When a piece of legislation has the potential to impact your business, your industry, or your best interests, you need to do everything in your power to attain your desired outcome.
But you can’t be the only voice in the room trying to persuade decision-makers. You need public support on your side for your issue to gain traction—and that support often comes in the form of key stakeholders who are also invested in your issue.
But how do you rally that support and guide stakeholders toward a common goal? It all starts with crafting a clear and unified message.
The Importance of Unified Messaging in Public Affairs Campaigns
A strong public affairs campaign requires a laser-focused message. Without it, stakeholders may come across as disorganized, muddled, and confusing when they engage with decision-makers.
It’s best to get stakeholders on the same page before asking them to reach out to government officials or attend committee meetings. That way, decision-makers hear a consistent message from your coalition. Each individual may have their own story, but they’re united by what they’re asking decision-makers to do in order to meet their needs.
Tenax Strategies works with clients to develop straightforward messaging from the start of any public affairs campaign—messaging that all stakeholders can understand and easily communicate to their communities and legislators.
Aligning Messaging with Campaign Goals
To develop a winning message for a public affairs campaign, you first need to be clear about your end goal. Often, but not always, the end goal of a campaign is to get a piece of legislation passed or blocked.
Once your end goal has been defined, you’ll need to determine who else in your community is invested in the same outcome. Those individuals make up the network of stakeholders that will help you achieve your end goal.
But public affairs campaigns begin long before an end goal is within clear sight. The legislative process moves slowly. More often than not, the initial message you’ll craft should be built around short term milestone goals.
If, for example, a bill has just been assigned to a committee, the short term goal is to get the committee to give a positive vote to release the bill. That message should be delivered first to the legislators who are part of that committee. Broader messaging would occur only after the bill passes out of committee and into the next step of the process.
At every step, you want the message you convey to stakeholders to align with the next milestone, building to achieving your end goal.
Clarifying Messaging With Stakeholders
Once we develop clear, unified messaging that aligns with the goals you hope to accomplish, it’s time to communicate that message to stakeholders so they can deliver it effectively.
These individuals you’ll be mobilizing to advocate on your behalf, and their behalf, to reach your desired outcome. The messaging you create not only helps compel stakeholders to join the fight, but it also ensures that they’re trained to communicate a clear and consistent ask when they engage with decision-makers.
When you initially reach out to stakeholders, you may find that their perspective on your issue is based solely on how it affects them personally. Their perspective, and the language they use to describe the issue, may need to shift to align with the specific messaging your public affairs campaign is trying to convey. This strategic realignment is what unifies and strengthens your message across even the largest of coalitions.
Providing all the information stakeholders need makes it much more likely that they will take action. When encouraging stakeholders to take action, provide easy-to-follow instructions to accompany your streamlined messaging.
For example, you might provide a flyer that tells a stakeholder the date, time, and location of a public hearing you’d like them to attend. You’d also include key details of your platform and a simple, specific ask for stakeholders to make.
How Tenax Strategies Builds Strategic Messaging
The Tenax Strategies team is available to help plan and execute your entire messaging campaign. We’ll work together to identify your overarching goals and the milestones you’ll need to reach along the way. Then our team of lobbyists and public affairs experts will develop strategic messaging that speaks to your best interests and is likely to move decision-makers.
We’ll identify the stakeholders, perform community outreach, and train the new advocates for your cause on how to deliver your message. We’ll identify where and when they should show up to communicate with decision-makers, and we’ll even organize our own campaign events when needed.
Don’t let unclear messaging bring down your public affairs campaign. Contact Tenax Strategies today to discuss your campaign and let’s create a message that breaks through!
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