Social marketing plus social mobilization equals the influencing of social behavior in the target audience and general public as the main focus of benefits with a mobilize partnership and cooperation of different sectors in the society.
The participation of the society in meeting the main goal is highly necessary to reach its objectives. The combined efforts from the different departments could be a big contribution to have a good outcome. Of course, the teamwork of every member in the society in different geographic areas is the primary factor to make this goal possible.
The social marketing and social mobilization are the great assets in developing social change. It affects the behavior of the people according how they are deliberated their strategies in informing the large mass. The combination of their strategies gives a firm ideas and awareness to the audience. Through these facilitating developments, the people’s trust in acquiring their knowledge and awareness would be strengthened.
“Health” is the most probably concern that I can address for social marketing and social mobilization because health education has a less impact to the people. The health issue becomes epidemic problem in our society. It is epidemic because most of us are not aware in the illnesses that may possibly come to us. Most of the time, we didn’t notice that we are carrying such traitor diseases for the reason that we are lack of being conscious in our health. Only few of our population are maintaining their health consultation to the licensed doctor, maybe most of them are those that can afford only. Maybe people who are less fortunate belong in the lists that are not so aware in health education. Though we have some sectors taking charge the duty of rendering health check-up, the way they are implementing in answering the needs of every citizen is not enough because they do not reach most of the places where the health consultation is highly needed. One example is the conducting of free medical check-up in certain municipality, if the populace is not well-informed regarding this program, only few of the people could avail this service possibly only those people who are near in the target place. In this situation, it shows that health campaign is not effective. In that case, the collaboration of different sectors of the society must be ruled to set an additional strategy for the stimulation of health campaign. Through social mobilization action, the specific goals should internalize among the different sectors especially the health sectors and also the populace of the society to build a community involvement of health services. The participation of every member would be great starting point for social interaction and the upholding of social unity.
Together with the implementation of social mobilization is the social marketing. Here, the promotion of health products and health awareness would be applied. As what we know social marketing is the marketing of products and it is just for the benefit of the marketer. [1]Conversely, www.ntagonline.org stated that social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society. By this definition, social marketing proved that its main function is to affect the behavior of the certain audience. Aside from this, social marketing cater information and it educate the people depending the product they are introducing. Placing the health campaign in this stage would be a valuable achievement.
In social marketing, the healthcare campaign could deliver well to the people through mass media (radio, TV, print ads, internet). The spreading of ads that associated in social marketing informing about the illnesses that may occur and the safety measure that could be put into action to prevent the unforeseen diseases should be included. Through social marketing, the updating of healthcare issue to the people would be easily scattered. It will reach no even the rural areas or remote islands in different location.
By implementing the social mobilization and social marketing in healthcare campaign, the problem of reaching out the people of spreading health concern would be fix rapidly since every sectors together with the people as the target audience are mobilize for the common goal. In this implementation, the problem of attaining the development in educating the people about health issue can be reduced.
To be able to promote it actively there must be several social marketing objectives that will serve as vision for greater development. The following are some of the objectives which I think could be a big asset in promoting the health campaign.[2]
•Increase the social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention.
•Increase the proportion of State health departments that report using social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention programs.
•Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited master of public health (MPH) programs that offer one or more courses in social marketing.
•Increase the proportion of schools of public health and accredited MPH programs that offer workforce development activities in social marketing for public health practitioners.
•Raising the awareness of the target audience regarding health issue.
One of the secret in social marketing that leads the good planning of health communication is the significance of delivering its messages to the general audience. To achieve the social change in this field, social marketing should focus its target audience in primary and secondary audiences. Primary audience covers the teen-agers, women of child-bearing age, mother or family members and so on. These audiences must be aware regarding in the illnesses which they might be prone so that they will be able to know the safety measure or prevention they are going to apply. The next target audience of social marketing that must pay its focus is the secondary audience including the health workers, teachers, opinion leaders and the like who are serve as motivators to the concern people in health issue. Through the help of these audiences the healthcare awareness motivation to the people would be easily implemented. The health campaign will spread out rapidly in different location. The influencing of health behavior to the people is not a hustle action for this health campaign because everyone are cooperated and contributing their knowledge and opinion. Through the participation of every audience regardless of its segmentation, the social change will probably achieve and the development will comes after.
Let us come back with the primary audience which is the core of the issue. This audience is the most crucial and the most vulnerable in society pressures. They are affected by peers, socio-cultures, environment and the like. Primary audience as I mentioned above is composed of teen-agers, women, mother and family and related to these. In these audiences, for me teen-agers are the most expose in health risk. Young men are not very much concerned about birth spacing, maternal health, and their mind-set towards sexuality and other misbehavior actions. An early pregnancy is very rampant for most of the teen-agers where the sexual diseases like AIDS/HIV are one of the results of uncontrolled behavior. [3]According to Dr. Corazon M. Raymundo, threats to adolescent reproductive health include early and unprotected premarital sexual activity, early pregnancy and childbirth, abortion, rape, violence and sexual harassment. Based on her article, one-third of the 475,000 abortions in the country are young women from the age of 15-24 years old and three of four maternal deaths are adolescents. Her article also stated that most of the health problems of adolescents are lifestyle related. It ranges in 13% the adolescents that are committing suicide and more than half of unsuccessful suicides are involved the slashing of wrists. Aside from that, 11% of the young men have tried illegal drugs like marijuana, shabu, ecstacy and cough syrup. The study also shows that 20% of the high school students are involved in premarital sex. At age of 18, there are 10% of teenagers have been pregnant and increases to 25% for the age of 20. In this dilemma, more efforts are highly needed in advocating these young men for the good of their lifestyle.
The other two segments of audience which are the secondary and tertiary audience are critical for various reasons. Secondary audience motivates and influences the behavior of the primary audience. It helps to pursue the main goal of affecting the beliefs, thoughts and attitudes of the people. Tertiary audience is vital in providing support information in pushing the social change of the society. This audience will serves as an advisory and resources of knowledge in implementing a plan for greater development.
The 4P’s are involved in this marketing program (promotion, product, place and price). Through promotion, it reaches out the attention of the target audience and persuades it interest towards the specific products. Health promotion is the communication element between the products and the consumers. It introduces the benefits and the features of the products as well as the goodness that it can render to the consumers. In healthcare campaign, promotion advocates the target audience to be aware in healthy measure and to educate as well with concern of the illnesses that might be existed. Product is also included in marketing program because the kinds of medicines, information or tips about the healthy measure are very necessary. Health products, information or healthy tips must be branded which could be able to catch the interest of the consumers. It must be accurate and has an informative impact. Product must create its difference from the other product to identify its uniqueness and to realize the importance of it in the target audience. The place where the health products are available is also necessary for purchasing. The consumers must know how to get this product. It must be available where the consumers can easily purchase it. Lastly is the price, not all the healthy products are affordable but to limit its price for reasonable value can provide a big compliment to the buyers especially the people in the bottom level.
In conclusion, positioning it in the market is not simple, it is not a kind of goods which can easily entice the audience and it is not also a kind of accessories which the people are enjoying to buy. In positioning the healthcare campaign in the market, certain strategies should be applied to follow the trend of competency when it comes in catching the costumer’s attention. The branding of healthcare campaign program must be viewed as branded to the public. Through the combination of socmob and socmar the goal of placing it in the market would be successful.
References:
[1]www.ntagonline.org
[2]http://socialmarketing.blogs.com/r_craiig_lefebvres_social/2010/12/social-marketing- to-achieve-national-health-objectives.html
[3(http://www.upiasia.com/Society_Culture/2007/11/20/commentary_sex_and_filipino_youth/7325/)
