Five ways to COVID-proof your campaign
This blog post is for Campaigners. Yes, every single one of you.
In early January, the UK Conservative Party published a guide for their campaigners on acceptable and unacceptable campaigning during the current COVID lockdown. It’s an area many political parties and campaigners across the world have been trying to navigate and most are not prepared to make the necessary changes.
COVID doesn’t mean you need to stop all campaigning. In fact, you shouldn’t. The reality many campaigners have faced within the last few months is that you can’t keep postponing your campaigning activities in the hope that the pandemic will end soon. If you’re a campaigner and you’ve been pushing your short- and medium-term plans into the long grass, then you need to stop right now. It’s time to reassess and futureproof your campaigns with the following strategies.
1. Ensure your house is in order
I’m a strong believer in the “Will it Make the Boat Go Faster” principle. Before you do anything else, you need to assess where you are with your campaign for 2020-2021 (especially if you postponed a lot of your planned activities) and what you need to achieve. If something doesn’t help you get there, then don’t do it. If something must be done, then you need to work out how you will be able to do it within the current COVID restrictions—and remember, those restrictions could become even tighter depending on the country you’re in.
In 2017, I ran the UK Conservative Party’s general election review. In my experience, politics is an unpredictable game. So far national approaches to COVID and elections have varied greatly across the European continent. Romania pressed ahead with theirs in December, but the French regional elections have been postponed to June In the UK there are rumblings of postponing until September, while the Netherlands has decided to go ahead but spread the election across multiple days. Even if you’re not expecting an election soon, your house should be in order and the foundations strong.
If an election is called, are you in a position to run a successful campaign with restrictions in place? Where are the audiences you need to reach, what’s the message you’d prefer to send and during the pandemic what will that message have to be? They probably won’t be the same. How will you reach your audience, and what activities have you planned that cannot be postponed or that lend themselves to what you’re already doing?
2. Think digital first
Digital has been treated like an afterthought for many years, and that’s a critical mistake. I’m amazed by the number of people who disregard it and just rely on social media channels to push their message out. There are a large number of political campaigns who have non-existent, weak or very static digital presences outside of Facebook and Twitter. Don’t let that be you!
During the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2019, I frequently talked about the importance of owning your relationships with your supporters. You need to have a home for your content where supporters can come and engage with you, and not just read pages and pages of stale content. Your website strategy should involve thinking about where people are on your ladder of engagement, how to meet them where they are, in order to get them to do more and be more involved in the future. That place is unlikely to be Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
3. Don’t just broadcast your voice, but engage and listen
I’ve long been an advocate of complementing your in-person or over the phone canvassing conversations with online interactions. In most countries outside the US, it’s virtually impossible to canvass the majority of a constituency unless you start very early, have loads of resources and are working in a constituency with low transience. However, I’ve worked in polling and so I know that most of that work can successfully take place online.
You just can’t do door-to-door canvassing in the world we live in right now. While in-person conversations within your community or electoral area are an important part of the political process, there’s nothing stopping you from surveying and engaging with supporters and voters online. Engage on the issues that matter the most to them. Let them share their opinions about local and national issues, the direction of your campaign or party, and who they would support if there were an election tomorrow. Keep it simple—no more than two or three questions per survey, per week. Offer feedback about survey results, and what you think or intend to do about the matter.
4. Help your people be in community with one another
People are craving community right now. We’re all either forced or inclined to limit in-person contact. That means that your core supporters are more likely to be open to interesting conversations with new people, as they are unlikely to meet any in another social setting. It's an excellent time to run phone banking exercises from home, targeting lapsed members, members up for renewal and volunteer prospects. Even if people haven’t been active before, a warm and welcoming phone call can be the nudge they need to muster up the courage to come to one of your online events.
I’m hearing anecdotal stories across countries at the moment that people are finding online events more successful than in-person ones because they slot into people’s everyday responsibilities better. It’s easier to commit to a full hour on Zoom after you put the kids to bed or you’ve finished work, than to an hour for the event, an hour for travel and half an hour of waiting around or small talking.
For fundraising, they’re also popular because there is a minimal cost associated, you can get a better geographical spread of attendees and better quality speakers. If you’re not currently doing this, I highly recommend that you get on it.
The flake rate (the people signing up but not showing up) is quite high for online events. It’s essential to keep doing normal audience building with reminders leading up to the event itself. And think about demographics: older people might not be as accustomed to the technical side of things (although the pandemic has certainly helped introduce people to tools like Zoom), while some socio-economic groups might not have the same online access as you do.
5. Use your list for good
You might think there’s little news in the world right now other than COVID, and so you’re tempted to just keep quiet. Instead, you should be thinking about how you can help with the wider relief efforts where you are by sharing local initiatives, volunteer opportunities and guidance. It’s the right thing to do—and it has the added benefit of keeping the conversation going, and your email list warm.
Focus on flexibility and ingenuity
Brands, companies and campaigns who are still effectively continuing their good work have two things in common: they’re creative and they’re agile. Knowing they’ve been dealt a bad hand, they’ve kept on target and found smart ways to drive towards campaign-relevant goals. While you may not feel as though you have a lot of control over current circumstances, you too can stay focused on success by employing these five strategies for campaigning during COVID.