What is social marketing?

Social marketing uses a range of techniques and approaches, commonly known as a 'marketing mix', to change people's behaviour in a clearly defined and positive way. Its aim is to achieve a particular 'social good', rather than commercial benefits - even though it uses many of the same methods as commercial advertising and marketing.

However, social marketing can also use techniques that are not necessarily about communication - for example, changing the way that a service is delivered or encouraging other changes to the target audiences environment - and can be considerably more challenging than its commercial cousin as it often deals with embedded lifestyle behaviours.

Social marketing activity is very targeted as audiences are broken down into segments. It considers all of the possible influences that affect the way each segment behaves so that it can identify the best ways to change this behaviour.

When and why to carry out an alcohol social marketing programme

A social marketing approach should be used when the aim is to achieve, and sustain, behaviour change with the target audience. The audience is at the heart of the social marketing approach. Considering what will best encourage them to change, it avoids assumptions about what different groupsbelieve, what will motivate them and what might stop them. The approach allows for people at every stage - from unaware of the problem to ideal behaviour.

It goes beyond awareness raising and is the approach that we recommend when we're looking to change the way people think and act.

NSMC benchmarking criteria

The National Social Marketing Centre (NSMC) has identified eight National Benchmark Criteria. These explain the key concepts that inform social marketing and can be used as a best practice checklist for your own social marketing campaigns.

Using the criteria can help us all to be consistent in our approach and this will help to increase the impact of our work. The criteria have also been designed to help us all share our social marketing knowledge and to evaluate different types of intervention. Click here for a template to help you share your evaluation.

1. Customer orientation: Put the customer at the centre of all your decision-making processes so that you fully understand your target audience.
2. Insight: Use research to identify 'actionable insights'. These are key pieces of understanding that will underpin your programme development .
3. Behavioural goals: Aim to change people's actual behaviour rather than just their attitudes by setting out clear measurable behavioural goals with timescales .
4. Segmentation: Identify audience 'segments' which have common characteristics, and tailor your interventions appropriately.
5. Exchange: Consider both the benefits and the costs of encouraging people to adopt a new behaviour. This will help you to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs to create an attractive exchange.
6. Competition: Find out what competes for your audience's time, attention and inclination to change. Work with or learn from the competition.
7. Methods mix - Use a mix of methods to bring about behaviour change, including education, support, control and design techniques.
8. Theory - Use behavioural theories to understand human behaviour and inform your programmes.