Social Media Next Best Practices … 3 Examples to Study

This concept of changing people’s behavior is the basis of this section, and of social marketing as a whole. We will talk about what social marketing is, and why it can be of use to you in your organization for the next best practices.

Then, we’ll go into more depth on marketing, and discuss what is known as the “4 Ps”–the four elements around which all types of marketing, social or profit-oriented, are centered.

Finally, we’ll finish with an overview of the stages someone will go through if their effort is successful.

Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.

-David Freemantle

It’s a lot of information, and much of it is more conceptual in nature than many other sections of the ToolBox. The next three sections of this chapter, then, will try to ground these ideas more thoroughly, so they can be used in your day-to-day work.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MARKETING?

So what, exactly, is social marketing? In Social Marketing Report, it’s defined as, “the application of commercial marketing techniques to social problems.” It means to take the same principles used in selling goods–such as shoes, television shows, or pizza–to convince people to change their behavior.

What does that mean? Well, instead of selling hamburgers, you’re selling a life without heart attacks. Instead of convincing teenagers to buy blue jeans, you’re convincing them to buy the advantages of postponing pregnancy.

Of course, if you are selling blue jeans, you’re still trying to influence behavior–you’re convincing people they need to wear your jeans–either for comfort, or for style, or value. So then, what is the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing?

It’s really summed up in one key point: commercial marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the marketer; social marketing tries to change people’s behavior for the benefit of the consumer, or of society as a whole.

“I’m not a doctor,” runs the joke. “I just play one on T.V.” Television and other forms of mass media, it seems, are often highly adept at making complicated tasks look simple.

This is especially true when it comes to marketing. The thirty-second ad for toothpaste will seem incredibly simple, even a bit silly–yet we’ll find ourselves humming the jingle in the car on the way home. When we stop by the grocery store a week later, we might pick up that toothpaste, caught by its colorful box and placement on the shelves.

We’ve been grabbed by a successful marketing campaign. It might seem so simple, that we’re barely aware of it–but it really represents a huge amount of research, design, and testing done by the toothpaste corporation.

Social marketing is based on the same principles used to sell that tube of toothpaste. It means using commercial marketing techniques to try and improve social problems. A social marketing campaign might be used, for example, to try to reduce violence against women, or to increase the number of people who sign up as donors for the national bone marrow registry.

Managing a social marketing campaign might look fairly simple–like you’re just putting up more posters to raise awareness of the lead poisoning problem in your community, for example. In reality, however, it’s much more than that. Social marketing is no less than a shift in how you view and run your program or organization. It can be a very effective approach, but it’s one with many details to consider.

On the following few screens, we’ll try to make concrete how you can accomplish many of these details. We’ll start by touching briefly on the importance of social marketing and when might be a sensible time for your group to draw up a social marketing campaign.

Then, we’ll dive into the details of how to manage a social marketing program. We’ll include how to separate consumers into individual groups and how to find out what those groups want (and how you can give it to them). Then, we’ll discuss designing the message, choosing the medium, and finally, implementing and evaluating your work.

WHY SHOULD YOU USE A SOCIAL MARKETING APPROACH?

Social marketing is an approach with a lot of advantages. Perhaps the two most pointed benefits are:

It helps you reach your target audience. Social marketing makes you look at whom you want to influence, and how to sway these people most effectively. And, for this reason,

It works. If creative, thorough marketing has helped numerous companies make millions of dollars, there is no reason, that well-run social marketing campaigns can’t be even more effective, in changing people’s behavior. After all, the benefits of good health    (or a clean environment, or an end to date rape) are surely more evident than the benefits of a pair of running shoes.

WHEN SHOULD YOU RUN A SOCIAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN?

So when is the proper time to run a social marketing campaign?

It will depend quite a bit on your program or organization, of course, but generally speaking…

When you are trying to change the behavior of a large number of people. If the number of people who you are trying to reach is small enough that they can be spoken with individually, or in a group, the time is probably not ripe for social marketing. For example, if you are interested in asking students at Pleasant Valley High School to volunteer at the upcoming spring fair, you might speak to them at an assembly, or visit individual classrooms. The development of a social marketing plan is more than is necessary. If, however, you want to increase volunteerism among everyone who lives in Pleasant Valley, a social marketing plan might be just what’s called for.

When you are trying to change behavior over a long period of time. Social marketing plans tend to be for long-term projects, when you are trying to change people’s behavior permanently, or over a long period of time. Generally speaking, if you are asking people to perform a particular action once, efforts to convince them to do so wouldn’t use a social marketing campaign. This is a bit tricky because some of the same principles might be used, or such an action might be a part of a social marketing campaign.

For example, asking people to give blood once at their office wouldn’t be social marketing. However, a concerted effort by the blood bank to try to increase the number of people who donate blood regularly might use office blood drives as a part of the campaign. That effort as a whole might be a social marketing campaign, provided it used the marketing principles we have talked about.

When you have the resources necessary to manage a comprehensive effort. As we’ve seen in the previous two bullets, running a social marketing campaign is not a short-term idea. It’s more of a philosophy that will direct how you approach your work as a whole. Therefore, a social marketing campaign should only be undertaken when you’re ready to use the time and resources it will take to make that shift.

This doesn’t mean your organization or program has to have a lot of money to use a social marketing approach. Excellent social marketing can be done on a shoestring budget if people are excited and willing to put a lot of effort into making it work.

With a dizzying array of new mobile apps created every day, it can be hard to decide where to invest your digital marketing dollars. But certain platforms have become canonical social media marketing tools. Facebook, Twitter, and more recently Instagram and Pinterest are being seen as essential to the digital arm of any campaign.

But being a whiz on one platform doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be a whiz on the next. A campaign that works on Facebook may not be fair as well on Twitter. It’s important to appreciate the nuance of each platform.

With that in mind, here are three beautifully executed social marketing campaigns.

Ford

Ford decided to market its C-Max hybrid with a cutting-edge campaign that integrated customer Instagram photos into a C-Max commercial. For those who have been sleeping under a rock for the last year, Instagram is a social photography app that lets users capture, modify and share compelling photos with their friends. The social and visual nature of the app makes it a prime target for marketers.

The core of the idea is to use Instagram to create one of the first collaborative stop motion animations. First, a 30-second animation was created and individual frames were stripped out of it to create 98 billboards that are going up all across the country.

Anyone can stand in front of one of these billboards, take a picture, and hashtag it #CMAX. A backend system was built to scrape Instagram for these pics and sequentially order them using image recognition software.

What you get is a collaborative animation that is constantly changing as new people upload their pictures. If you live in a big city, there might just be a board near you!

Check out the campaign here.

Nike

Nike has been reinventing consumer choice with NikeiD, a program that lets users design their own Nike sneakers.

Nike PHOTOiD goes one step further and socializes the whole process. Users are invented to submit Instagram photos from which Nike’s software will automatically design a sneaker based on the photo’s dominant colors. Users can then either purchase the sneaker or share their creations with friends.

Check out the campaign here.

 Taco Bell

Every year, South By South West (commonly called SXSW) attracts tens of thousands of music fans to Austin, Texas. Taco Bell targeted this young audience by making them the focal point of its Feed the Beat“rockumentary.” Fans were encouraged to tweet with the hashtag #feedthebeat images and videos of a show. All the footage and images were compiled by a documentarian. The final project yielded 500,000 views.

See the campaign here.

These are just three examples of innovative social media campaigns. Have any of your own? Let us know in the comments