The course will provide education and practical experience in social marketing, a powerful method business and health professionals can leverage to influence human behavior in order to improve health, business and public policy and benefit society. Combining both behavior change theories and best practices, the course covers the use of commercial marketing techniques to analyze, plan, execute, and evaluate programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare and that of their society. The course covers social marketing-driven programs, which incorporate more than messages, include components commonly referred to as the "4 Ps"-product, price, place, and promotion.

The participants will use CDCynergy - Social Marketing version 2, a tool developed by the Centers for Disease Control which allows business managers (i.e., human resource) and health professionals to lead non-health promotion trained community agency/department members (lay health promotion staff) through an extremely evidence-based, pre/post-tested process that is vetted by major players in social marketing. The course will provide students with step-by-step guidance for developing and documenting a successful social marketing program. Participants will complete the course with a project that can be used in their particular work setting and targeting their audiences’ health needs.

The course is designed for business professionals as well as health promotion and wellness practitioners for corporate, college/university and community settings, health providers and educators in clinical settings. Includes nurses, health educators, and public health and social service providers.

Objectives:

• Describe commercial marketing concepts used to analyze, plan, execute and evaluate programs designed to influence voluntary behavior of target audiences to improve health behaviors and status
• Explain how managers and supervisors of social marketing planners can support them as they apply principles and processes that may be different from those usually used on their department
• Describe the purpose and steps of each of the six phases of planning a social marketing program
• Identify processes of evaluating effectiveness of the marketing plan
• Discuss key social marketing concepts of barriers, benefits, competition, determinants of behavior, exchange, market research market strategy, 4 Ps of marketing, place, price, product promotion and target audience