Purpose: Social marketing is increasingly being seen as a potentially effective means of pursuing health education practice generally and within various specific areas such as mental health and wellbeing and more broadly in tackling health inequalities. This paper aims to report and reflect on the authors' experiences of undertaking a health education initiative in a rural National Health Service (NHS) health board in Scotland that utilised social marketing methodology and sought to develop wider capacity and ensure implementation in two topic areas: breast-feeding prevalence and being overweight and obesity among young people. Design/methodology/approach: Case study insights were gathered from service users and professionals using various methods (key informant interviews/focus groups; face-to-face stakeholder workshops; action-planning events; on-line survey; desk based research; complemented by general reflection from Social Marketing Sustainability Steering Group meetings). Findings: The project broadly achieved the goal of deploying social marketing principles and developing capacity in informing progress in each of the case studies and on occasions, initiatives were able to determine a relatively profound understanding of audiences and deliver activity on the ground within a large rural health board. Originality/value: Developing social marketing capacity is possible, though longer term sustainability is dependent on addressing a series of challenges, such as creating conducive long term planning mechanisms, gaining management support and securing on-going resources. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)