Global Survey Reveals a Lack of Social Marketing Skills in the Conservation Sector and Shows Supply of Training Doesn’t Meet Demand

Abstract

Biodiversity loss is one of the principle challenges facing us today. To halt and reverse this loss, conservation practitioners must find ways to change human behaviors which threaten species and ecosystems. Increasingly, it is being recognized that social marketing could be an effective way of achieving voluntary, ethical, and long-lasting behavior change for the benefit of biodiversity. By conducting a global survey of conservation practitioners, the objective of this study was to assess the need for social marketing skills, as well as the demand, supply, and barriers to receiving social marketing training in the conservation sector. From a sample of 322 conservation practitioners from 71 countries, results suggest there is a marked lack of social marketing skills in the conservation sector, with only 16.1% of participants considering their skill level to be expert or advanced. However, 61.5% of participants reported needing advanced or expert social marketing skills to be effective in their current role. In addition, the survey revealed a high demand for training in social marketing, but also that a lack of funds, time, and available courses all present major barriers to conservation practitioners receiving such training. The implications of these results for designing methods of providing conservation practitioners with social marketing skills and removing barriers are discussed.

Keywords

social marketing biodiversity conservation behavior change best practice

The reasons for biodiversity loss are often complex. The solutions, therefore, can be equally complex (Game, Meijaard, Sheil, & Mcdonald-Madden, 2014), often, possibly always, requiring a human dimension involving some form of behavior change (Bennett et al., 2016; Schultz, 2011). Indeed, behavior change for wildlife conservation is a rapidly expanding research field, and there is a widespread acknowledgment of the urgency of the need for increasing understanding of behavior change to reduce biodiversity loss (Wright et al., 2015).

Behavior change interventions are often very difficult, as they frequently seek to change deep-rooted behaviors. Such interventions have traditionally focused on providing information, in the hope that making the impact of particular behaviors clear to the recipients of such information could motivate voluntary shifts away from behaviors which cause environmental harm (McKenzie-Mohr, 2000; McKenzie-Mohr & Schultz, 2014). However, the evidence suggests that while such initiatives might increase knowledge and change attitudes, this may be insufficient to actually change behavior (Carrigan, Moraes, & Leek, 2011; Clayton & Myers, 2009). For example, in 1990, an information program about the greenhouse effect in the Netherlands aimed to increase public awareness and promote voluntary behavioral change. Results showed that despite an increase in knowledge, this by itself did not result in increased pro-environmental behavior (Staats, Wit, and Midden, 1996).

In recent years, conservation practitioners have begun to recognize social marketing as a potentially valuable technique in increasing the effectiveness of behavior change interventions for the benefit of wildlife conservation (Eagle, Hamann, & Low, 2016; Truong, 2014; Veríssimo, 2013). Social marketing aims to change behavior by applying marketing theory and techniques (Fox & Kotler, 1980). Social marketing was introduced in the 1960/1970s (Kotler & Zaltman, 1971; Lefebvre, 2013), and with a long history of use in multiple sectors, notably, the health and tourism sectors (Truong, 2014) is now a well-established field, with conferences, two journals, and an international association (Lotenberg, 2018). It is only recently, however, that social marketing has started to be used to any meaningful extent within the conservation sector (Veríssimo, 2013; Wilhelm-Rechmann, Cowling, & Difford, 2014; Wright et al., 2015).

One example of the successful use of social marketing to conserve wildlife is RARE’s Pride campaigns. Through this initiative, RARE developed a social marketing tool which has been applied in over 30 countries (Hessmiller, 2013). Pride seeks to affect behavior change by providing conservation education, working on the hypothesis that “by promoting awareness and understanding of the natural environment local people will rally towards its protection, and help generate support for conservation work” (Hessmiller, 2013). Their work is deeply rooted within communities, and significant emphasis is placed on identifying key stakeholders, designing messages which will resonate with these groups, and developing promotional materials which will effectively reach target groups via selected communication channels. Pride campaigns also engage stakeholders in a dialogue as to the costs and benefits of alternative behaviors and work to remove barriers to behavior change. Finally, Pride campaigns have a results framework that enables them to empirically demonstrate their success in achieving behavior change (Hayden & Fangzhou, 2013; Jenks, Vaughan, & Butler, 2010).

