Using Digital Social Marketing to Promote Change
First thing first, this blog is about social marketing which should not be confused with "social media marketing" because—well, they're not the same. Social marketing is "an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people’s behaviour for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole." This marketing objective still uses the same regular marketing methods and combines them with social sciences that would be applied in many tradition marketing campaigns but with the main difference being that the objective isn't to drive profits, its to benefit people by influencing behavior.
The "Truth" Campaign
A good example of digital social marketing is the Truth campaign which was launched in 2000 by the American Legacy Foundation. They are a perfect example of social marketing because their objective is "to change social norms and reduce youth smoking." With all of their efforts are focused directly on teenagers aged 12 to 17. My guess is that most people have seen at least one of their campaign advertisements, whether it was on a TV ad or a social media ad, they have always been on top of current trends so that they could inform young people about dangers without seeming like they were talking down to them. Recently they have made great use of digital marketing, using intriguing content with social media ads such as Instagram and TikTok to show videos of people tossing and destroying their vapes in creative ways in hopes of influencing the youth to adopt these behaviors and ditch their nicotine products. Truth has shown to be very effective over the years leading the way for anti-smoking/vaping campaigns by discovering many new social marketing strategies such finding out that the youth likes to rebel, so they influenced the youth to rebel against tobacco industries. This clever strategy was a way for them to lead behaviors rather than try and force them.
How I Would Promote a Cause
One thing that I have always been passionate about is the environment, particularly with the foods or products we consume and their effects on the environment. If I were to use social marketing to promote a cause, it would be a campaign with the objective to influence people to be more conscious about their food and product consumption behaviors so that they can reduce consumption of things that are especially damaging to the environment such as beef, palm oil and wool.
I would use social media marketing as my main form for the campaign because it is a good method to post inbound marketing content which engages an audience by informing them about the effects of certain foods. I would use startling yet factual statistics such as that "cows and sheep are responsible for 37% of the total methane (23 times as warming as CO2) generated by human activity. With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority" (fao.org). This would be a good way to inform people and influence them to make their own decisions with the information rather than aggressively market that everybody should go vegan.
On top of social media, I would also use analytics and re-marketing to help me target audiences who are most likely to help support my cause or donate. An efficient way to do this on a budget would be through email marketing because of its cost-effective yet high volume abilities.
On my last note I think it should be mentioned that some people may give marketers a bad rep but its not always about driving profits and converting users. Marketing is everywhere and it is important to focus on keeping our campaigns genuine and honest. Especially during the ongoing Black Lives Matter Movement, we can all use social marketing to help promote change, even if it's just speaking up or promoting on social media it will all benefit a well needed change in our societies negative behaviors. Help the movement and consider donating because the racism and police brutality should be a thing of the past.