By Mona Walsh
As part of Qube's road safety campaign for West Sussex, this is the problem we had to tackle. We decided a good starting point was to understand why some people drive too fast and what would motivate them to change their attitude and behaviour.
To achieve this kind of insight, we looked at the type of marketing that has long brought us successful road safety, anti-smoking and pro contraception campaigns, known as Social Marketing.
Social Marketing insights
Traditionally, Social Marketing has primarily been an offline activity. According to the rules of this discipline, the key to successfully achieving behavioural change (as in a road safety campaign) is down to two main components:
1) Customer Insight - understanding the audiences/communities you are targeting.
2) Customer Connectors - people who hold influence with the target community.
So the first thing to do is to find out who the target audience is - ie look at who is most likely to be driving too fast. The likelihood is if you're running a behavioural change campaign, you'll probably know what behaviour you want to change, based on statistical evidence such as the number of road deaths among young people.
Influencing people's behaviours
Whilst stats are a great place to start and give a 'cause' for our campaign (reducing road deaths, for instance), it isn't the full story. To really have a chance of reaching the target audience, it's necessary to burrow down deeper to gain a true insight into what it is that influences people's behaviours.
Of course, stats aren't enough to really understand what makes our speedy drivers tick. Social Marketing techniques dictate the next thing to do is drill down and down until you have a good idea of who the fast drivers are, where they live, when they are on the road and (here's the hard part) why they drive too fast. Only then can you work out what would encourage them to change their behaviour.
Reaching your audience
Of course this is much easier said than done, it takes resources both financial and human to achieve this level of understanding, not to mention trying to find and reach the audience in the first place.
And here's where our online expertise comes in. For some audiences, for example 17-27 year old men, the best place to start a campaign is online, where you can find specific communities, listen to what they are talking about and interact to gauge opinions.
This is where Social Marketing becomes Social Media Marketing: connecting with online communities to effect change. There's a myriad of conversations happening on the web ranging from people who want to show their pride in their local village to huge global communities whose members have a common interest.
One thing all these communities have in common is that they are made up of real people with real wants, needs, beliefs, doubts, suspicions, concerns, barriers and behaviours. And if they are online talking about something, it's likely to be something they care about and are motivated by.
Getting involved in online conversations
So from here you get involved with the communities. This will take time and a fair bit of thinking about. We've all seen the films where the strangers arrive in a village and the entire pub comes to a silent stand still when they enter, well it's likely to be the same with the online communities. Most will be established, some will be very cliquey and they'll all spot a charlatan a mile away.
Take your time to get to know the community and don't pretend to be something or someone you're not. Be upfront and communicate in an engaging and relevant way.
Once you gain a community's trust and really get a feel for what makes them tick, you will be well on your way to understanding what motivates them.
And with this knowledge you'll be able to take your campaign to the next step; developing a truly insightful strategy.
To see how we've enacted this strategy for our West Sussex Road Safety campaign, visit www.dontbealoser.co.uk
Talk to us about influencing offline behaviours, online - just call 01273 689672 or email us