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What is exactly social marketing? How is social marketing different from regular marketing? In order to answer this question let us look into the 4 Ps of social marketing.

What are the biggest criticisms of marketing is that it is too capitalistic. In other words, marketing primarily benefits the firm. However, it is not entirely true. All firms directly or indirectly benefit society at large. In the same vein, social-centric firms, actively pursue this goal. Social marketing can help them achieve this goal.

Social marketing attempts to ameliorate some of these criticisms. Firstly, it provides marketing tools to promote social well-being. The core philosophy of social marketing is that marketing should be driven by the goal of helping society. Secondly, the techniques that are used in social marketing are broader in scope. Directs the focus of action from pushing to interaction with the customer. Thirdly, the channels of social marketing are different. Traditional marketing focuses more on selling the product through traditional channels.

We have covered the 4 Ps of traditional marketing in another article in detail. You can read it to have a better understanding of the marketing mix. However, we will cover that briefly here.

Kotler and Zaltman extended the idea of the four Ps of the marketing mix into the social world. This suggested that the traditional makes were not conducive enough to understand social marketing.

This brings us to the main discussion. The 4 Ps of social marketing is somewhat different from the traditional ones.

We have already discussed that social marketing is focused on social benefits. However, let us see what this means for the 4p? This means that the pillars of the marketing mix is very different. We no longer have the impetus on selling the products. I focus is more on serving society. In this light let us see what the four Ps of social marketing are:

Starting points for or developing your social marketing strategy is purpose. Clearly defining the purpose will provide you with a direction for your marketing efforts.

Firstly, the purpose should be deliberated carefully.

Secondly, we should write down the goals. Goal setting is another simple but effective task.

Thirdly, these goals should help us delineate the tasks and roles for the managers.

Fourthly, we need to ascertain the key performance indicators for our goals.

The second important criterion for social marketing is the platform. Platforms are the channels through which we can communicate with the customers.

Firstly, the choice for the platform. There are different activities that can be facilitated by a platform. Based on these activities we need to decide which platform to choose. Activities like interaction with the customers, service requests, and customer support, and relationship marketing.

Secondly, we should also look at the size of the platform. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are quite popular. They have billions of followers around the world.

Thirdly, look at the kind of fitment between the demographic using the platform and our target customers. For example, if you want to market embroidery products then Pinterest is a great social media platform. On the other hand, if you want to market your B2B services then LinkedIn is more suited.

The next P of the 4 Ps of social marketing is participation. This can make or break your social marketing plans.

Firstly, unlike traditional marketing, social marketing relies heavily on the use of interaction rather than one-way communication.

Secondly, the firm should have a personal when it is communicating with the customers.

Thirdly, we should remember that the focus is on the benefit of society. Each and every interaction must reflect this ideology. We are there for the greater good.

Finally, we come to the fourth P of social marketing. Performance can help us understand how well we are executed the other three 3Ps.

We had earlier talked about the KPIs. These Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are critical to monitor marketing efforts.

There can be different ways to measure performance. Firstly, we can measure it in terms of the number of people served. Secondly, we can also measure it in terms of the return over investment. The first method can help us satisfy external stakeholders. On the other hand, the second one helps us satisfy the shareholders.

What exactly is the social marketing philosophy? When we talk about social marketing it is important to understand how we define the benefits reaped by the customers.

Firstly, in terms of the product, there are a few changes. When we talk about social marketing anything that we sell must have some benefit for society. It is not just the needs of the customers that we need to fulfill. It needs to serve some larger purpose.

Secondly, we need to discuss the price of the product. The focus of the pricing should be to maximize the reach of the benefits to society.

Thirdly, we need to talk about the place. The place in traditional marketing is the location of the exchange between the customer and the firm. In social marketing, the choice of the place should be driven by the goal of making it more accessible to the people.

Fourthly, the promotion also needs to be thought of in a different way. The promotion needs to be more interactive and customer-centric.

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4 Ps of Social Marketing - Management Weekly

Health and sustainability groups have slammed the governments watered down National Food Strategy, claiming it will fail to tackle food insecurity or get to grips with the obesity crisis.

A raft of organisations said the much-delayed 27-page document had proved the government did not have the will to take bold action to address the problems of the UKs food system.

