Redressing Health Inequalities With Social Marketing

By Author: Perfect Circle
Total Articles: 3
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Social marketing health campaigns can lead to positive behaviour change

Social marketing agencies have come onto the scene in recent years. Since that time, there have been many instances of successful (and ongoing) behaviour change programmes at work across the country.
Often (but not exclusively) commissioned by the NHS and other healthcare providers, social marketing health agencies, are now working to deliver the NHS’s wider healthcare vision and strategy – a part of which is to encourage people to be more personally aware (and responsible for) health issues.
A new breed of socially conscious business

This new breed of marketing agency is socially conscious and aware of the things going on in our word, and absolutely dedicated to finding effective ways of promoting social and personal good.
Different stages of behaviour change Social marketing has been proven to effectively initate different stages of behaviour change, over time, among target health groups.
While each campaign is quite different, social marketing attempts to create, and maintain, the momentum for change, leading ...
... to a positive (and sustained) health outcomes.

Using the latest insight and targeting technology, social marketers can gain a detailed profile and understanding of the people they want to connect with. But that is just the beginning; there is then a need for initial buy-in, ongoing and personalised contact, creative development, tracking and monitoring - all leading to positive behaviour change.
“To create sustained behaviour change in people and in communities, social marketing needs to be something that is accurately targeted, carefully delivered and meticulously monitored.”

Coping with the pressures

Our NHS healthcare system is buckling at the knees. With so many people now using (and relying) on the services that it provides, social marketing has a massive part to play in redressing the balance.

If social marketing can help to positively influence the way people are living and behaving, then it can have positive repercussions for primary health service providers like the NHS, and on society generally.

Tackling health issues (and behaviours) at their root cause, has proven to be a very effective way of influencing the overall outcome.
Social marketing penetrates the heart of why people behave as they do, and then finds the right ways of influencing their decision-making and lifestyle choices.

Big ideas, leading to positive outcomes

Social marketing is all about delivering ‘big ideas’ that change attitudes or behaviours. Used for dental marketing, by the NHS and the education sector, social marketing interventions tackle wide-ranging society and health issues.

The future face of marketing in the healthcare sector

So it would appear that social marketing is here to stay and as the healthcare sector struggles and continues to (at best) cope with the volume of health users across the ages, it is fighting back on many different fronts, and attempting to redress the balance by using social marketing principles and campaigns to influence peoples’ behaviours.

Social marketing – on a budget

Social marketing is quite different to commercial marketing – it is not fuelled by profit in any way. In fact, many highly successful social marketing campaigns have been run on a tight budget. It’s the number of lives that social marketing campaigns improves, that is the ultimate goal.

“Understanding, empathisizing and generally putting the customer’s needs at the centre of all decision-making and creative marketing etc, is the real key to its overall success.”

Social marketing is not about expensive advertising campaigns, promotions, or even a prolonged social media presence, although different digital and traditional marketing tools may be used to deliver key messages, it’s about finding the best way of encouraging and achieving individual, and community change.