By: Lusida Sinaga – Senior Account Manager of Fortune PR
The roots of social marketing campaign that differentiates it from commercial marketing campaign would be that social marketing campaign is aim to transform people’s perception and behavior. In communicating social marketing, a PR professional can use the PR cycle to develop a strategic plan.
Here are the four PR cycles that will help you run a social marketing campaign:
- Always start with research!
When running a social marketing campaign, strong research is a good start for any social marketing programs. We must first define and understand the problems, the goals, and the target audience.
After that, we must have in-depth understanding about what our audiences think about the issue, how they feel about it, occurred challenges, and what factors that will convince them to change their perception and behavior.
On doing research, a PR professional must read and listen from various media sources as well as from word of mouth about their company or organization. Find out what are the company pillars and core values, and implement it on the campaign’s message.
- Plan it in details
After we completed the research, a PR professional need to plan the most appropriate strategies to communicate the message. We can use the same Four Ps marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) as commercial marketing. But in addition to that, there are three more special Ps for social marketing mix, which are Public, Partnerships, and Policy.
Public means mapping out all the people involved. Target the audience, groups that influence them, policymakers, as well as the media. What it means by Partnerships, are other non-profits organization, government agencies, and business companies. Your partner involved must possess similar goals and values, credibility and access to target audience, resource that fills your gaps, and interest in sponsoring your program. The last P, which is Policy, can create a big impact on promoting perception and changing behavior on a large scale.
Detailed social marketing campaign planning also involves crafting the message, selecting the spokesperson, selecting the media channels, planning the activities and events, and budgeting. An important point for budgeting for social marketing campaign is figuring out how to maximize the campaign using a minimum amount of money. Since the budget for social marketing program is lower than other commercial communication programs.
- Run it and give it a go!
Follow your program outline carefully and just give it a go. But a PR professional must remember that goals like behavioral change, relationship, and engagement doesn’t come up instantly. Those things take time and a very careful process. It does not increase your company’s reputation directly. But to do so, a good media relation strategy is the key. You must figure out how your media pitch can get a spot in a well-known media.
- Monitor & Evaluate
There are a few ways to monitor and evaluate your social marketing campaign, such as daily media monitoring, quantitative or qualitative surveys after conducting an event, or even finding a representative or a key informant in the area where the program is conducted, even after the program is over, in order to measure sustainability.
The four PR cycle above basically starts with a coordinated strategic approach to reach their campaign goals. The PR cycle are integrated with the entire marketing plan. Each component of the cycle has a positive effect of the next step, and plays an integral role in assisting PR professionals in continuously executing the most impactful program. The four PR cycle is a crucial knowledge for all PR professionals who are about to set up an effective social marketing campaign.
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