Manager's Guide to Social Marketing

Published by Turning Point, this 38-page publication is intended to be a stand-alone tool to help people apply effective social marketing to their public health programmes and practices. It defines six phases of the social marketing process, suggestions on finding a great advertising or public relations company, a sample job description and a resource list.

Turning Point defines social marketing as "the use of marketing principles to influence human behavior in order to improve health or benefit society."

They define the basic social marketing principles as:

• Understanding your AUDIENCE, their needs and wants, their barriers, and their motivations;
• Being clear about what you want your audience to DO; changes in knowledge and attitudes are good if, and only if, they lead to ACTION;
• Understanding the concept of EXCHANGE; you must offer your audience something very appealing in return for changing behaviour;
• Realising that COMPETITION always exists; your audience can always choose to do something else;
• Being aware of the “4 P’s of Marketing” (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and how they apply to your programme;
• Understanding the role that policies, rules and laws can play in efforts to affect social or behavioural change.

Turning Point, started in 1997, is an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Its mission is to transform and strengthen the public health system in the United States by making it more community-based and collaborative.