Three essential aspects of any social marketing campaign need to be monitored and adjusted: effectiveness, efficiency, and strategy.

Effectiveness looks at the extent to which your campaign is accomplishing its goals (i.e., whether your message is reaching those for whom it is intended and having the desired effect). In marketer's terms, the three most common ways to monitor effectiveness are as follows:

• Sales analysis: This looks at the "numbers," such as the number of people attracted to a service or program, or the percentage of your target population that has undertaken a specific behavior change.

• Market share analysis: This tells you how you're doing in relation to the competition (e.g., the pull of the behavior you're hoping to change; other things people could be doing; another issue competing with yours for financial and political support).

• Expense-to-sales analysis: The question to be asked here is, "What kind of return did you get on your marketing dollar?" (This "dollar" includes the resources needed to conduct the campaign: staff time, advertising fees, Web site development, etc.)

If your effectiveness according to these measures isn't adequate, you'll probably have to address one or more of the following if you want to change the situation:

• Your message: Your marketing research-formal or informal-can tell you whether people are getting and paying attention to your message. If they're not, you need to find new ways to deliver and/or reframe your message so it will be received and listened to.

• Your services: If you provide services, how effective are they? Are you meeting people's needs? Are your participants meeting their goals? What's the word on the street about why people aren't enrolling? Answering these questions honestly will give you a start on making the changes you need to.

• Your reputation: If you have a bad reputation in the community, this will obviously affect your ability to attract participants and support or to convince people to act in the ways you want them to. It's important to alter whatever it is that leads people to think badly of your organization.

Efficiency looks at how well you are using your marketing resources. Are your efforts going in the direction that will give you the greatest return for the resources you have? In examining your organization's efficiency, there are four areas to pay attention to:

• Territory: Are you working in the right area? If you're only addressing youth violence in affluent neighborhoods, for instance, you're probably putting a lot of your resources in the wrong place. Has the neighborhood or area you're aiming at changed because of immigration, gentrification, or other social factors, so that it's no longer home to your target population? Especially if your marketing resources are scarce, you should be concentrating them in the area where they'll have the most effect.

• Market segment: Are you concentrating on the right segments of the target population? Are the people you're trying to reach ready to change? Are there intermediaries you should be targeting instead?

• Distribution channels: Are you getting your message out through channels that the target audience pays attention to?

• Competition: You have to be aware of what the real competition is and work to counter it. If you spend your resources trying to neutralize the wrong competitor, the target audience will ignore you. Questioning your target audience to find out what is actually at the root of their undesirable behavior-continuing to smoke, joining a gang, leaving their children unvaccinated-will help you understand just what, in both your campaign and your organization, you need to adjust to respond to competition.

Strategy asks the questions, How well do your current strategies and systems address the realities of the marketplace? Are your goals appropriate for the current situation? Are you looking ahead to understand what might happen in the future, and creating new strategies, goals, and systems to address the changes you see coming? Monitoring strategy means paying attention to two important things:

• Current conditions: What's going on in the world, in your field, in the target community, etc. that you need to respond to? Does your current strategy take these things into account? If not, you have to adjust your strategy to encompass the best methods available; the latest statistics; the current needs, locations, and preferences of the target population; and new developments in your field.

• Long-range trends: You can analyze trends in the larger world, in your field, and in the target community to make strategic decisions about where you should go in the future. Where is your issue heading in the next 2, 5, or 10 years? Will you still be doing the same thing, or will the issue be at the next stage of development? You need to think ahead and start preparing now for new directions in your organization or your social marketing campaign.

Adjusting strategy relies on an accurate and clear-headed analysis of trends and issues. If times have changed and your current campaign doesn't acknowledge that, you're operating at a disadvantage. You have to be aware of what the change is and how you can alter your direction to respond to that change.