To design, implement, monitor, and evaluate social marketing campaigns effectively and therefore have conservation impact, conservation practitioners require appropriate skills. Despite the growing appreciation and use of social marketing for wildlife conservation, the training which conservation practitioners receive, which is still largely in the form of a university degree (Elliott, Ryan & Wyborn, 2018; Muir & Schwartz, 2009), does not include social marketing skills. An increasing number of studies have looked at the gaps in training for conservation practitioners (e.g., Barlow, Barlow, Boddam-Whetham, & Robinson, 2016; Langholz & Abeles, 2014; Lucas, Gora, & Alonso, 2017). However, to our knowledge, no study has yet explored whether this includes social marketing skills.

In preparing this article, we conducted a survey to explore perceptions among conservation practitioners, academics, and conservation donors of (1) the need for social marketing skills in order to be an effective conservation practitioner and therefore achieve conservation impact, (2) the supply of social marketing training, (3) the demand for social marketing training in order to increase conservation impact, (4) barriers to social marketing training, and (5) the availability of best practice guidelines for conservation practitioners to implement social marketing campaigns.

In light of our findings, we make recommendations about how and what training conservation practitioners require and discuss the skills conservation practitioners should gain as a result of such training.

Method

Participant Recruitment

Responses were collected between October 3, 2017, and November 8, 2017, via an online survey using Google Forms which was delivered in English. As an incentive to take part, a chance to win a £100 voucher to spend on conservation-related certification was offered (on www.mywildlearning.com). To maximize global representation of participants, an effort was made to recruit participants from as many countries as possible, by using Google searches which focused on finding relevant contacts from every country in the world. The authors’ professional networks and social media were also used to recruit participants and asked that recipients to share it with their contacts (see Online Appendix 2 for further details).

Survey Design

The survey comprised 26 questions (Online Appendix 1). Both open and closed question formats were used and were developed following guidance from Bernard (2011). The survey was piloted several times to refine its structure and the wording. Several definitions were given at the beginning of the survey to clarify terminology (Table 1). The survey was divided into six sections, outlined below.

Table 1.

Key Definitions Used in Survey.

Social marketing for biodiversity	The ethical application of marketing techniques to encourage voluntary behavior change in target groups for the benefit of biodiversity.” In this definition, the term “biodiversity” includes humans.
Social marketing skills	The ability to design, implement, and monitor social marketing campaigns.
Effective conservation practitioner	Someone with the skills (e.g., social marketing skills) to help achieve conservation impact.
Conservation impact	The measured, positive change in the: – Status of biological targets (e.g., improved status of rhino population) – Threats to biological targets (e.g., reduced river pollution) – Human behaviors driving threats to biological targets (e.g., reduced bush meat consumption).

Survey Sections

Assessing the need for social marketing skills

The need for social marketing skills for conservation practitioners was assessed by asking participants (a) whether social marketing campaigns were a part of their work in the past, at present, and whether they would be in the future; (b) how important gaining skills in social marketing was for them to be an effective conservation practitioner; (c) how they would rate their current skill level in social marketing, and (d) what their desired future skill level was.

Assessing the supply of social marketing training

The supply of social marketing skills for conservation practitioners was assessed by asking participants (a) the type of training they had received in the past (e.g., class-based, online), (b) which organization provided the training, (c) how effective the training was, and (d) whether participants held any certification in social marketing.

Assessing the demand for social marketing training

The demand for social marketing skills for conservation practitioners was assessed by asking participants (a) how important they thought receiving additional social marketing training is to make them effective conservation practitioners, (b) the type of training they would like to receive (e.g., class-based, online), (c) how important gaining certification in social marketing is to them, and (d) the reason certification is/is not important.

Barriers to social marketing training

The barriers to gaining social marketing skills for conservation practitioners were assessed by asking participants (a) how important did they think certain barriers (lack of funds, time, available training courses, and institutional value for these skills) were, with respect to receiving training in social marketing and (b) whether there are any other barriers they could identify.

