Adoption of Promoted Marketing Practices

The indicator measures the extent to which the target sellers / service providers adopted the promoted marketing practices, such as inviting existing users of a technology to a promotional meeting to share their experience; cooperating with other producers to sell their produce; or customizing sales messages based on the target group and their preferences (e.g. different messaging for women and men).

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) List all the main marketing practices your project promotes. Try to avoid a situation where both ‘simple’ practices (e.g. using business cards) and more complex practices (e.g. using a completely new sales channel) are on the same list; the resulting data may not provide an accurate picture. You might want to have two separate lists for ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ practices and decide how many easy practices can equal to one difficult practice.

2) For each marketing practice, define what exactly it involves. For example, community level meetings offering people the chance to purchase small-scale solar panels might involve the following principles:

   - discussing with people the inconvenience of not having light and electricity and/ or paying for lamp fuel and batteries every week

   - demonstrating to people how the offered solar panels work

   - letting people calculate how quickly the initial costs will be repaid if they purchase the solar panels using available micro-loans

3) Set clear benchmarks of when the data collectors can conclude that a seller / service provider has used a given marketing practice (for example, when it has met at least two thirds of its key principles defined in step 2 above).

4) Interview (and, if possible, also observe) a representative sample of the target sellers / service providers and assess:

   - whether they have used any of the promoted practices in the pre-defined period (e.g. the past 12 months); and

   - if so, the extent to which they have followed their main principles as defined in step 2 above

5) Count the number of sellers / service providers that can be considered as having used the minimum number of promoted marketing practices (using the benchmarks set in step 2).

6) To calculate the indicator's value in percentages, divide the number of sellers / service providers that have used the required minimum of the promoted practices by the total number of surveyed sellers / service providers. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.

Disaggregate the data by gender and by the marketing practices that have been used.

1) Consider also assessing why the targeted business do not use (some of) the promoted marketing practices (due to high costs? low effectiveness? lack of labour? lack of expertise?).

2) Instead of asking whether the sellers / service providers currently use the promoted marketing practices, ask whether they have used them within a recent period of time (e.g. the past 12 months). This is because some practices are not used continuously and asking about the current practice might underestimate the extent to which sellers / service providers use these practices. For example, door-to-door sales might be conducted at a time when people have the most money (e.g. after harvest).

3) Also report on the percentage of sellers / service providers using specific marketing practices, for example:

   - % of service providers doing door to door sales

   - % of service providers offering discount vouchers for future services

   - % of service providers using community members to pre-identify potential customers

4) If you collect the data for this indicator in the course of an intervention (e.g. during a mid-term review), report also on:

   - the extent to which the individual principles of the surveyed marketing methods are used; and     

   - the extent to which the businesses consider them as effective

This information can help you understand the key weaknesses and address them in the remaining part of the intervention.