference.
• An advertising strategy should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
• The target audience is not only the target customers but also those who influence them.
• Message considerations include product-related aspects like characteristics/attributes, brand-related meanings, price-related aspects, incentives, and distribution.
• Creative considerations include appeals based on information (facts, demonstrations, testimonials) or emotion (humor, fear, love).
• Evaluation (control) measures include exposure (how many times an ad is seen), comprehension (understanding the communication), recall (remembering the message), persuasion (attitude/preference change), intent (planned action), and behavior (actual actions).

Push and Pull Promotional Strategies

• Push: Heinz communicates with Ralphs offering a free case of ketchup for every 10 cases purchased, which incentivize Ralphs to lower ketchup prices.
• Pull: Heinz creates a manufacturer coupon to send directly to consumers mailbox, to be redeemed at Ralphs/Target/Walmart.

The 4 P's and 4 C's of Marketing

• The 4 P's: Product, Price, Place, Promotion.
• The 4 C's: Customer Solution, Customer Cost, Convenience, Communication.

Distribution (Place)

• Distribution is the key final piece to successful marketing.
• Direct channel of distribution: Company to customer.
  • provides access to customer data.
  • enables greater cost efficiency, greater control in delivery, and closer contact with end users.
  • can be difficult to establish the same breadth with intermediaries, manufacturers may lack competencies, and have large up front fixed costs.
• Indirect channel of distribution: Company to wholesale to retailer to customer,
  • Distribution can be implemented quickly and reach many customers
  • Results in loss of control over selling environment
• Hybrid channel of distribution: combines both direct and indirect methods.
  • Allows the use of intermediaries results in greater efficiency in making goods available to target markets
  • match supply from producers to demand from consumers
  • offer more than it can achieve on its own
• Value chain involves trying to get the most out of the distribution.
• Every part of the chain needs to increase the value of the product.
• Full vertical integration: A firm gets involved in new portions of the value chain and controls multiple aspects from supply chain and production
• Forward vertical integration: Manufacturers gaining ownership or control over the intermediary at the next level down (GETTING CLOSER TO CONSUMER)
• Product distribution can be intensive, exclusive, or selective.
  • Intensive distribution: placing product in many outlets for convenience of customer
  • Exclusive distribution: placing the product in very few outlets
  • Selective distribution: somewhere between the two
• Slotting allowances: fee that is paid by the manufacturer to the retailer to get a space in that retail establishment
• The levels of retail service: self-service, limited service, and full service.

Building Price Foundation

• Importance of price:
  • price is the only marketing mix variable that can be changed quickly
  • related to total revenue and profit
  • has psychological impact on customers
• Fixed costs do not change with the number of units produced.
  • Average fixed cost per unit decreases as production increases.
• Variable costs are those production costs that are tied to the number of units
  • They are varying depending on volume

Inelastic and Elastic Demand

• Inelastic demand: A change in price results in a little or no change in quantity demanded.
• Elastic demand: A change in price causes a great change in quantity demanded.

Importance of Price

• Depends on the product, the target market, the purchase situation
• Customers use value to differentiate between competing brands

Psychological Pricing

• Buyers' expectations, odd-even pricing (ending in $0.99), and price lining (different levels of product with different prices) influence consumer perception.

Product Life Cycle (PLC) Stages

• Introduction - Gain Awareness.
• Growth - Stress Differentiation.
• Maturity - Maintain Brand Loyalty.
• Decline - Harvesting Deletion.

Types of Product Adopters

• Innovators are venturesome, highly educated, and use multiple information sources.
• Early adopters are leaders in social settings with slightly above-average education.
• Early majority are deliberate and have many informal social contacts.
• Late majority are skeptical with below-average social status.
• Laggards fear debt and rely on neighbors and friends for information.

Components of a Brand

• Brand elements: name, term, symbol, logo, slogan, url
• Brand equity: a brand's financial value to its organization
• Individual branding (multibranding):Separate brands for each product or product line
• Umbrella/family branding (multiproduct branding): Multiple products, same brand name
• Risks diluting the meaning of brand, confusing customers is a risk involved in packaging

Services Marketing

• Unique elements
  • Intangibility, the service unique element, refers to cant touch it, hold it, no change of ownership
  • Inseparability refers to cant separate services from those who create/manufacture the service
  • Inconsistency: difficult to standardize
  • There is no inventory
• Search attributes: customers can readily evaluate prior to purchase (size, price, television picture quality)
• Experience attributes: can only be evaluated after purchase, or once customer has experienced.
• Credence: can really never be confidently ealuated, even after purchase (psychotherapy, medical diagnosis, religious services, legal services, etc).

Building a brand

• Segmentation is carried out before targeting and positioning
• Segmentation refers to how simple and cost effective is putting potential buyers into segments
• The main segmentation strategies are:
  • one product, multiple market segments
  • multiple products, multiple market segments
  • segments of one, mass customization

Segmentation Variables

• demographic:ex: genders, teenagers v. senior citizens, income levels
• geographic: ex: east coast v. west coast, urban v. rural, climate, etc
• psychographic: ex: values, lifestyle, individual differences
• behavioristic: ex: usage pattern, benefits sought, decision making process