Free campaign planning tool!
- Sat, December 13 2008
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Thanks to my friends at Spitfire, if you need help planning your next big campaign, you’re in luck. Spitfire Strategies and the Communications Leadership Institute (the people who brought you the Smart Chart™ and Discovering the Activation Point™) have just unveiled their newest tool: The Just Enough Planning Guide™. It’s a free online resource that for the first time gives nonprofits and foundations a process for planning successful campaigns. Whether your organization is planning to pass a law, win popular support for an issue or organize a boycott, the guide gives groups a clear sense of where they are going, the best way to get there and what to expect along the way. Visit justenoughplanning.org to download a free copy.
Thanks Spitfire!
Here are steps it covers:
1. Confirm That a Campaign Is Possible. This is the time to step back and assess the viability of a campaign. Are the stars aligned for this effort to be successful?
2. Set a Clear, Measurable Goal That Is Achievable. Your plan needs to be focused on achieving a very specific goal. Your goal is your raison d’être. Are you trying to make something happen or stop something from happening? There is a difference.
3. Chart Your Course. Much like a road trip, there are likely many ways to get to your goal. You will use your knowledge of the field and the external environment to determine the best steps to your goal.
4. Anticipate Conditions. Visualize all possible scenarios – the good, the bad and the ugly – so your plan includes strategies for leveraging opportunities and mitigating challenges, including identifying your opposition.
5. Know How to Make Headway. What will propel you down your path? What major campaign activities can help you get from point A to point B?
6. Prioritize Your Target Audiences. Now that you have a strategy, stay focused by prioritizing who you need to engage to win, and when.
7. Put a Public Face on Your Campaign. Give the effort a name and a personality that is memorable and easily understood. You want people to recognize what you are about and not have to guess.
8. Operationalize Your Campaign. Based on the activities you think will help you make headway, determine which campaign tactics you will need: from intellectual knowledge to government relations to public mobilization to communications to coalition building to fundraising.
9. Stay on Track. Build evaluation mechanisms into your plan that will tell you when you are making progress and when you need to stop and make a mid-course correction. Meet regularly with your team to discuss your progress.
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