Some Fundamental Marketing Principles3

The following marketing principles are critical to the success of social marketing campaigns:

• Understand your audience-their needs, wants, barriers, and motivations.

• Be clear about what you want your audience to do-changes in knowledge and attitudes are good only if they lead to action.

• Understand the concept of exchange-you must offer your audience something very appealing in return for changing behavior.

• Realize that competition always exists-your audience can always choose to do something else.

• Be aware of the "4 Ps" of marketing and how they apply to your program.

• Understand the role that policies, rules, and laws can play in efforts to affect social or behavioral change.

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3 Adapted from Turning Point Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative. The Basics of Social Marketing: How to Use Marketing to Change Behavior. http://socialmarketingcollaborative.org/smc/basics.html