Addressing the drug epidemic isn’t the only thing Reagan got wrong but, it was definitely one of them. America’s longest war celebrated its 50th birthday last year but, nowadays it’s relatively well-accepted that War on Drugs failed or, to put it another way, drugs won. (This article is *eventually* about digital marketing, just hang with me for a minute.)
Incarceration isn’t the answer
A report published by The Global Commission on Drug Policy all the way back in 2011 concluded that “Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations”.
Correlation may not equal causation but it does appear that criminalizing drug use hasn’t been all too effective at preventing overdose deaths.
Why we lost the War on Drugs
To understand why the War on Drugs and programs like D.A.R.E. are ineffective, it can be helpful to think of them as similar to abstinence-only sex-ed. Abstinence-only approaches to sex and drug use are unsuccessful at improving health outcomes because these approaches fail both to acknowledge the reality that not everyone will abstain and to equip participants with the tools or knowledge necessary to mitigate risks.
Before we get into what can be done in the ongoing fight against the drug epidemic we need to consider what the ultimate goal is. If the goal of the War on Drugs was simply to punish people suffering from drug addiction, it was successful. However, if the goal is reducing fatalities and negative health outcomes resulting from drug use, a course correction is in order.
So, if criminalization isn’t the answer, what is?
America lost the war on drugs by using a carceral approach which proved to be both ineffective and demonstrably harmful. If we want a fighting chance against the drug epidemic, a harm-reduction-focused social marketing approach is our best bet.
Social Marketing and Harm Reduction
“Social marketing” refers to using traditional marketing techniques to promote behavioral changes that benefit individual/societal health rather than products or services. Similarly, the term “harm reduction” is used to refer to strategies, programs, and public health initiatives aimed at minimizing the negative consequences of drug use.
4 Key Principles
According to The Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA), social marketing is characterized by four key principles, voluntary change through the principle of “exchange” (that there is a clear benefit for the individual to change), the use of marketing techniques, segmentation and targeting, and a “marketing mix” of different methods, aimed at the benefit of the individual and society, not an organization.
End Overdose is one example of a nonprofit that’s figured out how to use digital marketing strategies (namely TikTok) to promote harm reduction practices with the goal of reducing opioid overdoses.
Let’s take a look at End Overdose through the lens of social marketing principles to discuss what they’re doing right and what opportunities they have to improve.
Voluntary Change Through the Principle of Exchange
This principle is absolutely integral to both social marketing and harm reduction. It’s also something that End Overdose does very well.
End Overdose promotes harm reduction practices which are predicated on the philosophy of meeting people where they are and giving them practical ways to reduce the risks associated with their current drug use.
In exchange for making the changes it promotes, End Overdose offers the biggest possible benefit, not dying. The organization’s slogan: “NO ONE ELSE HAS TO DIE”, drives this point home.
Marketing Techniques
End Overdose has garnered media attention for its masterful use of TikTok to educate young people about harm reduction.
In an interview, founder Theo Krzywicki explained the organization’s TikTok strategy “We just do trends, really…TikTok’s algorithm favors whatever is trending … So we answer basic questions, we’ll do how-to videos. A big thing is they’re really simple. We don’t use them to be like training pieces, we use the videos to just garner attention and drive traffic to our online resource, or how people (take a course) with us in person”.
End Overdose also sells a variety of branded clothing and stickers which allow for word-of-mouth marketing. Unlike some branded merch, End Overdose’s products are quite aesthetically pleasing and on-trend, increasing the probability that people will use the products and that other people will ask where they got them.
Segmentation and Targeting
End Overdose’s use of TikTok makes perfect sense for its target market. Overdose deaths are highest among people aged 15-34 years old and over 65% of TikTok users are in the same age range.
Aside from demographics, it’s important to note that while programs like D.A.R.E. are more focused on young people and children that have not yet used drugs, End Overdose is targeted more toward active drug users and the people around them, though I think most people should carry Naloxone and know how to administer it.
Additionally, it seems that End Overdose has more of a focus on casual/social users of illicit drugs (like college students and rave goers) while many other harm reduction organizations target maintenance users, IV drug users, and people experiencing homelessness.
Marketing Mix
Product: With social marketing, the product is the behavioral change being encouraged. End Overdose promotes a variety of harm reduction practices like using fentanyl test strips, carrying Naloxone, learning the signs of an overdose (End Overdose offers free in-person and online training), and destigmatizing drug use.
Currently, End Overdose provides free Narcan (Naloxone) with mandatory online training and fentanyl test strips are available in a free 2-pack, as well as packs of 5, 50, or 100 for around $1 per strip or as a monthly subscription for $4.99/month.
Price: The element of price in social marketing refers to the cost of the behavior change. For example, while there are many places to get free fentanyl test strips, the money lost to disposing of laced drugs can be very real for many addicts and shouldn’t be ignored. Additionally, publically advocating for harm reduction can have social and professional consequences due to ongoing stigma.
Place: For End Overdose, the main goal is driving traffic to its website where visitors can order Naloxone and test strips, this is a great option for people that have access to the internet and a mailing address but many people struggling with addiction don’t which is why it’s so important that other organizations focus on in-person outreach.
Opportunities
End Overdose has a number of opportunities to improve its social marketing efforts. The first thing I would focus on is improving the webpage design and UX. The current website leaves a bit to be desired which is a critical flaw for an organization that focuses heavily on driving website traffic.
Landing Page and Form Design
The landing page is relatively well-designed but clicking “Get Narcan” takes you to a page titled “My Account” with forms to log in or register but no additional information. It’s unclear what exactly you’re registering for and whether or not the Narcan is free. I would change the title, add some more information to this page, and switch to a multi-stage form design to increase conversions.
Website Navigation
The website navigation could be improved by adding the section titles to the drop-down menus. As you can see below, hovering over “Our Services” shows the options “Submit Reversals”, “Submit FTS Results”, and “FAQs”. Ignoring the fact that none of those options are services, it wasn’t immediately clear to me that clicking on the “Our Services” text would take me to a page that described the services.
To improve website navigation and add valuable information to the site, I’d recommend creating pillar pages defining each of End Overdose’s services, listing those pages in the “Our Services” drop-down, and moving the reversal and FTS submission forms to a new section. The new pillar pages would also be a great way for the site to improve its SEO ranking.
SEO
I found End Overdose through this article on Today.com. Despite making numerous searches with keywords related to harm reduction and services the organization offers, I didn’t find it on the SERP, organically or otherwise. See below a report I pulled from SpyFu which shows that End Overdose ranks on the first page for 23 keywords with a total combined monthly search volume of 184 and only 8 clicks from SEO.
Looking at the website’s “Press + Publications” page revealed a number of quality backlinks from reputable sites. It appears to me that End Overdose’s website is severely lacking in the words department. There just isn’t very much content on the site which is absolutely contributing to its low SEO traffic.
I’d recommend adding more content about harm reduction practices, services offered, and the positive impact of the organization as this could be hugely beneficial to End Overdose’s ranking and traffic from SEO.
In closing…
Making any real progress in reducing overdose fatalities is going to require the widespread adoption of harm-reduction practices. Like it or not, no one can be forced to recover from addiction until they’re ready and they can’t recover at all if an overdose kills them first.
The CDC reports that “In nearly 40% of overdose deaths, someone else was present. Having naloxone available allows bystanders to help a fatal overdose and save lives”. Drug overdoses are a leading cause of death among young people but, they don’t have to be. The tools and knowledge we need to drastically reduce that death toll already exist, they just need to be distributed.
Digital marketing gives us the opportunity to do just that.
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