Creating Messages that Drive Behavior Change

Education alone rarely changes behavior. If your community is trying to create impactful educational materials that lead to behavior change, such as recycling right, consider applying social marketing approaches.

On this page:

• What is Social Marketing?
• Learn How to Create a Social Marketing Program

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What is Social Marketing?

Social marketing is a discipline that aims to change behaviors for the good of society, communities, and people. Social marketing approaches can increase the effectiveness of communications and marketing efforts. To create meaningful and sustainable behavior change, organizations can deploy social marketing strategies to overcome barriers and provide people with personal, relevant motivators to act.

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Learn How to Create a Social Marketing Program

The following training materials provide the framework to develop a new behavior change campaign. This training also shares examples of how recycling, composting, and food waste prevention programs have applied social marketing approaches to develop messages that change behavior.

Recorded Presentations

Module 1: Overview of Social Marketing (recording).

Module 2: Define Success. Research Behaviors. Identify the Barriers, Benefits and Motivators to the Desired Behaviors (recording).

Module 3: Developing a Message Strategy and Leveraging Partners. Pilot and Evaluate (recording).

Module 4: Case Study of Social Marketing Related to Reducing Food Waste (recording).

Presentation Slides

• Presentation slides for all four modules listed above (pdf) (7.31 MB)

Guide and Worksheet

• Social Marketing Guide and Worksheet provided by a behavior change organization. 

Questions

• For questions about the training or social marketing, contact RecyclingEd@epa.gov.