Social Marketing: Using Marketing Principles and Techniques to Improve Contraceptive Access, Choice, and Use

"High Impact Practice: Use marketing principles and techniques to shape the provision of contraceptive services and products to improve access, choice and use, for target populations."

From the HIP Partnership, this service delivery brief provides an overview of social marketing as it relates to family planning, including evidence-based strategies to implement social marketing practices to maximise family planning investments.

Social marketing leverages marketing concepts - i.e., the 4 Ps: product, price, promotion, and place - to influence behaviours for the greater social good. It uses behaviour change theory, market research, and consumer insight to inform the delivery of health information, products, and services that are attuned to clients' needs, values, and preferences. What distinguishes social marketing from other behaviour change approaches is the notion of value exchange, or the idea that the intended audience will adopt or select a contraceptive method, product, or service in exchange for perceived benefits. "Social marketing success is ultimately about creating sustained behavior change, which goes beyond changing knowledge and attitudes around family planning."

After delving into the workings of the social marketing strategy, the brief examines what challenges this practice can help to address? For example, in response to a lack of a wide range of contraceptives in private sector outlets, social marketing programmes can link private facilities to quality-assured products and sensitise providers to offer contraception. In Nepal, the Contraceptive Retail Sales (CRS) social marketing programme supports pharmacies to offer injectable contraception to their clients by training providers, promoting the "Sangini network" via mass media, and conducting periodic support visits to ensure quality of family planning provision by Sangini providers.

The brief shares evidence of this strategy's impact. One systematic review cited here found that social marketing programmes that used "audience insight" and "addressed both the cost and benefits of behavior change" were more likely to be effective. The review concluded that social marketing is effective in changing behavioural factors (e.g., knowledge, attitudes, perceived access) and behaviours (e.g., use of contraceptives) and achieving desired health outcomes (e.g., prevent unintended pregnancies).

The brief offers practical tips for variety of family planning social marketing programmes. In brief:

• Begin with the end in mind: Consider technical, financial, institutional, and market aspects from the outset.
• Create sustained behaviour change, which does not not just mean changing knowledge and attitudes by:
  • Clearly identifying the audience, segmenting and tailoring interventions accordingly.
  • Seeking to understand audience members' lives, behaviours, motivations, and constraints using relevant theories.
  • Seeking to understand competing behaviours.
  • Maximising the benefits and minimising the costs of adopting a new behaviour.
  • Using a mix of methods based on the factors influencing the practice.
• Conduct audience research.
• Invest in multi-year social and behaviour change.
• Support coordination among government, private sector, and social marketing programmes.
• Where possible, leverage existing infrastructure.
• Ensure subsidised social marketing products are targeted and priced appropriately.
• Increase cost recovery and support a fair marketplace.
• Balance branded and generic promotion.

The brief concludes with links to tools and resources, priority research questions, and indicators to track implementation of this HIP.