The National Food Strategy proposed bold, evidence-based recommendations that would have had an enormous impact on improving our food system, making healthier food more available and accessible to all, said Graham MacGregor, chairman of Action on Sugar and Action on Salt.

However, todays announcement makes it abundantly clear that our government is in the pocket of the food industry and has no desire to bite the hand that feeds it. We can only assume that Sajid Javid has chosen not to implement these tailor-made recommendations for political reasons, which completely contradicts the governments levelling up ambitions.

This shambolic decision will no doubt massively impact the NHS and the nations health, which will suffer the consequences and escalating cost of treating obesity.

Barbara Crowther, director of the Childrens Food Campaign, said:This is not a comprehensive food strategy when it fails to offer any new measures to address either the cost of living or the human and social cost of obesity.

On the one hand it acknowledges Henry Dimblebys analysis of a junk food cycle but on the other does nothing to address it, whilst key measures to rein in the industrial marketing power of the junk food industry are also now delayed.

It leaves the forthcoming health disparities white paper with a huge task to get the obesity strategy and work to reduce dietary inequalities back on track. We can only hope that the health department can do a better job than the one in charge of food supply.

Sustain CEO Kath Dalmenydescribed the proposals as shamefully weak, adding:In the face of multiple crises in the cost of living, rocketing obesity, climate change and nature loss, the government was given crystal clear analysis and a set of recommendations by the Dimbleby food strategy, and has chosen to take forward only a handful of them.

This isnt a strategy, its a feeble to-do list, that may or may not get ticked.

However, retail leaders gave a cautious welcome to the governments plans.We are supportive of any measures which secure long-term food security, address labour shortages, and invest in innovating the UK supply chain, said Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the BRC.

Consumers must be at the heart of the strategy, which means producing food that is healthy and sustainable but also affordable. We already have high environmental and animal welfare standards in this country, and any changes to improve these must be balanced against cost increases and affordability.

Anne Godfrey, CEO of GS1 UK, said plans in the strategy to set up a new Food Data Transparency Partnership could be a big step forward.

It will go a long way towards tackling health disparities, providing clarity for consumers, and enabling trust and collaboration throughout food supply chains.

Opie added:Defra must ensure the data transparency project does not add unnecessary burdens and costs to the supply chain. Furthermore, as this is Defras strategy, the litmus test will be if it improves co-ordination across Whitehall and the rest of the UK. Without co-ordination we will continue to see increasing costs from divergence and new regulations.

Continued here:
Health groups vent fury over 'watered down' National Food Strategy - The Grocer

Do you desire to take your social marketing campaigns to the next level? You want your social media accounts to become sales-generating funnels. In todays article, well discuss social marketing campaigns and why you should start yours too. Well also mention the importance of trusting in professionals, like marketing and design agencies.

What is Social Marketing Campaign?

Social marketing helps you meet your target audience needs. Simply put, social marketing campaigns are strategies you employ to achieve certain goals and objectives of your business or organization.

As a business owner you know the implications of having a great product or service without customers. You cant afford not to invest in social marketing campaigns to make your customers and prospects aware of your business.

Investing in social marketing campaigns will boost your business online presence and this is a great way to drive sales. Remember we have Instagram account for sale that will help you to get started on accomplishing your social marketing campaigns. Here are some benefits thatll accrue to your business if you decide to take your social marketing campaigns to the next level.

When you invest in social marketing campaigns, your brands online presence will definitely improve. Your customers and prospects spend a great amount of their time on social media platforms and you can leverage on to increase your brand awareness. Endeavor to create content that appeals to your audience and theyll sure reward you with their patronage and loyalty. Of course, the premise is that your social media account already has enough followers. If your Instagram account does not have many followers, you can try this techniquehow to get 1k followers on Instagram in 5 minutes.

When you consistently promote and share content thats centered on your product or service, this leads to increased lead generation for your business. As more customers and potential customers consume your content online, theyre most likely to patronize your business when its time for them to make their purchasing decision. And this has a positive impact on your revenue level once you factor in the cost to manage social media ads. You can also use the heatmaps tool for user behaviour tracking and analysis.

Andrew Davis quote sums up the positive impacts of creating content. Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. Imagine the multiple effects of engaging content and well-executed social marketing campaigns would have on your business. This is possible only if you start working on marketing your business on every social media platforms.

