Scope

If you've done any social marketing already, you'll know that investing time in the scoping stage is critical to the success of your project. At this stage, you will:

• Develop clear, actionable and measurable behaviour goals, by looking at existing research and expert views on high risk drinking
• Identify the different audience segments that your social marketing project will target

Key elements of the scoping stage include:

Consult with stakeholders

Consult with stakeholders to find out more about the behaviour and motivational factors of your target audiences. Identify who the major stakeholders are within your local community - for example health practitioners, local councillors and voluntary groups. If possible, set up a stakeholder steering board for your intervention, which will help you to get a balanced perspective on the problems around behavioural change and alcohol related harm.

Review information

Review any information that you already have. Use preliminary research to identify the scale of the problem - for example, set a benchmark based on local data to measure behaviour change.

Understand your audience

Your target audience may be a substantial proportion of your local population - but you cannot take a 'one size fits all' approach to reaching them.

Identify the different types of increasing and higher risk drinkers to get a deeper understanding of the kind of people they are. Look at why they drink, but also other factors in their lives - for example, where they live, what media they consume, how they spend their money and what motivates them to think about their own health. Use your insights into their values and attitudes to develop targeted communications that will effectively engage them when it comes to the delivery stage. You also need to understand their other priorities and what else is competing for their time.

Look at increasing and higher risk drinking in the context of other chronic health issues such as heart disease and lung disease and the associated behavioural changes required relating to diet and smoking.

Quantitative and qualitative research

Carry out research to find out more about your target audiences' behaviour and influences.

• Qualitative research explores people's attitudes, behaviour and experiences through methods such as in-depth interviews or focus groups. These methods give researchers an in-depth understanding of the perspective of members of your target audience. Qualitative research would include audience insights from the Alcohol Learning Centre (ALC) that can help you understand more about increasing and higher risk drinkers

Quantitative research generates statistics through large-scale survey research, using methods such as questionnaires or structured interviews. This type of research reaches many more people but the contact with those people is much quicker than it is in qualitative research. Quantitative research involves gathering factual data, such as statistics, so that it can be examined in as unbiased a manner as possible. An example of quantitative research would be taking a representative sample of alcohol related injuries in the area of your study.

The difference between primary and secondary research

Secondary research looks into the target audience and issue. This may include desk research and stakeholder consultation.

• Primary research is carried out directly with the target audience. For example:
• Face-to-face or telephone interviews
• Online or emailed questionnaires
• Vox pops or 'clip-board' research
• Focus groups

Segment your audience

Identify audience 'segments', which have common characteristics so that you can tailor interventions appropriately.

Segmentation traditionally focuses on demographic and epidemiological factors such as age, sex, class, culture and education. Social marketing gives an additional focus to behavioural factors.

Use the DH social marketing segmentation tool alongside your own primary and secondary research and insights. As well as helping you to understand your audience segments, it will identify where they live in your local area. This will help you to develop targeted marketing and communications, using the most effective routes and channels.

Evaluation

Evaluation is not just a stage at the end of our social marketing activity. It's something that should be thought about from the start. At the scoping stage, you should be setting KPIs that will help you to measure the success of your activity, and be clear about how you will measure them. The evaluation tool included in this toolkit can help you to make sure that evaluation informs each stage of your activity.