Excellent Educational Programs

SOCIAL
MARKETING
SESSION 8. STEPS 5 AND 6: AUDIENCE
INSIGHTS AND CRAFTING A DESIRED
POSITIONING
Objectives
Step 5 Audience Insights
◦ 1. Perceived barriers
◦ 2. Desired benefits
◦ 3. Potential motivators
◦ 4. The competition
◦ 5. Influential others
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
◦ 1. Behavior-focused positioning
◦ 2. Barriers-focused positioning
◦ 3. Benefits-focused positioning
◦ 4. Competition-focused positioning
Step 5 Audience Insights
1. Perceived Barriers: Reasons your priority
audience hasn’t done the behavior in the past,
might not want to do the behavior, or don’t think
they can.
Step 5 Audience Insights
Perceived Barriers:
- What are some of the reasons that you haven’t done this behavior
in the past?
- What are some of the reasons you might not do this in the future?
- What do you think you will have to give (up) in order to perform
this behavior?
- Do you think you can do it?
- Why, perhaps, did they quit doing it?
Step 5 Audience Insights
2. Desired benefits. What your priority audience
says is “in it for them” if they do the behavior.
Step 5 Audience Insights
3. Potential motivators. Your priority audience’s
ideas on what someone could say to them, show
them, do for them, or give to them that would
increase the likelihood that they would adopt the
behavior.
Step 5 Audience Insights
Potential motivators:
(1) “What could someone say to you that would make it
more likely that you would consider adopting this behavior?”
(2) “What could someone show you that would make it more
likely that you would adopt this behavior?”
(3) “Is there anything someone could give you that would
help you adopt this behavior?”
(4) “Is there anything someone could do for you that would
help you adopt this behavior?”
Step 5 Audience Insights
4. The competition:
Behaviors our priority audience would prefer over
the ones we are promoting
Behaviors they have been doing “forever,” such as a
habit that they would have to give up
Organizations and individuals who send messages
that counter or oppose the desired behavior
Why competition?
◦ Give up an addictive behavior.
◦ Be uncomfortable
◦ Reduce pleasure
◦ Spend more time
◦ Resist peer pressure
◦ Hear bad news
◦ Risk relationships
◦ Give up leisure time
◦ Give up looking good
self-interest ◦ Learn new skills
 Challenges in social marketing

Commercial marketing appeals to immediate self interest

Social marketing:
 Behavior that may be opposite of self interest
 And may be opposite of current behavior
 And may never clearly benefit the person
Competitors in social marketing
Competing forces that may stop your target audience from adopting the
behaviour(s) that you want them to:
INTERNAL TO THE INDIVIDUAL
Competing behaviours
Competing benefits and motivation
◦ Smoking: stress relief and relaxation;
◦ Over-eating: pleasurable experience
Competitors in social marketing

EXTERNAL TO THE INDIVIDUAL

Personal influences
- Family, friends, work colleagues
- Other peer group forces: (group norms) which encourage the individual to engage
in competing behaviours
Wider influences: impersonal influences
- Competing profit organisations: the fast food industry, the tobacco companies,
drug cartels, alcohol manufacturers, retailers
- Competing non profit organizations: other groups trying to gain the same target
segment’s interest; or for the same fund
QnA: What alternatives might be to

 Exercising regularly?
 Eating five servings of fruits and vegetables daily?
 Breastfeeding?
 Target behavior of your project
Assessing competitors: Cost/benefits analysis
preferred behaviour: competitive behaviour:

Benefits/
Motivators

Cost/
Barriers
Strategy development from
cost/benefit analysis
Adding value to the desired behavior (increasing the benefits the
audience receives)
Making the competing behavior less valuable (decreasing the
benefits of the current behavior)
Making the desired behavior less costly (e.g., easier to do)
Make the competing behavior more costly or more difficult
Some combination of these four strategies
Considering Both: cycling vs using a
car
preferred behaviour:
(cycling)
 good exercise
 makes me feel good
 appreciate local area
 other people approve when I do it
motivators  good for the environment
 saves money
 it’s easy to act
 don’t have enough time
 wouldn’t feel safe
 I drive a fuel-efficient vehicle
 can’t due to health
barriers  the weather makes it
uncomfortable
 the journey to work is too far
competitive behaviour:
(using a car)
 it’s quicker
 it’s easier
 I can listen to the radio/music
 it’s what I’ve always done
 it’s expensive
 I feel guilty
 don’t know the routes
 I see others enjoying the cycle
 I’m doing other things for
the environment
 others disapprove
Influencing audience behavior
Develop your strategy
Decreasing Barriers & (Perceived) (Perceived)
Barriers Benefits
Increasing Benefits of Behavior

 
Brushing your teeth
Behavior to
………………………….. Encourage
Recycling
…………………………..

 
Keeping your phone in your bag
Behavior to
……………………………… Discourage
Step 5 Audience Insights
Influential others. Those your priority audience
listens to, watches, and/or looks up to.
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
Positioning Defined
Positioning is the act of designing the organization’s
actual and perceived offering in such a way that it
lands on and occupies a distinctive place in the mind
of the priority audience—where you want it to be.
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
1. Behavior-focused positioning
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
2. Barriers-focused positioning
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
3. Benefits-focused positioning
Step 6 Crafting a Desired Positioning
4. Competition-focused positioning