Tools- of Changes

Changing Transportation Behaviours: A social marketing planning guide

If you want to influence transportation choices, this planning guide is written for you. You may be working on a very small or large program. This guide has been designed to help you focus on practical first steps and explore additional social marketing considerations. The guide's worksheets walk you through each step, provide quick access to the key questions to ask, and link to associated recommendations for further details. Available in English and French.

The Guide breaks planning into eight steps, one chapter per step.

1. Form a Planning Team looks at rallying colleagues (staff, volunteers, consultants) to benefit from their expertise, experience, networks and future support.
2. Determine the Focus, Behaviours and Audiences helps you concentrate your efforts where they will produce the greatest impact.
3. Gather Information discusses the types of information you'll want to find, in order to identify and prioritize the audience segments, benefits and barriers on which to focus.
4. Set Objectives provides a framework for developing realistic and measurable targets.
5. Develop the Strategy looks at how to methodically overcome key barriers and make particular travel behaviours more fun, easy and popular.
6. Establish Partnerships discusses partnering with organizations that share the same interests and goals, to reduce barriers, increase benefits, improve the credibility of your messages, and facilitate access to your audiences.
7. Pre-Test and Pilot Test describes ways to keep checking with reality as you develop your program, to ensure it will work and improve its cost-effectiveness.
8. Implement and Improve Continuously looks at how to ensure your program stays on track, evaluate impact and lessons learned, and increase cost-effectiveness over time.