Social marketing is a process that applies marketing principles and techniques to influence behaviors that benefit society and the target audience. Principles of social marketing suggest that lack of information is only one of the barriers to changing behavior, yet awareness or information-based campaigns are the most common approach to changing behaviors. A comprehensive social marketing campaign requires a clearly defined target audience, a singular call to action, an understanding of target audience perceived barriers and benefits to taking action, and a verified strategy to reduce those barriers and/or emphasize those benefits. Other social marketing strategies include using a trusted source to deliver or endorse the message, asking for pledges or public statements from target audiences, creating positive peer pressure, creating social norms, or installing prompts. 

Social marketing can be used to promote behaviors that result in source water protection. For example, a simple social marketing campaign may seek to make sweeping sidewalks instead of hosing them off a social norm by asking targeted audiences to sign a pledge, identifying a respected person in the community to endorse the behavior and its importance, working with a local store to discount brooms, and working with the local water utility to highlight how much money could be saved on utility bills.