We cannot ignore the considerable efforts that Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization, offers to provide reproductive health care in the United States and globally, such as are Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Venezuela. Planned Parenthood consists of 159 medical and non-medical affiliates, which operate over 650 health clinics in the U.S. It partners with organizations in 12 countries globally. (1) This organization directly provides a variety of reproductive health services that include:
- Birth control and long-acting reversible contraception.
- Emergency contraception.
- Clinical breast examinations.
- Cervical cancer screening.
- Pregnancy testing.
- Pregnancy options counseling.
- Testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
- Sex education.
- Vasectomies.
- LGBT services.
- Abortion.
As any other organizations, Planned Parenthood uses digital marketing to understand their targeted audience and make awareness about their message. Planned Parenthood uses both mass media and digital media to understand, communicate, educate their targeted audience, and build a strong network of advocates who care and support Planned Parenthood core mission and vision. This non-profit organization is supported by the U.S. government, big corporation, and individuals.
Facts about Planned Parenthood:
- Planned Parenthood provides sexual and reproductive healthcare, education, information, and outreach to nearly five million women, men, and adolescents worldwide in a single year.
- 2.5 million women and men in the United States annually visit Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers for trusted health care services and information.
- Planned Parenthood 57 independent local affiliates that operate more than 650 health centers throughout United State, providing high-quality services to women, men, and teens.
- Planned Parenthood provides more than 4.2million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including more than 650,000 HIV tests.
In this blog, we will explain how planned parenthood implements the behavioral marketing strategy to target their audience. Planned Parenthood targeted audiences are divided into two groups: Patients and Donors.
Patients:
Planned Parenthood target women and men from all ages, ethnicity, financial and educational background. However, Planned Parenthood is focusing more on black and Hispanic people who live in the poor neighborhood because the percentages of unplanned pregnancies are higher than any other group. According to Steven from Life News. Com
“abortion advocates have always claimed that their main goal is to reduce unintended pregnancies and, by placing abortion centers and Planned Parenthood clinics in minority communities, abortion backers claimed their focus wasn’t promoting abortions to blacks and Hispanics but to help them reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies by promoting birth control and contraception.”
He also indicates that
“……the rate of pregnancy among black women is almost three times as high as it is for white women and, though they make up less than 13% of the female population, black women have about 37% of the abortions.”
The organization also targets High school, college, university students, and LGTBQ community.
How Planned Parenthood uses behavioral marketing.
An article that is written by Naquanna Comeaax from pregnancy help news mentioned that planned parenthood uses big data technology and tools to collect, process, and analyze data about their targeted audience to provide help as soon as possible to avoid the unexpected consequence. They use zip codes from the collected data to build abortion and clinic centers in a neighborhood where the percentage of black and Hispanic residents are the highest. Also, they make use of zip code to find more information about the school, college, and university to identify the density of female student populations. It is obvious to see how easily PP get their target audience IP address through the required information when you sign up to their app on your phone. Here is an example of the information that will build an entire profile of each individual sign up to their app.
Planned Parenthood also adopts geo-fencing and IP technologies to collect data that will help in target their client for marketing/advertising purposes. Basically, Planned Parenthood set up a mobile geo-fence around Planned Parenthood clinic, hospitals, doctor's offices, and when a smartphone user enters the geo-fence area, the user smartphone’s will be assigned to a unique ID. When the user opens an app, an ad will be served. the same article gives an example of how Planned Parenthood uses mobile geo-fencing to deliver banner ads with pregnancy help messaging to a woman’s smartphone while she’s near an abortion clinic or sitting inside of one. this banner ad will continue to appear on her smartphone for up to 30 days.
Donors:
Awareness
For a first-time user, who do not know any information about planned parenthood, it is crucial to building brand awareness to educate them about the services and facilities that pp provide. We think that using social media platforms for storytelling will help to boost the level of brand awareness.
Fundraising
Using CRM, which contains information about the donors such as donor’s name, address, ZIP code, phone number and email, will help Planned Parenthood to segment their donors as the first time, occasional or regular donors then, Planned Parenthood will create email lists to target, send meaningful messages for different pools of supporters. As a result, Planned Parenthood will be able to promote an organization’s message, increases brand awareness, helps rally supporters around a cause, and helps to raise funds. Planned Parenthood could leverage the benefit of CRM to segment donors based on their donation levels, recent donations, and lifetime donations. This information will be helpful when it comes to running any display, social media, or email campaign with the goal of increasing donations. For example, some people prefer to donate in a specific occasion such as new year or Christmas. Planned Parenthood could create a specific marketing campaign to target them to promote them to donate once again.
Advocacy
- To have a strong base of advocate, Planned Parenthood has to integrate their online marketing strategy with the offline. This means that Planned Parenthood could start the conversation online and it will be transferred to event or rally sponsored by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood uses social media to recruit volunteers who will be able to help Planned Parenthood at a different aspect.
- Using celebrities to talk about the sensitive issue publicly. Celebrities have millions of fans around the world, and if they could use social media to spread the Planned Parenthood message this will help to increase the brand awareness and improve Planned Parenthood current image. For example, in 2011, Scarlett Johansson published a YouTube video for defending women's healthcare.