A fundamental requirement in the scoping of a social marketing intervention is to establish a rounded picture of people’s lives, what is important to them, what moves and motivates them, and what causes and influences both the problem and desired behaviour.

By seeing the customer in the round, you identify the many contexts within which people live their lives, and what influences them. This helps segment the audience (if appropriate) to identify groups of people who might respond in a similar way to a given set of social marketing activities.

There is also a wealth of theory which you can draw on to help you explain how the audience will respond to possible interventions, to deal with negative behaviour, and enhance positive activity.

This task area links directly to a number of NSMC Benchmark Criteria: No. 1 Customer Orientation which emphasises developing a robust understanding of the audience, based on good market and consumer research, combing data from different sources; No. 2 Behaviour, which emphasises a clear focus on behaviour based on a strong behavioural analysis, with specific behaviour goals; and No. 7 Segmentation, which underlines the importance of using a developed segmentation approach (not just targeting) and avoiding blanket approaches.