Community based social marketing: effective tool in influencing behavior
When the social marketing theory was formally conceptualized by Kotler during the 70s, nations, government
agencies, NGOS, private institutions, as well as communities used the concept and applied them to create
advocacy over an issue.There are many pressing concerns that citizens can participate in right in their own
communities. Why communities? Well for one, they are easier to govern and people know one another so they can
easily influence others. Besides, asking people to participate and monitoring activities is easier on a community
level. This is why community based social marketing fits well in such scenario. There are so many issues that a
community can participate in like environmental awareness by making the planet greener through reduced carbon
footprint. Another important issue would be sustainability so that the next generations would still inherit a rich
planet. Whatever the goal maybe for community based social marketing, it is surely worth the effort. Plus,
the citizens get to know their neighbors and start building a more interactive community. Isn’t that wonderful?
To have a clearer understanding of community based social marketing, it is helpful to understand some
tools that are often used in creating campaigns. For example , many programs that tries to promote sustainability
have turned to community based social marketing as a vehicle since this very powerful in sending messages to the
public. For one, this type of promotion is more personal and can handle queries from the public thereby producing a
higher rate of behavioral change. The following tools are efficient in launching as community based social
marketing:
- Prompts – they act as simple reminders in the form of visual images like bumper stickers that rermind
people to drive safely or recycle waste
- Commitments – this can be in the form of a pledge that people can sign
- Norms – norms are dictated upon by a culture or community depending on the needs of a social group,
teaching children to recycle waste can be a norm
- Communicating effectively by sending powerful messages that can discourage negative behaviors like drunk
driving
Actually, there are numerous approaches to community based social marketing aside from the give, the important
thing is that they achieve a goal.
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