The availability of best practice guidelines

The availability of best practices for social marketing skills was assessed by asking participants to (a) list any best practice guidelines they knew about, (b) report how useful they found those guidelines, and (c) state how useful they would find best practice guidelines in learning social marketing skills generally.

Background data

The final section gathered the following background data on participants: job title, country employed in, name of organization, type of organization (e.g., conservation nongovernmental organization [NGO], government organization), highest level of education completed, gender, and age. Job titles were used to assess the relative accountability level of the participant within their organization hierarchy; each participant was categorized as a low (e.g., job titles include officer, assistant, student, scientist, conservation practitioner, biologist, ranger, forester), medium (e.g., job titles include manager, coordinator, instructor, adviser, specialist, consultant, adviser, team leader, senior scientist, professor), or high (e.g., job titles include director, head, CEO, chair, dean, president) level of accountability.

Analysis

We calculated descriptive statistics to explore the quantitative survey questions. Qualitative data were thematically coded by researchers into different key viewpoints, then relevant quotes were subsequently selected to illustrative the range of viewpoints.

Results

Survey Response

A total of 347 people responded to the survey; 55.6% (n = 193) of these were from e-mail addresses identified by Google searches, 34.6% (n = 120) from the authors’ professional networks, and 9.8% (n = 34) from social media promotion. The response rate was 15% (see Online Appendix 2 for further details).

When analyzing results, it became apparent that some participants thought that the survey was about social media rather than social marketing. Where possible, participants who thought this were identified by responses to qualitative questions and omitted from results (n = 25). The final analysis therefore comprised 322 responses.

Participants were employed in 36.4% (n = 71) of countries worldwide, representing all five major geographic regions. The majority of participants were employed in European countries (35.1%, n = 113), with 21.4% (n = 69) based in the UK alone, the Americas (25.8%, n = 83), and Asia (18.9%, n = 61). There were fewer participants from Africa (12.1%, n = 39) and Oceania (5.3%, n = 17). Finally, 2.8% (n = 9) of participants did not give their country of employment. Figure 1 shows the global distribution of participants.

Figure 1.

Number of responses to survey by country.

Overall, there was a slightly higher percentage of female, compared with male participants (53.1%, n = 171 and 45.7%, n = 147, respectively), while 1.2% (n = 4) preferred not to give their gender. Participants were from a range of age groups, with most being ages 30–39 (30.1%, n = 97), followed in descending order by 20–29 (28.0%, n = 90), 40–49 (23.6%, n = 76), 50–59 (11.8%, n = 38), and 60+ (6.5%, n = 21).

In total, participants represented at least 230 organizations, with most working for conservation NGOs (Table 2). Based on our categorizations, 48.8% of participants (n = 157) were in low accountability job roles, 36.6% (n = 118) in medium accountability job roles, 11.2% (n = 36) in high accountability job roles, and for 3.4% (n = 11), this information was unknown.

Table 2.

Reponses by Type of Organization.

Type of Organization	No. of Responses	%
Conservation NGO	161	49.85
Government organization	58	17.96
University	31	9.60
Other	32	9.91
Independent consultant	16	4.95
Consultant firm	15	4.64
Training organization	7	2.17
Donor organization	3	0.93
Total	323	100

Note. The total is greater than the number of responses because some participants classified their organization multiple ways. NGO = nongovernmental organization.

Assessing the Need for Social Marketing Skills

Over three quarters of participants reported that gaining social marketing skills was absolutely essential or very important for them to be an effective conservation practitioner (76.1%; Figure 2), and 61.5% (n = 198) reported that to be effective in their current role, their desired future skill level in social marketing was advanced or expert (Figure 3). However, only 16.1% (n = 52) reported that their current skills in social marketing were advanced or expert. Over half of the participants had taken part in social marketing activities in the past (62.7%, n = 202; Table 3), while a slightly lower percentage were currently doing so (59.0%, n = 190). However, the majority of participants reported that they would be undertaking social marketing activities in the future (79.2%, n = 255; Table 3).

Figure 2.

Participants perception of the importance of gaining skills in social marketing.

