Social Marketing
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CDC

Ready to Move On?

Check yourself: Have you filled in the information gaps that you wanted to? Do you need to go back to the literature to explore something new?

If you find that you haven't filled important gaps that you identified in the problem description phase, you may need to conduct additional formative research. This can happen if the results led you down a different path (i.e., a different target audience, a new behavior) than you originally anticipated.

But, in other situations, you'll have plenty of information. The hard part is making decisions and being very specific about

  • Who your program will be targeted to.
  • What behavior you will ask them to do.
  • How you will ask them to do that behavior.

But, you will never have all the answers. As long as you are keeping the audience's perspective above all else, your expertise and that of your planning committee is valuable to help you fill in the missing pieces.

At the end of this phase, you will be able to answer most of the planning questions and you should feel comfortable with your level of understanding of your target audience.