Using Social Marketing to Promote Nutrition and Health Behaviours

Think about the last advertisement you saw. Was it for a new smartphone? A fizzy soda? A fast-food burger? Commercial marketing is brilliant at making us want things. It identifies a desire-for convenience, for flavour, for social status-and presents a product as the perfect solution. Now, what if we could use those same powerful techniques, not to sell a burger, but to sell a behaviour? What if we could “sell” the idea of eating more fruits and vegetables, of breastfeeding exclusively for six months, or of choosing to cook a healthy meal at home instead of opting for takeout?

This is the core idea behind social marketing. It’s not just about creating a catchy public service announcement (PSA) or printing a poster. It’s a complex and fascinating field that borrows the best tools from the commercial world to promote public health and nutrition. It’s an approach that understands that to drive meaningful, lasting behaviour change, you have to do more than just tell people what’s healthy. You have to make that healthy choice appealing, accessible, and rewarding.

What is social marketing? 🔗

At its simplest, social marketing is the application of commercial marketing principles to promote behaviours that benefit individuals and society as a whole. The goal isn’t to make a profit; it’s to make a positive impact. Instead of selling a product, we are “selling” a behaviour. And just like a company launching a new sneaker, social marketers have a toolbox of key strategies to get the job done.

According to academic reviews, a successful social marketing initiative doesn’t just happen. It’s built on a foundation of several key benchmark criteria, including a deep understanding of the audience, a clear “behavioural objective” (what, exactly, do we want people to do?), and a smart use of the “marketing mix.” It also recognizes that we aren’t operating in a vacuum. There is always competition. For a public health campaign promoting home cooking, the competition is the fast, cheap, and heavily marketed fast-food industry. Social marketing’s job is to make the healthy choice the most compelling one.

Social vs. commercial products: A tougher sale? 🔗

One of the biggest challenges in social marketing is the nature of the “product.” When a company sells you a car, you get an immediate, tangible benefit. You can drive it, show it to your friends, and enjoy its features. When a public health program “sells” you on long-term nutrition, the product is often intangible, and the benefits are delayed.

The “product” might be:

• Prevention: The benefit is something that *doesn’t* happen, like not developing type 2 diabetes. That’s a hard thing to get excited about today.
• An abstract good: The benefit is “better health” or “more energy.” This is vague and competes with the very concrete, immediate pleasure of a sugary snack.
• A difficult action: The “product” is quitting smoking, which involves overcoming a physical addiction and costs the user in comfort and effort.

In short, a commercial product often offers a positive (add this fun thing to your life), while a social marketing product often involves a negative or a sacrifice (give up this thing you enjoy, or exert effort you’d rather not). This difference is why simply raising awareness or providing knowledge is rarely enough. People know that smoking is bad and vegetables are good. The barriers to change are often not a lack of knowledge but are rooted in deeper issues: cultural practices, myths, cost, convenience, or simple human psychology. A social marketer’s job is to understand and dismantle those specific barriers.

The marketing mix in social marketing 🔗

To tackle this challenge, social marketers adapt the classic “4 Ps” of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. But in the social world, these concepts take on a much deeper meaning.

Product: The ‘thing’ we’re offering 🔗

The “product” is not the behaviour itself, but the benefit of the behaviour that the target audience actually values. This is a critical distinction. A nutrition program might be focused on Vitamin A consumption, but as research from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has shown, that’s not what sells. In one program, researchers found that mothers weren’t motivated by the fear of night blindness. Instead, they valued green leafy vegetables because they believed they gave their children bright eyes and shiny skin. That-the tangible, visible, desirable benefit-became the “product,” not the vitamin.

Story Time: Imagine a campaign trying to get new fathers to help with household chores and childcare to reduce stress on the new mother, which in turn supports her ability to breastfeed. The “product” isn’t “doing chores.” The “product” is “being a hero to your new family,” “a stronger partnership,” or “a happier, more peaceful home.” You sell the benefit, not the task.

Price: What it really ‘costs’ to change 🔗

In commercial marketing, price is just money. In social marketing, “price” is the sum of all the barriers a person must overcome to adopt the new behaviour. These costs are often more powerful than money.

The FAO identifies several types of costs:

• Monetary: Yes, healthy food can cost more money. But it also might cost more in fuel to travel to a faraway market or to keep a stove on longer for cooking.
• Time: It takes time to plan healthy meals, shop for ingredients, cook, and clean up. For an overworked parent, time is the most precious commodity.
• Effort: Learning a new cooking skill, reading labels, or just remembering to take a supplement all require mental and physical energy.
• Psychological: This is the big one. What is the psychological cost of adopting a new feeding practice that your mother-in-law or husband doesn’t approve of? The “price” could be family conflict or social stigma.

A social marketing program must find ways to lower this price. It might mean offering quick-cook recipes to lower the time cost, or running community workshops for mothers *and* mothers-in-law to reduce the psychological cost.

Place: Making the healthy choice the easy choice 🔗

In retail, “place” is about distribution-making sure the product is on the shelf when you want to buy it. In social marketing, “place” is about making the desired behaviour easy to perform. It’s about access and opportunity.

It doesn’t matter how many radio ads you run promoting nutritional supplements if the health clinics that distribute them are only open from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., when most people are working. “Place” means:

• Physical Availability: Are nutrient-rich foods actually present in the local marketplace?
• Accessibility: Are clinic services available at convenient times and locations?
• Context: Where does the behaviour happen? If you want to promote hand-washing, “place” means ensuring there is soap and clean water at the hand-washing station.

