Evaluating a Social Marketing and Public Relations Campaign on Adult Literacy

Evaluating your marketing campaign is a continuous process, as the need for revision is always present. More importantly, evaluating the effectiveness of the promotional activities allows you to be selective, thus achieving the best results.

One way to measure the effectiveness of your activities may be monitoring — recording the number of times television and radio public service announcements are broadcast. Or, you might compile a book of press clippings.

If you have left brochures in a supermarket or a barber shop, go back and see how many are left. If you have to blow the dust off the pile, you know this place is not the right one for your material!

If you have given a video presentation in a shopping center or other public site, keep track of the number who are really watching, who seem interested, and who pick up material.

Keep track of where the material is and find out if it is effective there. Establish indicators to compare with the results of your promotional activities.

-- What's working?
-- What isn't working?
-- How must you change your campaign?

When prospective students call or come to your literacy program, ask them how they heard about the program. It's important that you take the time to assess all of the means by which the information has been received. We know from marketing research that it is rarely a single message that results in action behavior but rather a series of messages that "nest" until favorable behavior (from the point of view of the advertiser) takes place.

Consider color coding your marketing material if you are going to be using the same material differently or leaving it in different places. Then you can ask the caller or student when he/she comes to your program the color of the coding.

Look back at your promotional activities. Look at your indicators of success. List how you are going to evaluate to see that the activities are achieving your goals. The bottom line is: are you attracting your market segment? Based on your information, you can make recommendations and improvements for both the immediate and near future.

The following are some forms on which you can collect data.