Step 4: Gather Credible Evidence

What to Measure for Social Marketing Programs?

It can also be helpful to think about evaluation for social marketing in terms of the 4 P's. The marketing mix is a unique component of a social marketing plan and the next few sections talk about evaluating each part of the marketing mix.

Evaluating Product and Price
As part of your marketing strategy you identified a product to offer to the audience and the price for "buying" that product. Your evaluation could be used to determine if the product and its related benefits were acceptable to the audience. Also, you may want to evaluate how well you minimized the costs to adopting the behavior; for example,

Did the audience understand what you were asking them to do?
Did they attempt the behavior?
Did they adopt it?
Were the benefits enough to persuade them to overcome the costs?

You'll also probably want to keep tabs on the competition. Did anything happen during the course of your program that would increase the audience's desire to participate in competing behaviors? For example, did the prices of unhealthy items in the vending machine drop? Did something happen to persuade legislators to adopt a policy opposing the one you were advocating?