Figure 3.

Participants assessment of their current level of skills in social marketing and their desired level to make them an effective conservation practitioner.

Table 3.

Participants Response to the Question “Which of the Following Best Describes Your Past, Current, and Future Application of Social Marketing Campaigns as Part of Your Conservation Work?”

Question	Yes	No	Not Sure
Have done this in the past	62.7% (n = 202)	29.2% (n = 94)	8.1% (n = 26)
Currently doing this	59.0% (n = 190)	34.5% (n = 111)	6.5% (n = 21)
Plan to do this in the future	79.2% (n = 255)	4.0% (n = 13)	16.8% (n = 54)

Assessing the Supply of Social Marketing Training

Almost a third of participants (31.7%, n = 102) reported having previously received training in social marketing, 18.0% (n = 58) provided the name of an organization that had provided training or a course they had attended. The most frequently mentioned courses were delivered by RARE (n = 9) and by Doug McKenzie-Mohr (n = 4). Only 5.3% of participants (n = 17), however, had received any sort of certification.

The most common type of training received by participants was class-based, provided by an external training provider (23.3%, n = 75), of which 12.1% (n = 39) was from a nonacademic provider and 11.2% (n = 36) from an academic provider (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Type of social marketing training participants reported having received.

Assessing the Demand for Social Marketing Training

A large proportion of participants (63.0%, n = 203) reported that receiving additional social marketing training was absolutely essential or very important for making them a more effective conservation practitioner (Figure 2). The type of training that the majority of participants were most interested in receiving was online learning from an external nonacademic provider and online learning from an external academic provider, reported by 48.1% (n = 155) and 47.2% (n = 152), respectively (Figure 5). Just over a quarter of participants (26.4%, n = 85) reported that gaining a certificate was either absolutely essential or very important to them (Figure 2).

Figure 5.

Type of social marketing training participants expressed interested in.

Reasons given for why certification was important included: “I am at the beginning of my career so the certification is important to show while applying for jobs,” “Having a certificate validates your accomplishments,” and “Certification legitimizes your work.” Reasons given why participants thought certification was not important included: “The knowledge is more important than having a certificate,” “There is no particular value to me in having a certificate, since my other qualifications (e.g., work experience, academic qualifications) are more relevant to potential employers,” and “More interested in the skills than the official certification.”

Barriers to Social Marketing Training

The biggest barrier to receiving training in social marketing that participants reported was lack of funds, with 53.3% (n = 178) reporting this as a major barrier. This was followed by lack of time, with 46.0% (n = 148) reporting this as a major barrier, lack of available training courses (44.7% n = 144), and lack of institutional value for training (30.1%, n = 97; Figure 6). Other barriers included not knowing about suitable courses, either generally, for example, “Not aware of where to go to get training,” or specifically training nearby, for example, “Location; not much offered locally and traveling is expensive and time consuming. Online offers the best option.”

Figure 6.

Barriers to social marketing training reported by participants.

Assessing Best Practices

Over half of participants (57.1%, n = 184) reported that a best practice in social marketing for wildlife conservation is either absolutely essential or very important for them to be an effective conservation practitioner (Figure 2).

Of the 17.4% (n = 56) participants who listed a best practice, 73.2% (n = 41) reported it to be very useful, 17.9% (n = 10) reported it was somewhat useful, and 1.8% (n = 1) reported it was not very useful. Best practices given included peer-reviewed papers, for example, Dessart and van Bavel (2017); books, for example, Lee and Kotler (2011) and McKenzie-Mohr (2011); websites, for example, National Social Marketing Centre (http://www.thensmc.com); and guidelines, for example, RARE (2007). The full list of best practice resources given by participants can be found in Online Appendix 3.

Discussion

This study used the results of a global survey to explore the need for skills in social marketing for wildlife conservation, the supply and the demand for training in this sector, and the barriers to training and the availability of best practices. Overall, we found a high perceived need and high demand for social marketing skills. However, we also found a lack of training, lack of skills, and multiple barriers to gaining social marketing skills. Here, we discuss the results of the survey, its implications for designing social marketing training, and strategies for increasing the use and effectiveness of social marketing for the benefit for wildlife conservation.

