Running a political campaign is one of the most challenging and exhausting activities ever. Running a typical campaign means you will have more than 12 hours of work days for several months. On the Election Day, you either win or you, along with your entire campaign team are fired. As the Election Day approaches, it creates a huge amount of stress and pressure for success. As nothing can eliminate the stress of the Election Day, a proper organization of a political campaign can avoid some unnecessary challenges. For this purpose, Election Campaign Management teams are formed to help political parties hold organized and stress-free campaigns.
There are the five steps involved in the process of running a political campaign. They are:
Getting the Right Tools for your Political Campaign
In the current, modern age of politics, technology has emerged as the backbone of any campaign. Well-designed tools will allow your election campaign management team to share information easily and help make decisions as the Election Day approaches. Putting the right tools in the right place and using them in the right way, can make your campaign effort much easier and effective. One of the effective tools to use here is the Public advocacy campaign as this a unique way to influence public opinion and public behaviour. These public advocacy campaigns are designed to win, helping overcome a negative public image which will help your campaign.
Hiring Your Campaign Staff
Every campaign needs three positions filled. They are the treasurer, the fundraiser, and the campaign manager. Depending on the size and the budget of your campaign, these three employees can either be hired on the basis of full-time paid staff or employees that work on multiple campaigns or as volunteers. While the treasurer is responsible for maintaining the campaign’s financial accounting, the fundraiser’s job is mainly to focus on raising the money necessary for the campaign. He is also responsible for projecting the expected fundraising. However, the bulk work related to fundraising is the candidate’s job. The campaign manager’s job is to run the entire campaign. While many of the candidates like to this themselves, they are also busy with fundraising and creating public advocacy campaigns, that interfere with being effective managers. Therefore, it is necessary to hire a full-time manager to ensure that the campaign opportunities are being addressed.
The Campaign Budget
In order to run a successful campaign, it needs to be carefully budgeted. The very first step for this purpose is to determine the vote target. The planned budget would be built around this information, keeping in mind that you will be talking to a much larger audience. Many Election campaign management professionals suggest that you communicate with each potential voter around 6 times. Do not forget, the campaign will also need to spend money on fundraising, staff hired and other overheads.
Determine the Right Strategy and Message for Your Campaign
Strategies and messages vary tremendously between campaigns. Unlike other parts of the campaign, these two, tie directly into the candidate’s personal beliefs. In the early stage of the campaign, the candidate, and his key staff must have frank discussions about these issues. Only after these discussions can the Election campaign management put together a strategy.
The Main Aspect of Running the Campaign
After all the tools, teams, budgets, strategies, and messages are put together, running the campaign is mostly means just implementing the strategies decided. Your campaign needs to be prepared for changing circumstances and you may need to revise these previously prepared items. However, with great planning and effective corporate affairs management who take charge of the campaign, your operations will run very smoothly.
There may be many other steps or factors that influence campaigns but these five steps are the basics of running a political campaign.