Understanding the Concept of Societal Marketing

Societal marketing is the practice of using your marketing program in alignment with the social media outlets that are available on the Internet like YouTube, MySpace and even Helium. There are other types of outlets for social media which include blogs, forums, and newsletters. You can build your marketing campaign around the concepts of social marketing to further the brand of your company through word-of-mouth advertising.

An example of a company using social media would be Sony with its release of Spider-Man 3. They worked with Google Earth to provide to fans a map of Manhattan with an overlay of Spider-Man 3. They also released the still pictures from the film for use by fans on their Spider-Man 3 blogs. They accepted fan challenges from fan art assignments to creating original videos for their members only content. It is this type of campaign that companies are initiating in the hopes that societal marketing will help their companies improve their return on investment while increasing their brand name.

Companies do need to be careful when they are planning on using societal marketing as their campaign strategy. Individuals aren't required to provide a positive experience to the people who read the blogs and forums and if companies aren't careful they can be inundated with negative promotional information. A campaign that was looking to improve the companies brand could instead be faced with a backlash of negative information.

Societal marketing can be a useful tool for companies to explore, but with any concept precautions need to be taken so that the marketing campaign doesn't negatively affect the company. But companies can take a risk and try out different channels for their marketing campaigns but it is always smart to be diversified in your plans. In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket or you could end up with a loss at the end of the quarter.