Social marketing is one of those disciplines you may have heard of but don’t quite know what it is. You’re not alone: social marketers often have to grapple with people thinking we ‘do Facebook’ and other social media marketing, for instance.
Social marketing combines marketing theory with social sciences like behavioral economics to systematically plan and develop programs that focus on achieving clearly defined behavioral goals for a social purpose. (Note a social marketing campaign can involve social media, it’s just that we don’t start our thinking with a particular channel in mind.)