Social Marketing vs. "Social Marketing" Smackdown

At the suggestion of Carol Kirshner of the blog Driving in Traffic, I have created a chart to help elucidate the differences between authentic social marketing and the new use of the term to mean “social media marketing.” As organizations like Jupiter Research continue to knowingly or unknowingly use the term incorrectly (see backstory here), confusion will reign as people try to figure out what each other is talking about. This chart, which I hope will be a collaborative work-in-progress, can serve as a touchstone for continuing the conversation among marketers of all kinds.

Social Marketing vs. “Social Marketing”

	Social Marketing	“Social Marketing”
AKA	Social Marketing	Social Media Marketing
Usage Started	1971	Approx. 2005
Definition	The use of marketing techniques to promote the adoption of healthy or pro-social behaviors	Marketing via online tools and platforms that people use to share information with each other, such as blogs, social networking sites, wikis, podcasts and shared media sites
Purpose	Changing individual behaviors to improve their own health or well-being, or to help society for the greater good	Involving consumers in marketing efforts designed to generate positive word of mouth or personal investment in the brand
Who Uses It	Nonprofit organizations, government agencies, other organizations working toward health or social change	Companies or other organizations that want to add an online peer-to-peer or participative component to their marketing
Who “Profits”	Individuals or society	The organization doing the marketing
Target Audiences	Individuals at risk for a particular health or social problem, those who are likely to adopt positive behaviors to help society	Tech-savvy consumers who are already using social media tools, whether as a creator or consumer of content
Related Fields/Terms	Nonprofit marketing, cause marketing, health marketing	Social media optimization, social network marketing, word of mouth marketing, viral or buzz marketing, citizen marketing, community marketing
Examples	Verb Campaign, truth Campaign	Snakes on a Plane, Chevy Tahoe
For More Info	Wikipedia, Squidoo, Social Marketing Wiki	Wikipedia, SEOMoz blog, Marketing with Social Media

Whether you are a social marketer or a social media marketer, I invite you to add your comments and modifications to this chart to make it helpful to everyone in the marketing field. I will post updates as the chart evolves by blogsourcing a la David Armano.

UPDATE (9/6/06): I added the year the usage of each term first appeared. Kotler and Zaltman coined the phrase in an article in 1971. I don’t have a historical source for the “other” social marketing appearing in 2005, but that’s when I remember first seeing it.

UPDATE (2/21/07): Added “community marketing” to the “related fields” list.

Technorati Tags: social marketing, social media, jupiter, blogsourcing