Survey Response

The survey gathered responses from a broad geographical range, although there was a clear skew toward practitioners based in the United Kingdom and United States. This skew is because more e-mails were sent to practitioners employed in these countries and possibly because the survey was in English. However, this may belie a broader geographical coverage which extends beyond these two regions, as many UK and U.S. organizations conduct their work in countries other than those where they are based.

Despite this broad coverage, the overall rate of response of those who received the e-mail was only 15% which is lower than the 36.83% average of e-mail surveys found in a review (Sheehan, 2006) and slightly lower than some other similar surveys aimed at conservation practitioners (e.g., Shiffman & Hammerschlag, 2016, response rate = 21%; Braunisch, Home, Pellet, & Arlettaz, 2012, response rate = 25%). There may have been several reasons for this low response rate: (1) recipients may be unlikely to read or respond to unsolicited e-mails, (2) the survey was delivered in English, which may have presented a barrier to some recipients, and (3) given that social marketing is only beginning to be used in the conservation sector, many of the practitioners we contacted may not have any awareness of social marketing and its relevance in a conservation context. Indeed, the last of these points could mean that social marketing skills are lower than reported here.

The low response rate could have introduced a bias, which might impact the external validity of the survey (Bernard, 2011; Werner, Praxedes, & Hyungyu, 2007). However, given the broad geographical coverage, large number of organizations represented, variation of accountability levels, and broad sociodemographic distribution, we believe the results provide a reasonable starting point for assessing social marketing skills within wildlife conservation. A further important point to note is that results of this study are based on self-reported preferences and perceptions, so it is inevitable there will be some biases associated with this (Bernard, 2011). We bear in mind these potential biases in the following interpretations of results.

Need, Supply, Demand, and Barriers

Over three quarters of participants said that gaining social marketing skills is absolutely essential or very important for them to be effective conservation practitioners; however, less than a third of participants reported having had previous training in this area. This highlights a mismatch between the recognition of the importance of social marketing and the training practitioners have so far received. Furthermore, only a small percentage of participants (16.1%) considered themselves to have advanced or expert skills in social marketing, although over half desired to reach this skill level, to be effective in their professional roles. Without the skills to properly design, implement, monitor, and evaluate social marketing campaigns, there is the risk that conservation practitioners will not be applying them effectively, thereby decreasing their potential conservation impact.

Moreover, a range of barriers to acquiring skills in social marketing were cited. Lack of funds, the barrier rated as most important by survey participants, is an all too common problem in conservation (Fox et al., 2006; Myers, Mittermeier, Mittermeier, da Fonseca, & Kent, 2000; Waldron et al., 2013). Interestingly, cost has also been cited as the main barrier to attending a social marketing training event by practitioners in a range of other sectors (Deshpande & Lagarde, 2008): A finding which is perhaps inevitable, given that social marketing is targeted at achieving behavior change for social rather than economic gains and so is most commonly utilized in sectors with financial constraints. As a “crisis” discipline, conservation has multiple conflicting demands on very limited money, with funds remaining far below what is necessary, and difficult decisions have to be made about how to distribute money (Halpern et al., 2018), with perhaps training being often deprioritized. Solutions to overcome this barrier could include choosing cheaper methods of learning such as online learning (if available) and increased funding specifically for social marketing training. In addition, making more funding available for designing and running training specifically for social marketing for wildlife conservation would overcome the barrier of availability of courses, which was identified as a barrier by almost half of participants. Providing funding specifically for designing and running online courses could help reduce the lack of funding and lack of training courses barriers simultaneously.

So to summarize, we find that although conservation practitioners both recognize a need for social marketing skills and desire training to acquire these skills, so far most have not received such training, while several barriers are identified which are likely to prevent practitioners from undertaking training in the future. These findings have important implications. Biodiversity conservation is critical for the health of our planet (Oliver et al., 2015), and human behavior is a primary cause of biodiversity decline (Schultz, 2011). Yet current behavior change strategies are proving largely ineffective (Veríssimo, 2013; Wright et al., 2015). Finding ways of increasing the success of such strategies, such as social marketing, could be therefore be key to both environmental and human well-being in the future. In the next sections, we briefly discuss skills required by conservation practitioners to successfully deliver social marketing campaigns. We then go on to explore how conservation practitioners can best acquire these skills, based on the survey results.

