Effective Advocacy Campaign Tips: What You Need to Know

Advocacy Campaign Tips to Run an Effective Effort

Running an effective advocacy campaign demands more than just passion and good intentions. It takes skill, strategy, planning, and a whole lot of hard work. We’ve also seen many well-meaning advocacy campaigns stumble because they skip simple steps in the process and don’t lay the basic groundwork. 

So, how do you cut through the noise, build support for your cause, and create real, lasting change? The following will give you some of the essential tips for running a winning advocacy campaign and building a roadmap for success.

Have clear goals and a strategic plan

Simply put, every advocacy campaign needs to start out by identifying its goals and writing a plan to achieve those goals. It may, at times, feel like an exercise in futility to put your goals on paper, but without having defined short- and long-term goals, your campaign will be scattered and ineffective. Even if you have all this info in the back of your head, putting it all on paper will ensure that your entire team is on the same page.

Your advocacy goals should be specific and clearly state what you want to accomplish. Instead of “improving education,” you should set goals like “increasing funding for after-school programs by 20%.” Your goals should be quantifiable so you know how you are measuring success. Lastly, your goals also need to be realistic. It’s fine to be ambitious, but being unrealistic can lead to discouragement and burnout among your team.

Once you have identified your goals, the next step is to write a plan. Think of this as a roadmap that guides your campaign. Some questions to answer within this plan include:

• Who do you need to influence to achieve your advocacy goal (i.e., your targets)?
• Who can help you influence those advocacy targets?
• What message will resonate with your audience?
• How do you plan to communicate with your audience?
• What resources will you need?
• How will you measure the success of the campaign? 

Create urgency with deadlines

For advocacy campaigns, nothing is more effective at creating urgency than a deadline. If you are lucky enough (I use “lucky” loosely here) to be working on a campaign that has a built-in deadline—a legislative vote, a regulatory decision, or a public comment period—capitalize on it! Make sure everyone involved, including your target decision-makers, your advocates, and your internal team, is aware of the ticking clock. That means highlighting the deadline in all your communications, from emails and social media posts to press releases and at in-person events. And make sure you keep your team updated on your progress towards your deadline, so they feel a sense of accomplishment.

If, on the other hand, your advocacy campaign doesn’t have a strict timeline—and the urgency that comes with it—create one! You can and should set a specific date for when your bill will be filed or when a committee will pass it. 

This isn’t about manufacturing a crisis—it’s about setting realistic and achievable goals. Deadlines help avoid getting bogged down in the weeds and make you focus on what truly matters. Setting deadlines is an important way of holding your team accountable, including yourself. Deadlines also create a framework for measuring progress and identifying potential roadblocks.
 
Make sure your advocates know how they can help.

You want to make sure that you lay out clear and easy ways for your advocates to get involved. Can they sign a petition online? Call their legislator? Share a graphic or a video on social media? How about collecting petitions or signatures from their friends and neighbors? If it’s not an official form, can they download a PDF from your website to collect the signatures? How can super-advocates tell their stories and get the word out about why this issue is important in their lives? Can they add it to a story bank, get in front of a legislator on lobby day, or maybe speak at a press event? What are the offline actions that they can take? 

It's also critically important to empower your advocates with the resources they need. Make sure you give them talking points and scripts so they can make phone calls, organize events, or engage in letter-writing campaigns. Set up training sessions either in person or virtually to help your advocates feel more comfortable with their tasks. Once your advocates are prepped and ready, you can organize lobby day events where they can meet with legislators and voice their concerns. 

It's also important that you celebrate your advocates and incorporate a layer of public appreciation. Make sure you recognize their contributions on your social media, newsletters, and at any events. Send them handwritten thank you notes or emails to express your gratitude. These personal touches go a long way in helping advocates know that they are appreciated and that their work is valued.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

You don’t have to do it all by yourself. Effective advocacy campaigns take a ton of time and resources, and they really are a team sport.

Delegating and asking for help increases your capacity and frees up your time to focus on big-picture planning. It gives you a more diverse perspective by bringing in different viewpoints and ideas. It allows you to pool resources and save time and money. Asking for help can even be a boost to morale since it is much less isolating than trying to do everything on your own.

Advocacy campaigns have many different avenues that they can go to for help. You can and should leverage your network of volunteers who are passionate about your cause. These folks are great at running phone banking, canvasses, and social media, for instance. You can reach out to coalition partners who may have access to resources, expertise, and networks. If the budget allows, you can also hire a paid advocacy consultant. Consultants can offer you high-level strategic guidance, help to keep you on track, and can have expertise in areas where your team might be lacking.

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we work on advocacy campaigns daily—big and small, federal and local, all over the country and even some around the world.

Leverage the power of storytelling

In the world of advocacy, we often have no shortage of data, statistics, and focus group-tested arguments that we can leverage. While this data is important, in many cases it’s personal stories that truly break through and resonate with a broader audience. Stories are key to unlocking empathy, building connections, and driving change. From the earliest cave paintings to today’s short-form online videos, stories have always been how we understand the world. And that connection is what will motivate your audience to take action.

There are several ways you can effectively leverage storytelling. Video, for instance, is a powerful storytelling medium. Usingshort, impactful videos captures the raw emotion of a personal story. You can also use audiograms or quotes that are paired with an image on platforms like Instagram and Facebook to share stories with a wider audience. 

When using storytelling, the biggest rule is to be authentic. People really can spot a fake story or something that’s written by AI a mile away. So make sure you tell your storytellers to share their genuine experiences in their own voice.