When considering the possibilities of Social Marketing in Healthcare, you need to first consider what is meant by Social Marketing. The simple definition is "using social influence to promote a product, service, idea, or position". So this is not so much a technique as it is a philosophy. Using Social Marketing in Healthcare means that the process involves the use of various social networks and other channels, to promote your new program or new healthcare opportunity. Social marketing in healthcare revolves around using the web to build customer relationships, promoting awareness, creating brand recognition and creating product awareness. It is also sometimes referred to as Social Marketing for Healthcare.
There are many methods available for implementing social marketing in healthcare. These include programs such as blogging, direct mail, online forums, wikis, press releases, consumer information panels, television and radio spots and many more. Some of these methods work well for some types of products and some may be effective for a particular health promotion program or initiative. Some of the social marketing approaches have been implemented successfully by health promotion agencies and some have not. A review of the literature will show that this topic has been researched over a long period of time and there is sufficient evidence available for making some statements about the effectiveness of some of these interventions.
Recently I did a detailed review of the literature on the impact of these marketing techniques in healthcare. My study was carried out using a shotgun approach that involved randomly choosing one of the marketing strategies from the list of those that had been promoted in the media, which had the highest reported results for each strategy individually, and conducting a random survey for participants at each selected site. After conducting this survey, I compared the results for each strategy individually, by using a Student's t-test and a chi-square analysis to compare the mean differences in results between the different strategies. It was found that when compiling a marketing plan for a healthcare worker's scheme, it was more effective to implement four separate strategies rather than the blanket application of one of the strategies.
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What I found was that although there was some improvement in the branding of a brand when it was applied to a health promotion campaign, there was still a lack of branding when it came to identifying the right product or service. The reason for this is that this was a multifaceted task. I identified several different strategies that worked for each participant and then had to select one from these strategies to promote. Another problem was that as each participant saw the brand name on a different product or service, there was often a tendency for them to associate these with each other and to think of them in terms of 'their' brand, rather than their service or product.
There are a number of other issues that arise from this multifaceted field of work. For example, many of the sustainability campaigns that I documented in my previous work were adopted by healthcare organisations in order to improve the profitability of their businesses. However, some of the sustainability campaigns did not have the right product or services attached to them, meaning that the healthcare organisation actually spent more on implementing the campaign than it made from the increased profitability. So clearly, the sustainability element of the campaign had to be considered in the overall context of social marketing principles.
This leads on to the other four principles that I discussed at length in my previous article. The first is that the campaign had to be devised as a comprehensive integrated activity. It had to include all the important factors for creating a brand and driving sales. These factors had to be based on information that the client already has, rather than on guesswork or on assumptions from the designer. I also made sure that the design of the promotional literature had to provide an easy-to-read format that appealed to a wide range of healthcare professionals. It was important for the content to be clinically relevant, but it was equally important that the message was printed in a highly visible place, with easy-to-read information, so that the vast majority of people who looked at the literature would know what the organisation was promoting.
The second principle that I wanted to highlight in the last section of this article is about the integration of the four principles. The main aim of the social marketing programme into the healthcare programme was to create brand awareness and, ultimately, to encourage better behaviour. The four principles are all about encouraging behaviour change. So if the aim of the programme is to promote healthier behaviour and encourage people to take more responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, then the four principles have to be applied in the design and delivery of the campaign.
So, overall, the four principles that I mentioned above are about incorporating the four core strategies from the social marketing approach into the overall design and development of any healthcare campaign. There are many ways in which this can be done - for example the use of TV, radio and advertising is an extremely powerful way of promoting awareness and creating brand loyalty. By combining this type of traditional marketing with the innovative social marketing approach, you can create an effectively engaging and compelling healthcare campaign.
