User:Klcarver/Social marketing

The social marketing Wikipedia page seems to have a neutral tone, but lacks enough substantial information about the topic. It might be helpful to break down the page into more specific sections and delve into how social marketing is approached and what its goals are. There are many resources listed, but not all appear to be credible. My focus for improving this page will be to find amplifying information to break down the subject in a more comfortable and readable way and to find more credible resources to add quality details to the existing information.

Lead
Social marketing is a marketing approach which focuses on influencing behavior with the primary goal of achieving "common good." It utilizes the elements of commercial marketing and applies them to social concepts. However, to see social marketing as only the use of standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals is an oversimplified view. Social marketing has existed for some time, but has only started becoming a common term in recent decades. It was originally done using newspapers and billboards and has adapted to the modern world in many of the same ways commercial marketing has. The most common use of social marketing in today's society is through social media.

Traditional commercial marketing aims are primarily financial, though they can have positive social effects as well. In the context of public health, social marketing would promote general health, raise awareness and induce changes in behavior.

Social marketing is described as having "two parents." The "social parent" uses social science and social policy approaches. The "marketing parent" uses commercial and public sector marketing approaches. Social marketing has started to encompass a broader range of focus in recent years and now goes beyond influencing individual behavior. It promotes socio-cultural and structural change relevant to social issues. Consequently, social marketing scholars are beginning to advocate for a broader definition of social marketing: "social marketing is the application of marketing principles to enable individual and collective ideas and actions in the pursuit of effective, efficient, equitable, fair and sustained social transformation". The new emphasis gives equal weight to the effects (efficiency and effectiveness) and the process (equity, fairness and sustainability) of social marketing programs. Together with a new social marketing definition that focuses on social transformation, there is also an argument that "a systems approach is needed if social marketing is to address the increasingly complex and dynamic social issues facing contemporary societies."

Article body
I am thinking about adding a few new sections to the article to improve clarity and break down topics in a way that helps readers digest the information more easily. In addition to cleaning up the introduction, my suggestion includes adding the following sections:

Benefits - this section will explain the benefits of social marketing and why it is a helpful tool

Process/Approach - this section will include information on the process of developing a social marketing plan and how to implement it

The current Applications section is very confusing to me because it includes much more information than simply examples of how to apply social marketing to various scenarios. This section needs a lot of work and seems a bit overwhelming to try and tackle during my first pass at this assignment.

The first new piece of information I want to add focuses on the current status of social marketing and how it is changing. I would like to add the following section:

Development of social marketing

The use of social marketing has been developing beyond government organizations to include private and academic institutions. With this evolution comes additional areas of focus in the social marketing realm which aim to benefit organizations themselves instead of influencing behavior.