Run Your Campaign Like a Start-Up

Now that you have decided to run for the first time, or for re-election, you must start thinking like an entrepreneur and running your campaign like a start-up business. As such, your campaign needs a sound business plan, capital funding, resources, a target market and message, and a sales effort supported by effective marketing materials.

“No one will ever be a bigger expert on your business than you.”

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Dan Kennedy’s Eternal Truth #8 No B.S. Business Success, Entrepreneur Press, 2010

Whether for start-up entrepreneurs or first time candidates like you, those words ring true. Entrepreneurs know what sets their product or service apart. Likewise your campaign’s singular goal is to communicate what sets you apart from the competition. In other words, to demonstrate to voters how they will benefit with you in office.

Depending on when you run and where you live, your campaign’s life span will be four months at least and a year at most. You assemble it, launch it when you announce your candidacy, grow it during the active campaign, and dismantle it soon after Election Day. Regardless of outcome, once votes are tallied and results published, your campaign has no reason to exist. Short time horizons like that call for sound time management.

First-time candidates for small, local district offices often fail to run cost-effective campaigns. Instead of making sensible, bottom-line decisions, they let emotions get in the way, leaving them with no sense of whether their actions strengthen or weaken their goal to win. Sensible decisions are made when you stay laser focused on how they improve your chances for success on Election Day.

For example, if limited finances dictate fewer yard signs than anticipated, would opting for one-color signs do the job, or would a mailing yield the better bang for the buck? Only you know the answer. To be successful, your job is to believe in yourself 110 percent, to have the moxie to make bottom-line decisions, and to get elected.

A new business calls for a plan and so does a political campaign. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so make your campaign soar with an effective plan. Keep it on track with a daily campaign calendar.

Before that first sale, any start-up business must secure money to make money and grow. Likewise your campaign must have its core message in place before soliciting that first contribution. Once you do, you can start raising money, spreading your message, and building the campaign. When funding allows, move ahead with a promotional piece, voter lists, and yard signs. Then choose how best to deploy them.

First-time candidates can be tempted to go top cabin. But as with any new business, your campaign should conserve money wherever possible. For example, do you feel the need for a campaign office, or can you run things just as well from your home? If an off-site office is a must, can you rent or borrow needed furniture, equipment, and computers? Can you locate used stakes for the yard signs? Will the least expensive option for yard signs, plastic film on metal frames, offer adequate visibility and get the job done?

Regarding each budgeted item, answer these questions first:

• Is it a need or a want?

• Where is the funding for it?

• What is the return on expense?

• Is my goal to win justified by the expense?

• Is there another way to get it done for less, or no, money?

If answers are unclear, look for creative ways to meet the goal and save money.

Down-ballot candidates have always knocked on doors, telephoned, sent brochures and postcards, and placed yard signs and still do. But nowadays an Internet presence is also imperative for political campaigns, except perhaps those in very small districts. When it comes to one for your campaign, qualify the idea first by asking the questions above.

The Take Away

When you manage your campaign like a small business, you make rational, bottom-line decisions which orient your campaign to the consumer, or voter in your case. In the end, by thinking and acting like an entrepreneur, you will have waged a skilled, credible campaign, one where you did everything right for the best outcome on Election Day.