Skills Required for Social Marketing for Wildlife Conservation

Given that social marketing is a novel tool in the conservation sector, there is an opportunity, when designing courses to train conservation practitioners in these skills, to ensure that this training not only gives a solid foundation in general principles but is also tailored to the specific needs of those in the sector.

Our survey did not ask conservation practitioners to detail specific skills that they wished to acquire but only assessed the demand for social marketing skills generally. This is useful for identifying the broad themes which are important to address. However, given that this article is specifically focused on social marketing training for conservation practitioners, while it is not the purpose of this article to provide a detailed course outline for teaching social marketing skills, below we highlight some key skills which we suggest are currently lacking within the conservation sector and/or of particular importance to conducting successful social marketing campaigns for wildlife conservation. These are (1) profiling, (2) developing effective messages, (3) product/service development, and (4) identifying messaging channels. A further theme we would highlight, but because it is already a key part of many conservationist’s skill sets and do not give further attention to here, is monitoring and evaluation. In a recent study, it was suggested that these elements are commonly lacking in conservation-focused social marketing campaigns (Veríssimo et al., 2018). The importance of monitoring and evaluation should therefore be emphasized in social marketing training for the conservation sector.

Profiling (also known as segmentation)

Critical to any social marketing campaign is gaining an in-depth understanding of the sector of society whose behavior you hope to change (Grier & Bryant, 2005). This phase should include addressing questions such as what motivates current behavioral patterns and what are the social and cultural stigmas around these behaviors (Evans-Lacko et al., 2013, Grier & Bryant, 2005). In this profiling, one often also needs to determine the products that will be desirable and the price range the target audience is willing/able to pay. Profiles might include details such as gender, age, marital status, social and professional status, motivations behind current behaviors, and current attitudes toward conservation (e.g., as in TRAFFIC & WWF, 2013).

Developing effective messages

Another important skill is the ability to create messages which will resonate with the target group (Biroscak et al, 2014; Burgess, 2016; Kotler, Roberto, & Lee, 2002). This requires skills in marketing and advertising, which are rarely, if ever, taught as part of the training that most conservationists receive.

Product/service development

To achieve behavior change, it is key that social marketing campaigns offer viable alternative products or services which enable people to move away from practices which are causing harm. For example, in China, a campaign to protect the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey encouraged communities to adopt fuel-efficient stoves, in order to reduce wood harvesting and so protect the forest habitat on which the monkeys depend (DeWan, Green, Xiaohong, & Hayden, 2013). In addition to promoting these stoves, it was clearly vital that they effectively fulfilled their purpose—that is, cooking. Product development skills were certainly vital to achieving this.

Messaging channels

Deciding on the correct messaging channels is critical for making sure messages reach their target audience. Depending on a range of factors, the messaging channels which should be used will differ markedly: As an example, it will clearly not be effective to focus on social media, if the primary target audience is without access to the Internet. Again, identifying the most appropriate channel (e.g., social media, print media, public meetings, or face-to-face interaction) will require specific skills not generally taught to conservationists and so should be included in social marketing training.

Training Delivery

Broadly, there are two methods for increasing the skills of conservation practitioners in social marketing. The first is formal training, for example, class-based courses, and the second is informal training, for example, peer-to-peer (Manuti, Pastore, Scardigno, Giancaspro, & Morciano, 2015).

Formal training of social marketing

In our survey, formal methods of training were cited as both the most common form of social marketing training that survey participants had received and as the preferred way of receiving training in the future. However, while the most common method of previous training was specifically via class-based teaching, the preferred way of receiving training in the future was online. Online training as a general method is increasingly being used in a variety of sectors (Kemp & Grieve, 2014), including in conservation. For example, United for Wildlife deliver online training covering multiple topics, such as project planning and marine ecology (https://learn.unitedforwildlife.org/), and WildTeam run a variety of online training, for example, project management (www.mywildlearning.com). Moreover, online training of social marketing specifically is also on the rise (Deshpande & Lagarde, 2008).