Conclusion

Its not too late to get started on making your social media accounts generate as much leads as you desire. Youve got to put in the efforts to reap the rewards. Starting a social marketing campaign is necessary to achieve your business goal.

Read more:
What is Social Marketing Campaign? - The European Business Review

Social marketing is the application of the principles and techniques of commercial marketing to promote socially desirable goals. It has been applied extensively, and with considerable success, in efforts to encourage/discourage specific health behaviors, such as using seat belts, putting babies to sleep on their backs, getting exercise, eating right, and not smoking. A list of recommended reading on this topic is provided at the end of this page.

Applying social marketing to the promotion (and even the design) of comparative quality reports requires that you first identify specific behavioral objectives. That is, you have to know what you want consumers to do. In the context of commercial marketing, the objective is to get someone to buy a product or service. In the context of health behaviors, there is a defined behavior that is defined as desirable (getting regular exercise) or undesirable (smoking). But in the context of a quality report, you are not trying to drive consumers to choose a particular provider or plan; what you want is for them to be making their own informed decisions.

The behaviors you are trying to influence aresubtler:

The power and the challenge of social marketing is that it requires you to take your audiences perspective whenever you make a decision. If you do not adopt this perspective early in the process, you may well design a report that does not resonate with your audience. This is why you have to be clear on who your audience is, what their information needs are, and how they get and use information. Remember, too, that you audience may not be the public at large, or even all people who need a particular health service. To be effective, promotional efforts need to narrow down to a more manageable and specific audience.

Learn more about narrowing down your audience in Defining an Audience for Promotional Purposes.

Learn more about the role of audience research in a promotional campaign in Researching the Audience.

Focusing on the audience starts before promotion. You need to see your productyour comparative quality reportfrom the point of view of your audience. You are probably very excited about the report; they are not. You are sure it will be valuable and useful; they have no idea how or why it would even be relevant to them. Taking the audiences perspective requires a certain level of self-disciplinebut while it may be uncomfortable, it also allows you to be more effective than you are likely to be otherwise.

Applying the principles of social marketing requires you to:

Early research with your audience can give you the understanding you need in order to articulate the benefits your audience will find compelling and address the barriers people are likely to experience. It is fairly straightforward to highlight valued benefits in your messages. Addressing barriers, on the other hand, can be trickier.

Knowing about barriers can help you reduce them, either as you design your report or as you decide where to place your report so it is easy for people to access. But not all barriers are easy or inexpensive to overcome.

It can also be challenging to discuss barriers in promotional materials without drawing attention to why people may stay away. But you may be able to refer directly to a perceived barrier in promotional materials if you can make a compelling case that you have reduced or even eliminated the barrier in your report. For example, one perceived barrier for many people is that the report will be written in technical medical language and full of statistics. You can make it explicit that your report has been designed and tested to make sure it is user friendly for people who are not medical experts.

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Applying the Lessons of Social Marketing to a Quality Report

The key ingredient for doing social media marketing well is having a strategy.

Without a strategy, you might be posting on social media platforms for the sake of posting. Without understanding what your goals are, who your target audience is, and what they want, itll be hard to achieve results on social media.

Whether you want to grow your brand through social media or to level up as a social media marketer, developing a social media marketing strategy is essential.

Heres one way to do it.

Its interesting to note that a social media marketing strategy and a social media marketing plan have a lot of crossovers.

You can think of it this way: A strategy is where youre headed. A plan is how youll get there.

One of the simplest ways to create your social media marketing strategy is to ask yourself the 5Ws:

To help you create your strategy, I have made a simple social media marketing strategy template. Feel free to use, adapt, or modify it as you see fit (after making a copy of it).

Heres another interesting point about strategy (or strategies): You can also have a strategy for each of your social media channels, such as a Facebook marketing strategy, an Instagram marketing strategy, and so on, which all lead up to your overall social media marketing strategy.

But lets start with your overall strategy.

The very first question to answer is the Why.

This relates to your social media goals. Are you on social media to promote your products? To drive traffic to your website? Or to serve your customers?

In general, there are the nine social media goals you can have:

Youll likely have more than one social media goal, and thats fine.

Generally, its great to focus on just a handful of goals unless you have a team, where different people or groups within the team can take on different goals.

For example, at Buffer, the marketing team uses social media both to increase our brand awareness and drive traffic to our content while our Advocacy team uses social media to provide timely customer support.

