You’ve decided you’re ready to run for office and now it’s time to budget for a winning political campaign—where to begin?
Issue advocacy campaigns start with the best of intentions. We begin with a coalition who cares about your issue and want to make a real difference. But without a bit of campaign know-how, you will fall off track. Here are ten common, advocacy campaign mistakes along with tips on how to avoid these errors.
Whether you won or lost your political campaign, the 2018 Election Cycle is over. Like us, you're probably pretty exhausted. These past months you've likely been getting your hands dirty and working tirelessly on your campaign cause, and we want to help you clean up both your literal and figurative mess.
Here are our tips on how to end a campaign:
It is campaign plan time. If you are running a campaign, start writing a plan now. Here are our 10 tips on 10 questions a political campaign plan should answer.
One of my favorite political campaign tips is, that campaign fundamentals can be the difference between winning and losing. No matter what level of race you are running, campaign fundamentals are core to winning. Good political campaign advice can help give a campaign a good start. If you need a campaign team you can always reach out and talk with us about consulting on your campaign.
Here are 9 essential political campaign tips to get your campaign moving in the right direction with a couple of essential bonus tips at the end:
Don’t run unless you have a chance to win. There is a political campaign legend that if you run enough times, you will build name recognition and get elected. In the majority of races, this is not an accurate presumption. It is the reverse that is true: the more times you run, the less likely you are to win. Most folks who run the second or third time do not win.
Know how many votes you need to win. Every year I see candidates who chose the wrong race to run in. Vote goals don’t need to be that complicated, but any political campaign worth its salt needs a vote goal. Often, the biggest mistake people make is not calculating a vote goal at all. The simple act of creating a vote goal can save you a lot of time campaigning for a race you might not have had a shot at.
Yes. Digital advertising works. Though I'll forgive you for not taking a one-word answer. You'd be right to be a little skeptical. The truth is that no one single communication medium is the best way for your campaign to talk with voters- never believe a consultant who tells you otherwise.
Advanced targeting can be the advantage you need to win your campaign. Before we get deep into micro targeting voter modeling other advanced targeting, let’s start off by defining targeting so that we are all on the same page. This is a basic rule for all campaigns: candidates, ballot, independent expenditure, etc. Targeting (sometimes referred to as micro targeting) is looking at your whole district or universe and then narrowing it down to the people you need to communicate with to win. Every campaign has limits - people, time, money or all of the above. Effectively targeting helps you use your limited resources as effectively as possible.
Creating a political campaign budget is all about choices. What do I think I can raise, and what will I spend it on? One thing that more down-ballot races should consider is campaign polling. If you’re running for a citywide office, a countywide office, or any office where more than a few thousand votes determine the winner, a good poll done by a professional pollster is a wise investment. Here’s why:
Our team is made up of amazing creative, organizational, and political consulting talent committed to achieving political and advocacy goals. We have worked for candidates and causes, big and small, all across the country.
