Community Based Social Marketing

Recently in class with Dr. Kool we were introduced to the concept of “Community Based Social Marketing” and how it can benefit our class. Ultimately community based social marketing can help in working on our wiki and ultimately presenting our ideas to Colwood council.

Community based marketing works on the premise and information is not enough to change behavior. I agree with this because just providing facts and “cut and dried” information will not be enough to inevitably change people’s thoughts. Social Marketing is a systematic procedure where marketing is adapted to achieve specific behavioral goals for a defined social goal. An important ideal to keep in mind though is that the audience for whom you are focusing on must be thoroughly analyzed and put at the center of every decision that must be made. There must be a defined action on what you want your audience to do and also an exchange with the audience to give up or change their behavior.

There are 10 questions to ask oneself while defining the outlines for the study. First of all, what is the social/environmental problem that is being addressed? This is beneficial because it provides a starting point and a baseline for starting the research. Also, what actions will best address the problem? The audience that is connected to this action must be targeted and what they want in exchange for the adoption of this new idea must be considered. Another question to ask is whether or not the audience will believe that what is put before them is true. If the audience does not follow your view and disregards it, then your project will fail. Potential competition must also be considered because they could possibly be offering something that is far more gratifying or valuable to the community. The community will have to be reached at a time and place that works for them and where they will be most vulnerable to take in the concept that is being presented. This intervention will also need to be examined in how often, from whom and how it can be integrated with other perceptions to maximize efficiency. Finally, the resources that are required for this must be questioned and whether or not other parties will need to be involved for success.

Once these initial 10 questions are addressed, the campaign undergoes 5 steps that will benefit and make the community marketing adapt to different outcomes or scenario changes. Possible barriers and benefits are to be investigated as they pertain to the project. This involves both internal and external goals which can include literature research, conducting a focus group and doing surveys in order to gather real data. Once the barriers are outlined, focus can become directed towards mitigating and avoiding them. This can come in the form of evaluating norms, persuasion techniques and possible incentives. An initial pilot plan becomes developed by revolving around the barriers as well as the benefits.

After this strategy has become developed then the pilot plan can be ran and tested in order to see how it works. This initial testing is vital as strategies can be compared to expected results and adjustment can occur if the need arises. The fourth step is the actual implementation of the project after necessary changes have been made. This can make the plan more worthwhile and a success because potential problems have been mitigated. A project that has been thoroughly analyzed will have a much higher rate of being a success when compared to a project that has not given appropriate attention to potential problematic sources.

Once the project has been implemented the final stage is to continue the process of monitoring and adapting to possible changes that can arise. Society is always changing as peoples thoughts, beliefs and morals are always evolving. Projects that involve the community must always be aware of these changes and how they need to adapt to them. The continual monitoring of these changes ensures that the project continues successfully and does not succumb from being unprepared.

I think that community based social marketing is a great concept and can be applied to our projects for Colwood. For our project, which revolves around the trail systems for Royal Roads we have already implemented some aspects of community based social marketing. We used this process to find out our targeted population as well as the initial pilot plan for our project. Using Dr. Kools community based social marketing methods can thoroughly investigate potential problems as well as boundaries that must be considered. Hopefully using these methods will create some great projects that Colwood council can use to help with their goal of reducing carbon emissions