Once you have figured out your Why, the next thing to consider is your target audience.

Understanding your target audience will help you more easily answer the following questions on what, where, and when you are going to share.

For instance, if a travel and lifestyle brand (like Away) knows that its target audience loves to read about new places and travel tips, it could share such content on its social media profiles.

A great exercise to try here is to build marketing personas.

There are many different ways of building marketing personas. My personal favorite approach is to, again, use the 5Ws and 1H.

You likely dont have to start from scratch. If your business has been running for a while, you most probably already have a good sense of your target audience. What might be helpful is to write it down so that you can share it with the team or use for your future reference.

To help you with developing your marketing persona, Kevan Lee, our Director of Marketing, have written a complete guide to marketing personas.

When you see this question, you might be thinking about the types of content to share. For example, do you want to share videos or images?

But hold on for a second!

Were talking about your social media marketing strategy here so lets take a step back and think on a higher level. Instead of the types of content to share, theme might be a better word.

Here are a few brands and their theme(s):

If you scroll through the social media profiles mentioned above, you might have noticed that the brands have more than one main theme. Having a handful of themes is perfectly fine as it gives you the space to share a range of content to keep your audience engaged without being seemingly unfocused.

This is where a good understanding of your target audience will be helpful. Look at your marketing personas and consider the following questions:

For a fitness apparel and accessories brand (like Gymshark), a goal of its target audience might be to stay up-to-date with the latest fitness gears. In that case, it can share its latest products on its social media profiles.

(Would that be too promotional? Maybe not. Investment bank Piper Jaffray surveyed more than 8,600 American teenagers and found that 70 percent of them preferred brands to contact them about new products through Instagram. The key goes back to understanding your target audience.)

The next step is to determine where you are going to share your content. In other words, which social media platforms does your brand want to be on?

(Related: Here are the top 21 social media sites to consider for your brand.)

Before we go any further, remember that your brand doesnt have to be on every social media platforms. We have made

Quick tip: That being said, itll be wise to at least have a complete profile on the Big Four Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as they would often show up on the first page of Google search results when people search for your brand.

Again, your understanding of your target audience will come in handy here. Which platforms are your target audience most active on? What makes them visit that platform? For example, teenagers and young adults might like scrolling through Instagram when they are bored to see what their friends are doing or whether their favorite brands have new products.

Another, albeit smaller, thing to consider is, what is your brands X factor? Are you great at photography, videos, or writing? Certain platforms lend itself well to certain content types. For example, photos are great on Instagram, long-form videos on YouTube, articles on Medium. But this is a minor point because social media platforms are evolving to provide almost every type of content nowadays.

Finally, consider smaller, niche platforms, too. For example, Zwift, a multiplayer online cycling training software company, has started a club on Strava, a social network for athletes. Their club has more than 57,000 cyclists, and thousands engage with their posts on Strava.

The last key part of your strategy is figuring out when you want to share your content. You might be tempted to jump into a research for the best time(s) to post.

Pause. And breathe.

Lets take a step back and look at this from a higher level again. Before deciding exactly which time of the day and days of the week you want to post, consider the behaviors of your target audience.

When do they usually use social media to find the type of content that youll share?

Here are some examples to consider:

You might have inferred from these few examples that there might not be a universal best time to post. It really depends on your audience. So for this step, focus on the general behavior patterns of your target audience.

When you have created your social media marketing strategy, you can then find your brands best time to post through experimentation.

And there you have it your social media marketing strategy!

But thats not the end. As mentioned above, a strategy is where youre headed; a plan is how youll get there. You have decided where to head to; now you need a plan.

How should you fill out your social media profiles? What should your tone and voice be like? What posts type (i.e. image, link, video, etc.) should you use?

To help you with the next step and your social media success, we have a step-by-step guide for creating a social media marketing plan. Heres a sneak peek of the infographic youll find in that guide:

Developing a social media marketing strategy is probably one of the hardest things to do because it requires you to step back and look at the big picture. You have to shift your mindset away from your daily tasks like scheduling and replying to comments to higher-level thinking.

But its greatly rewarding and helpful to have a social media marketing strategy so that you arent just posting content just for the sake of posting content. Itll help you achieve your social media and business goals.

P.s. You might like these related resources:

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Social Media Marketing Strategy: The Complete Guide for Marketers