The goal is to design a “place” where the healthy choice is the path of least resistance. This could mean working with local shop owners to stock healthier snacks near the checkout counter or setting up a mobile clinic in a central village square.

Promotion: The message and the messenger 🔗

This is the part everyone thinks of as “marketing”-the ads, slogans, and campaigns. But in social marketing, *how* you promote is just as important as *what* you promote. Promotion is a sophisticated mix of communication channels designed to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

This often involves a two-pronged approach:

1. Mass Media: Using channels like radio, television, or social media to build broad awareness, introduce a new idea, and make it a topic of conversation.
2. Interpersonal Communication: This is the high-touch, persuasive channel. It’s the conversation with a trusted health worker, a discussion in a mothers’ group, or even advice from a community leader.

Often, the most effective “messenger” isn’t an outside expert; it’s a peer. This is where creative strategy becomes vital. Instead of just telling new mothers to breastfeed, a campaign might focus on a different messenger. As Nutrition International notes, a successful strategy might involve “mobilizing health service providers, husbands, and family members” to create a supportive environment. The promotion is aimed at the influencers, not just the individual.

Promoting positive behaviours: From insight to action 🔗

So how do social marketers figure all this out? They don’t guess. The entire process is built on a foundation of deep, empathetic research. This is what separates social marketing from simple advertising.

It all starts with formative research 🔗

Before a single poster is designed, social marketers go out and talk to the audience. This is called “formative research,” and its only goal is to understand the world from the audience’s point of view. A case study from the University of Michigan School of Public Health on a COVID-19 vaccine campaign illustrates this process perfectly.

The steps are:

1. Identify the problem and goal: We want to increase vaccination rates.
2. Identify the target audience: It’s not “everyone.” It’s specifically the people who are hesitant.
3. Understand the audience’s perceptions: This is the most important part. Through interviews and focus groups, they learned *why* people were hesitant. Was it lack of research? Distrust of the government? Personal values about choice? They also listened for motivators: What *would* convince them? (e.g., protecting elders).
4. Develop a strategy: The research findings directly shape the message. Instead of a “just do it” message, the strategy became “protect your family” and “respecting your choice.”
5. Disseminate through appropriate channels: The research showed that the message would be best received not from the government, but from trusted Tribal leaders.

Finding your people: Audience segmentation 🔗

That research process reveals a critical truth: there is no such thing as the “general public.” A 65-year-old grandfather, a 22-year-old college student, and a 34-year-old new mother are all motivated by completely different things. Trying to reach them with one message is a waste of time and money.

Social marketers use audience segmentation to divide a large population into smaller, more homogeneous groups based on their beliefs, behaviours, or values. This allows for highly targeted, effective messaging. For example, the vaccine campaign segmented their audience into the “Wait-and-Seers” (receptive to information), the “Maybe Nevers,” and the “Nevers,” and focused their efforts on the “Wait-and-Seers.”

In the nutrition world, research on young adults has identified segments like:

• Lifestyle Mavens: Passionate about health, follow influencers, and actively seek out new recipes.
• Aspirational Healthy Eaters: Want to be healthy but struggle, find it hard work, and may be resistant to messages they feel they already know.
• Blissfully Unconcerned: Not bothered about healthy eating, don’t notice health messages, and don’t see the point.

You can see immediately that a “healthy eating” campaign would need a radically different strategy for each group. The “Mavens” might just need a new, exciting recipe. The “Aspirationals” might need a message focused on autonomy and easy, time-saving hacks. And the “Blissfully Unconcerned” might need a message that doesn’t mention health at all, but focuses on a benefit they *do* care about, like saving money or physical appearance.

Connecting the dots: Creativity and strategy 🔗

This is where it all comes together. The formative research provides the *insight*, and the marketing mix provides the *tools*. The final step is using creativity to link them.

Let’s go back to the Nutrition International example of promoting breastfeeding.

• The Problem: New mothers aren’t exclusively breastfeeding.
• Formative Research Insight: It’s not the mother’s choice. The mother-in-law, who holds the power in the household, believes old myths that the baby needs water or other foods.
• The “Old” Strategy: Tell new mothers to breastfeed (and watch them fail, creating family conflict-a huge “price”).
• The Social Marketing Strategy:
  • Target Audience: Mothers-in-law.
  • Product (Benefit): “Your wisdom and experience are key to a healthy grandchild.”
  • Promotion: Create messages that honor the mother-in-law as a protector and key decision-maker, positioning her as the “hero” who ensures the family’s health by supporting her daughter-in-law.

By changing the audience and the “product,” the campaign reframes the entire problem, lowers the “price” for the new mother, and creates a supportive environment-a “place”-where the healthy behaviour can finally happen. That is the true power of social marketing. It isn’t magic; it’s a deeply empathetic, strategic, and creative process designed to make the world a healthier place, one behaviour at a time.

What do you think? When you reflect on your own health habits, what “price”-in time, cost, or psychological comfort-do you find is the biggest barrier to change? Can you think of a time when a health message really resonated with you, and was it because of the message itself, or the person who delivered it?

References

1. https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuaf194/8315047
2. https://www.nutritionintl.org/our-work/how-we-help/behaviour-change/
3. https://www.fao.org/4/t2860t/t2860t02.htm
4. https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2023posts/using-social-marketing-to-improve-public-health.html
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8470224/