Outlining the Strategic Marketing Planning Process

1. Outlining the Strategic Marketing Planning Process Chapter 2

2. The Problem is how to make sure we are really using marketing to the fullest extent and not dropping into advertising alone, product development alone, or ignoring the consumer because we think we know more than they do. - William Smith, Executive Director Academy for Educational Development

3. The Nature and Role of Social Campaigns • "A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which intends to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices, and behaviour." (Kotler & Roberto 1989:6)

4. Target Adopter • Target adopter is what in traditional Marketing we call the "target market", whose behaviour or thinking the change agent is trying to change. • We are usually asking the target adopters to do one of three things with respect to the social issue: 

6. Marketing HighlightLowering Blood Pressure • Background and Situation • Coordinated by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The ultimate program purpose is to reduce death and disability related to high school pressure.

7. Several hypertension control issues are part of this program. • Excessive stroke mortality in the southeastern US • Effective treatment practices • Utility of lowering the systolic blood pressure in order Americans • Role of lifestyle changes in preventing and treating hypertension • Issues regarding special populations and their situations • Educational strategies directed at professional, patient, and public audiences and community organizations

8. Target Audiences • Women taking birth control pills • Older persons • African Americans • People with diabetes • People with high blood cholesterol Following segmentation principles, the unique characteristics of each of these segment would be analyzed relative to a variety of factors: current knowledge, beliefs and behaviors; perceived benefits and costs of current and healthier lifestyles.

9. Objectives and Goals • Have your blood pressure checked. • Lose weight if you are overweight • Be physically active • Choose foods low in salt and sodium • Limit your alcohol intake • Take prescribed high blood pressure medication

10. Understanding Target Markets and the Competition • It’s hard for me to change my diet and to find the time to exercise • My blood pressure is difficult to control • My blood pressure varies so much, it’s probably not accurate • Medications can have undesirable side effects • It’s too expensive to go to the doctor just to get my blood pressure checked • It may be the result of living a full and active life. Not everybody dies from it

11. Strategies • Product • Behaviors as products. • Some programs may include promoting services and tangible objects. E.g., home monitoring instruments. • Distinguish between the product (desired behavior) and the product’s positioning (the benefits are equal or greater if the target customer adopts the target behavior)

12. Price Perceived costs of adopting the desired behavior (entry costs) and of abandoning the current one (exit costs) • Don’t have to make all the changes immediately. Focus on one or two at a time. Once achieved, go onto the next change. One change can lead naturally to another. • Keep your track of your blood pressure outside doctor’s office, e.g., at home. • Don’t have to run marathons to benefit from physical activity. Any activity, if done at least 30 minutes a day over the course of most days, can help.

13. Place Places are chosen to make it easy for people to monitor their blood pressure, such as health clinics, community health centers, doctors’ offices, malls, and even in homes.

14. Promotion Key messages on increasing awareness and understanding of the importance of knowing your blood pressure and the benefits of following recommended lifestyle changes. Media channels have included the following: • Facts sheets, pamphlets and brochures with recommendations for managing high blood pressure that are available from health care providers, by mail and over the internet. • Provide professional educational materials guidelines for clinicians

15. Websites that include healthy diet and recipe info and tips on how to achieve a healthy weight • Provide a toll-free number, recorded info about high blood pressure prevention and control • Prepare special materials for high-risk populations: women and Latin and African Americans • Mass media that include print ad, radio, and posters • Organized special events, e.g., ‘May is High Blood Pressure Education Month’.

16. Evaluation • A reduction of mean blood pressures between 1960 and 1991 shows that the population had heard and acted on the messages. More importantly, this has led to a significant reduction of death rates from heart disease and stroke. • Team up national, state, and local government agencies; nonprofit, voluntary and professional organizations; business; communities; and individuals to improve the health of all, eliminate disparities in health, and improve in years and quality of healthy life.

17. Social Marketing Plan OutlineWhat are the steps in the social marketing planning process? • Where are we? Step 1: Analyze the Social Marketing Environment • Determine program focus • Identify campaign purpose • Conduct an analysis of SWOT • Review past and similar efforts (Details in Chapter 5)

18. (Cont.) • Where do we want to go? • Target audience, objectives, and goals • Step 2: Select target audience: begins with segmenting the market and ends with choosing one or more targets • Step 3: Set objectives and goals: what we want our target audience to do and what they need to know and believe to make the behavior change more likely; establish quantifiable measures relative to our objective.

19. Cont. • Step 4: Analyze target audience and the competition: explores current knowledge, beliefs and behavior or target audiences relative to objectives and goals; competition, perceived benefits and barriers to action are identified and understood. (Details in Chapter 6-8)

20. (Cont.) • How will we get there? • Step 5: determine Strategies Product– Design the market offering; in social marketing, desired behavior and associated benefits of that behavior; may include promoting tangible objects and services that support or facilitate behavior change. Price– Manage costs of behavior change including money, convenience, time, effort, and pleasures

21. Place– Make the product available; this is where the target audience perform the behavior; acquire any tangible objects, receive any services associated with the campaign, and learn more about performing the behavior. Promotion– two components of promotional strategies– create messages and Choose media (communication) channels (details in Chapter 9-13)

22. (Cont.) • How will we stay on Course? Social Marketing program Management • Step 6: Develop a plan for evaluation and monitoring (what will be measured and how will it be measured?) (Ch. 14) • Step 7: Establish Budgets and Find Funding Sources: this step may necessitate revisions of strategies, target audiences, and goals or the need to secure additional funding sources. • Step 8: Complete an Implementation Plan: this will provide detailed info on ‘who will do what, when, and for how much’.

23. Why is systematic planning process important? • Through the systematic process of analyzing the marketplace, we can select a appropriate target audience for our efforts; only through taking the time to know our target audience, we can establish realistic goals and objectives; only through developing an integrated strategy, we can create real behavior change by communication (promotion), perceived benefits (product), perceived costs )price) and perceived ease of access (place).

24. Cont. • By taking time to establish how we will measure our performance, we will ensure that this critical step is taken to contribute to future successes. • The temptation, and often the practice, is to go straight to advertising or promotional ideas and strategies. Questions we ask e.g.,: • How can we know our slogan (message) if we don’t know what we are selling (product)?

25. Cont. • How can we know whether ads on the sides of buses (a media channel) are a good idea if we don’t know how long the key message is? • How can we know how to position our product if we don’t know what our audience perceives as the benefits and costs of their current behavior compared with the behavior we are promoting?

26. Cont. • Social marketers need to be flexible, recognizing that there may be a good reason to go back and adjust a prior step before completing the plan. E.g., • Step 4 may reveal that goals are too ambitious or that one of the target markets needs to be dropped. • Ideal media determined in Step 5 may turn out to be cost prohibitive or not cost-effective when more carefully examined in Step 7 (budgets).