Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing by marketing experts Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.

Craig Lefebvre and June Flora introduced social marketing to the public health community in 1988 where it has been most widely used and explored. They noted that there was a need for 'large scale, broad-based, behavior change focused programs' to improve public health (the community wide prevention of cardiovascular diseases in their respective projects), and outlined eight essential components of social marketing that still hold today.

1. A consumer orientation to realise organizational (social) goals.
2. An emphasis on the voluntary exchanges of goods and services between providers and consumers.
3. Research in audience analysis and segmentation strategies.
4. The use of formative research in product and message design and the pretesting of these materials.
5. An analysis of distribution (or communication) channels.
6. Use of the marketing mix - utilizing and blending product, price, place and promotion characteristics in intervention planning and implementation.
7. A process tracking system with both integrative and control functions.
8. A management process that involves problem analysis, planning, implementation and feedback functions.

Speaking of what they termed "social change campaigns," Kotler and Roberto introduced the subject by writing, “A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior."