Social marketing

What comes to mind when one thinks social marketing. This can easily be confused for social networking? But, it is actually not. Although, the networking bit can be important in social marketing.

Social marketing can be defined as a systematic application of marketing, alongside other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioural goals, for a social good.

Social Marketing seeks to influence people to change their lifestyle for the better. Sean Kidney, a social change strategist with 20 years of experience gave us an insight on what social marketing is all about and how it could be applied in campaigns. He explained through A social change strategy checklist, how social marketing can make positive change.

Social marketing seems to apply a “customer oriented” approach using concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns, health promotional campaigns or fund raising for NGOs. The difference is that in social marketing the objective is to achieve some social good where as in commercial marketing the goal is financial.