Careful strategy development is the cornerstone of effective programs. Too often, behavioral change programs are developed based on hunches rather than reliable information regarding the barriers and benefits to a behavior. Developing effective community-based social marketing strategies involves a good deal of humility. Avoid the temptation to assume that you know what strategy will work. Instead, carefully explore the barriers and benefits to the behavior you wish to promote before considering what strategies to utilize. Furthermore, the methods used in many programs are often not based on social science knowledge regarding facilitating behavior changes.
When programs lack a solid foundation, there is a much higher likelihood that they will not change behavior or that the changes which occur will not be as substantial as they might have been.This brief introduction covers how to design a community-based social marketing strategy.
Developing a community-based social marketing strategy involves addressing two behaviors simultaneously: 1) the behavior to be encouraged, and 2) the behavior to be discouraged. You will want to reduce barriers and increase benefits for the behavior you wish to encourage while doing the reverse for the undesirable behavior.
Too frequently, program developers focus solely on the behavior they wish to encourage without giving adequate thought to the undesirable behavior. By also addressing the behavior to be discouraged, we can make the desired action more attractive in contrast. The following example will clarify the importance of this two-pronged approach.
Imagine that you are creating a program to encourage bicycling as a means of commuting to work. Suppose we were to focus just on encouraging biking, as many organizations do. In that case, we might create bike lanes to make biking safer, encourage having shower facilities at workplaces, and ensure adequate locations for securely locking bikes. While each approach reduces the barriers to biking, many commuters might still see driving as more convenient.
To alter these perceptions, we need to increase the barriers and reduce the benefits of driving. You might accomplish this in several ways, such as placing a carbon tax on gasoline, reducing available parking, increasing parking rates, altering the layout of streets to slow traffic, and introducing congestion charges as London, England has done. Each of these approaches discourages driving and makes bicycling, in contrast, more attractive.
Principles for Developing Effective Strategies
Developing an effective community-based social marketing strategy is predicated on having identified and prioritized barriers and benefits. By following the methods outlined in previous Minutes, not only will you have identified several barriers and benefits, but you will likely also know which of these barriers and benefits are most important. Knowing which barriers and benefits are most relevant will allow you to utilize limited resources most effectively.
- Select tools based on barriers and benefits: To design an effective strategy, select tools tailored to your identified barriers and benefits. For example, if lack of motivation is a barrier, you might consider the use of commitments, social norms, or incentives—each of which will be described in future Minutes.
- Scrutinize your design with focus groups: Prior to piloting your strategy, conduct focus groups to receive feedback on your proposed strategy. If the strategy receives positive reviews, you are ready to pilot. If not, you will want to make further refinements.
- Pilot test your strategy: Before delivering a program broadly, test the strategy’s effectiveness with a limited number of people. Before committing to using the approach throughout a community, you want to know that it will work effectively. If the pilot is successful, you can be much more confident of success when you broadly implement the strategy. If the pilot is unsuccessful, you need to make further revisions and pilot again before broad-scale implementation and evaluation.
As can be seen above, the design of a community-based social marketing strategy is pragmatic; each step builds on those that precede it. Effective program design will help ensure the success of your program and serve one other essential purpose; cementing funding support. Increasingly, funding agencies are demanding that projects have a solid evidence base regarding effectiveness before being implemented broadly.