Health communication & social marketing practice The past decade has seen an enormous surge in social marketing and healthcare to convey various messages. Social marketing has also been established as an essential health communications tool to promote health initiatives. Social marketing should not be the only tool to communicate information to the general public, but to complement the existing practices in place. This week, you will examine the use of social marketing as a communication channel in healthcare. Review the following website article: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). Gateway to health communication & social marketing practice. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/
Social Marketing and Healthcare
Health Communication and Social Marketing Practice
“Brand is just acumen, and acumen will match reality over time.” (Elon Musk). Social marketing is the adoption of commercial, promotional technologies into programs that are intended to influence the response of target audiences to improve both the individuals’ well-being and the well-being of the community in which they belong (Deshpande, 2019). Social marketing is not just about fresh leads but keeping revenue up across every front. The use of social media marketing will be critical for engaging existing customers, reaching new audiences, and building trust and loyalty that carries into renewals, upsell and cross-sell growth. Social marketing aims to inform people about voluntary strategies they can use to change their behavior. This behavior change should be voluntary, and the planner’s job is to make the desired behavior an easy choice for the target audience.
Health professionals must understand marketing key concepts, designing programs to aid health products, and changing health behavior. Social marketing is an outlook to persuade people to accept ideas and attitudes, perform healthy behaviors, refer to health facilities, and receive health products (Friedman et al., 2022). The social marketing planning process stages are getting started, scope, developing, implementing, evaluating and follow-up. Health communication involves verbal and written strategies to influence and empower individuals, populations, and communities to make healthier decisions. Health communication often integrates components of multiple theories and models to aid positive changes in attitudes and behaviors (Nabi & Myrick, 2019). Public health experts grant health communication essential to public health programs that direct disease prevention, health nurturing, and quality of life, and it can make significant contributions to aid and refine the health of individuals, communities, and society. Social marketing is needed in today’s society to promote health initiatives, where communication channels are used in developing health campaigns and evaluating the effectiveness of communication campaigns.