How to run a great campaign

November 8, 2017 1 Comment

My recent role to assist Cowshed with campaign work gave me a great insight in how to run successful campaigns for a broad range of clients from start to finish.

I worked mainly with Wales Co-operative to deliver the Social Saturday campaign, a day to champion social enterprises and it was a great experience. Thanks to Vicki and team for the warm welcome and fondness for afternoon snacks.

In former jobs, running a campaign came alongside a huge amount of other work, often felt a momentous and uphill task, but having enjoyed the freedom to focus gave me some clarity on what it takes to run a great campaign.

Here’s my advice:

1. Be organised – planning is your friend, it’s the thing you need to come back to over and over again and keeps you on track.
2. Budget – know what you’ve got from the start then you can look at what each element of the campaign will need, having a little extra without allocation at the start won’t hurt either.
3. What’s your ask? Do you want people to sign up? Donate? Attend? Give? Whatever it is, that should drive your campaign.
4. Be realistic – setting unachievable targets and aims is only going to demotivate you, have realistic goals and if you do better than that’s great. You can learn for next time.
5. Free is your friend – don’t have lots of budget? Remember that a lot of digital media is free to use and can reach a lot of people for not too much work.
6. Stories – they should be at the heart of the campaign and will ultimately drive your intended audience to act. It’s what the media love too, always have them.
7. Media contact – Let them know what you’re planning in advance – if they aren’t interested ask them what would make them interested and think if you can accommodate them.
8. Pick up the phone – emails get lost, piled up, deleted, unread and having an actual conversation is a great way of starting a relationship.
9. Communicate – it’s so important to communicate with your colleagues so you’re on the same page, updates are good so everyone is clued in.
10. Have fun – campaigns are great and there’s plenty of opportunity to do things differently, whether that be with graphics, pictures, events or stories.

If you need any support with campaigns then please get in touch.

Awesome illustration by The Meekshall