Online training has several advantages over class-based teaching. For example, it is generally cheaper and does not require learners to spend time or money on travel. Furthermore, learners can fit the training around their own schedule, have more time to work through and critically reflect on any exercises, and can work though the training at their own pace (Robinson & Hullinger, 2008). There are, however, several clear disadvantages to online learning. For example, the lack of direct contact with a teacher can mean that if learners lose motivation, it may be challenging to reengage them, and they don’t get immediate feedback from discussions. Some learners might also be put off by the technology involved, while large investments of time and money might be required by the organizations providing the online training course (Kemp & Grieve, 2014), which in the conservation sector are often charities. Moreover, class-based training has several other advantages over online training. For example, it can give greater networking opportunities for participants, which might result in new ideas, future collaborations, and exposure to new ways of thinking (Sawrey, Copsey, & Milner-Gulland, 2017). Nevertheless, technological advances and application of learning theory, for example, being able to easily access and navigate through learning material on mobile computer devices (e.g., smartphones) and the use of interactive quizzes (Gikas & Grant, 2013; Zhang, 2005), are helping to overcome some of the barriers associated with online learning (Anderson & Dron, 2014).

So far, the evidence is mixed regarding the relative effectiveness of class-based versus online training. Some studies have found no significant difference between test results for the two delivery methods (Bowen, Chingos, Lack, & Nygren, 2012; Kemp & Grieve, 2014), some have indicated that failure rates can be higher for online training courses (Joyce, Crockett, Jaeger, Altindag, & O’Connell, 2014; Van Doorn & Van Doorn, 2014), while others have found higher pass rates for online training (Schoenfeld-Tacher, McConnell, & Graham, 2001; Zhang, 2005). Few studies, however, have compared the effectiveness of online and class-based training outside of the university setting, and there is a need for further research, specific to social marketing.

Another way in which conservation practitioners could, but currently largely don’t, formally gain skills in social marketing is during university degrees, which most in the sector undertake (Blickley et al., 2013; Muir & Schwartz, 2009; Noss, 1997). There are increasing calls to diversify skills taught in conservation-related university degrees in order to better prepare graduates for nonacademic careers (and indeed often academic careers; Lucas et al., 2017; Muir & Schwartz, 2009), and this could include training in social marketing, perhaps by offering elective modules. Tailored open-access resources could help lecturers build social marketing in to curriculum (Kelly, 2009). Alternatively, where possible, links could be made with other departments within the university to provide this teaching (Biroscak et al., 2014). Evidence suggesting that universities are increasingly offering social marketing skills, in some departments at least (White, 2018), indicates that the capacity of conservation departments to integrate such training should be growing.

When following a formal training route, one way to ensure practitioners achieve a certain skill level is through standardized assessment and certification (Werquin, 2010). In this study, we found that only a very small proportion of participants (5.3%) had certification in social marketing, and of those that did, it is not known what proportion were given their award simply for attendance of a course rather than passing an assessment. Nor do we have information regarding the relevance and quality of the certificates. The low level of certification is likely in part due to lack of training opportunities and to the barriers participants identified. However, we also found that three quarters of participants placed limited value on gaining certification in social marketing, for example, because of perceptions that skills and experience are more important than certification, suggesting the worth is not clear to many, and opportunities to receive certification may not be availed of, even when available. For those that did value certification, the reasons stated were similar to those cited in other fields, such as personal satisfaction, increasing skill level, and career progression (Werquin, 2010). One way, therefore, of increasing the value placed on certification, and thus ensuring practitioners achieve a certain skill level in social marketing, could be to enhance and/or emphasize these benefits.

One participant said that certification was not important as social marketing is the work of specialists. Indeed, in some cases, organizations may choose to employ external agencies to conduct certain aspects of social marketing campaigns, for example, profiling target groups and developing marketing plans to deliver the messages, as the Chi campaign aiming to reduce rhino horn consumption did (Offord-Woolley, 2017). Although this can work well in some cases, it can be very expensive so is likely only large conservation organizations will be able to afford this option. Moreover, we suggest that even when conservation organizations do employ external agencies, having a good understanding of how social marketing works, and fits into their overall objectives, will still be key in optimizing outcomes.

