This is the fifth (and last) in a series. You can read the first article?here.
If you've been working through these posts as you develop your campaign, you have established goals, identified audiences, refined messages, created campaign materials, and thought about channels. Now you need to create a plan.
First of all, there's no one way to run a campaign. You may want to run it as a series of connected actions (e.g. around one key message) and then repeat. Or you may wish to have a bunch of promotions leading up to a big event (e.g. a rally or meeting with a politician). There's also a 'slow drip' approach where you continuously share and promote over a period of time.
Whichever way you run a campaign, planning and execution is crucial. A good campaign involves these key activities:
- Set milestones. When do you want your campaign activities to occur? When do you want to start and end? Are there any events by other organizations that may influence your schedule? Any dependencies like when funding is promised or the availability of key people? Write down your key dates.
- Create phases.?There's nothing worse than a plan that is a monotonous series of tasks that go on and on with no break. You can avoid this by phasing the work or packaging tasks into sprints - a sprint is a collection of tasks that takes place over a 2-3 week period. Execute the tasks, track progress on these, assess after the sprint ends and then plan the next one.
- Write it all down.?It doesn't matter what you use. You'll probably want to use a shared document (Google Docs or Sheets, Office 365) or a project planning tool (Trello, Monday.com) so your team can have easy access to the plan. Create action-oriented tasks that are easy to track, assign and measure.?
- Delegate.?You are a team and you'll want to involve people in tasks that they are qualified and eager to complete. Don't make the mistake of hoarding tasks - you'll become the bottleneck and your team's engagement will ebb.
- Monitor the work. Campaign managers are professional naggers! Ensure that you follow up with the team on the work assigned. Schedule regular status meetings (at least bi-weekly) to review plans and progress. Don't hesitate to reassign a task to another team member if someone is struggling to complete the work.
- Record progress.?Have a way to record when a task is complete - for example, if you are using Excel, have a status column and move the task from 'Planned' to 'In Progress' to 'Completed' as you work on it. This way your team can see real progress as the campaign moves forward. If your team is in the same town and you meet regularly, a whiteboard with the current work progress can be really useful.
- Celebrate milestones!?When you complete a milestone don't forget to celebrate! There are lots of creative ways to do this but at a minimum you need to acknowledge that the milestone is completed and that you are now closer to your overall goal. Recognizing everyone on the team for their contributions will keep morale up and ensure success.
- Close the campaign.?Most campaigns are going to run for less than six months. Recognize that your campaign will end and that it is over. (You can always fire up a v2.0 campaign when needed!) Be sure to formally recognize your team and supporters in a meaningful way, ranging from kind words on a thank you card to an actual payment with any surplus funds.
That concludes this series on health care campaigns. I hope you found it useful!?
