Developing Social Marketing Campaigns for Youth

The Youth Social Marketing Toolkit, created by California Family Health Council (CFHC) and the California STD/HIV Prevention Training Center (CA PTC), is an invaluable and cost-efficient tool for providers serving youth.

Get the Youth Social Marketing Toolkit

The toolkit is a step-by-step guide to developing low-budget prevention campaigns for youth with an emphasis on sexual and reproductive health.  Complete with planning materials, campaign samples, and links to related resources, this new provider toolkit will assist you with the creation of tailored and effective local social marketing campaigns.

What is Social Marketing?

Social marketing uses the basic principles of commercial marketing to help people improve their health and well-being. 
In social marketing:

• The “product” you are promoting is a change in behavior or attitude, like using condoms, or convincing youth not to spread rumors.
• The “price” is the cost of making the change in the person’s life.  The goal is to reframe the costs so that the people you are trying to reach understand the benefits of making the change.
• The “place” is where you will meet and interact with the priority population.  The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the consumer to make the change.  For example, you may want to distribute free condoms.
• “Promotion” is made up of all the ways you can use to notify your population of the change messages.
• “Policy” is the intent to influence policy that will promote positive change.

The Basic Steps for Developing Your Campaign

The toolkit outlines the basic steps for collecting the information that will help inform and shape your campaign. These steps include: 

• Conduct a community assessment to identify the sexual health outcomes to be improved by your social marketing campaign as well as your community’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that may impact outcomes.  This will help define your priorities.
• Develop specific and achievable goals and objectives. 
• Design the key messages for your campaign. Make sure the messaging you develop resonates with your population.
• Decide how to get your message out and do it!
• Evaluate how well the message is working and implement necessary changes.

Considering budget limitations, the many resources in this toolkit will help you evaluate the best campaign media and models to use – and it will help guide you through the evaluation process.

Experience the toolkit by visiting and get started on your youth social marketing campaign today!