Informal training of social marketing

Based on the responses to our survey, it also seems that informal training methods are highly valued in the conservation sector. We found that the second most popular method of receiving training in social marketing was “on-the-job,” for example, peer-to-peer. Peer-to-peer training could potentially be a particularly important tool for the conservation sector, as it helps to overcome several of the barriers our survey identified such as cost and course availability. However, on-the-job training by peers requires there to actually be someone within the organization to have the time and knowledge to teach. Therefore, small organizations might struggle unless individuals are motivated to self-teach. On-the-job learning is often reactive, unplanned, serendipitous, and unfocused due a lack of learning outcomes (Manuti et al., 2015). Therefore, best practice guidelines could aid learning, both on-the-job and self-taught.

Best practice guidelines are common in many conservation sectors (e.g., Costello & Wieczorek, 2014; Hockings & Humle, 2009; Knight et al., 2006), as an effective way of sharing methodologies that have been shown to work well. Best practice guidelines could also be used to structure, guide, and standardize formal learning. Best practice guidelines usually include a way of tailoring strategic approaches to specific situations and can therefore be used flexibly to find the most appropriate solutions for complex and unpredictable conservation problems (Game et al., 2014). Of the best practice guidelines cited by participants in our survey, most were rated as very useful, and the list generated could therefore serve as a good starting point for anyone interested in the subject (see Online Appendix 3). However, the list comprises 30 literature sources, which might seem overwhelming to the beginner. For this reason, we suggest a need for further work to systematically review the relevance and quality of these resources and then condense them into a shorter list of recommended reading for conservation practitioners seeking to learn more about social marketing.

Conclusions

In this study, we have shown that the potential value of social marketing in achieving conservation impact is beginning to be recognized, but that skills in social marketing are still rare in the sector. Such skills, shown elsewhere to be effective means of affecting behavior change, could be greatly beneficial to those seeking to address threats to wildlife (Veríssimo, 2013; Wright et al., 2015). Nevertheless, as our survey indicates, the use of social marketing in the conservation sector is still in its infancy, and the value of this technique may still not be widely recognized among practitioners and funders. We therefore suggest (slightly tongue-in-cheek) that one way to overcome this could be to run a social marketing campaign, informing conservation practitioners and funders of the potential value of this technique.

Notwithstanding the benefits of social marketing training, we do also acknowledge that not all conservation practitioners can, and perhaps even should, undergo this type of training. Organizations prosper by having employees with a diverse range of skills, and staff cannot have advanced skills in all areas (Muir & Schwartz, 2009).

In summary, there is a need to (a) ensure affordable, high-quality, and relevant training is available to conservation practitioners, which provides them with the skills to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate social marketing campaigns; (b) ensure training is available via multiple channels to suit trainee’s preferences and budget, that is, online, class-based, and on-the-job; (c) create a short list of recommended reading on the subject of social marketing for wildlife conservation; and (d) encourage critical and ongoing evaluation of social marketing training courses (Redford & Taber, 2000) and ensure lessons learned of successes and failures are openly shared.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material, Robinson_et_al._supplementary_material - Global Survey Reveals a Lack of Social Marketing Skills in the Conservation Sector and Shows Supply of Training Doesn’t Meet Demand

Supplemental Material, Robinson_et_al._supplementary_material for Global Survey Reveals a Lack of Social Marketing Skills in the Conservation Sector and Shows Supply of Training Doesn’t Meet Demand by Beth S. Robinson, Matthew J. S. Creasey, Ali Skeats, Imogen Coverdale, and Adam Barlow in Social Marketin Quarterly

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to all completed the survey. The authors would like to thank Jenny Carter for assisting with survey dissemination. The authors also thank Dr. Sarah Crowley, Josephine Crouch, Jane Hooper, Mahgol Kazari, and Steve Jones for reviewing earlier survey versions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this research was provided by an anonymous, private donor.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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