All winning political campaigns all have three important things in common.
It may sound simple but it’s true.
And campaigns that lose usually fail in at least one of these areas.
You can consider them to be the 3 Important M’s:
Message, Money, and Minutes.
If you want to win your race, you must keep these three things in constant focus.
Message
Your winning message is absolutely the most important aspect of your campaign.
Without a simple and clear message that connects with voters you’re probably going to lose.
Too many candidates think that if they put up signs everywhere and get loads of endorsements from local leaders and mucky mucks that they will be a shoe in for office.
Wrong. Those candidates lose far more often than they win.
Why? Because they failed to connect with the voters.
You connect with the voters of your district by having a message.
That message must resonate on an emotional level that motivates them to cast a ballot for you.
The message can’t be about you. That’s a mistake a lot of candidates make too. They make their message about their resume and accomplishments, not about what’s important to the voters.
A winning message always keeps the voters front and center, focuses on a problem or problems they want fixed, and provides a realistic plan for turning things around for the better.
Before you do much else on your campaign, figure out what your winning message is going to be, then refine it and repeat it over and over and over again on the campaign trail.
If you’re ready to learn the secrets of creating a winning political campaign message, I recommend The Winning Message premium course to you.
Money
Yes, if you want to win your election you need to raise money.
How much money? I can’t precisely say as I don’t know the specifics of your district. That’s something you must figure out as you create your campaign budget and fundraising plan.
Basically, you need to find out how much money it will take to effectively get your message out to the voters then go out and raise that amount.
Most good candidates who get blown out in elections lose because they are afraid of raising money. They either can’t bring themselves to ask or don’t want to be told no by a potential donor.
The typical excuse I encounter is that the candidate feels sleazy soliciting funds.
Don’t allow that excuse to hobble your chances of winning. Banish it from your mind right now and forever more.
Raising money for a political campaign is not about raising money for yourself.
You need to look at it as raising money for the betterment of your community.
Remember your winning message? It’s about fixing a problem in the community.
You can’t fix that problem if you’re not in office.
You won’t win office unless you raise enough money to communicate your winning message with the voters.
To learn how to become a successful political campaign fundraiser, the Jump Start Your Fundraising premium course is right for you.
Minutes
If football is a game of inches, political campaigning is a game of minutes.
You’re always running out of them and therefore you must use them wisely.
Election Day never moves away from you.
It’s always moving closer and closer and closer like Jason of Freddie in those 80’s slasher movies.
At first Election Day will be months away, then weeks, then days.
Finally you’ll find yourself waiting for the polling places to close and wondering if you’ve done enough to win.
As a candidate there will always be more demand on your time than there are hours in the day.
Because of this it’s easy to focus your energy and attention on the wrong things.
Before you know it you can fall behind on hitting your fundraising goals and getting your winning message out to the voters in your community.
You must be disciplined when it comes to scheduling your time.
You will need to budget your time stringently, usually by the hour but sometimes down to the minute.
The two most important things you must focus your time on if you’re serious about winning is the time you are communicating directly to the voters and the time you are asking for money.
Those two activities should take up more than 50% of your time. Everything else goes into the remaining time or is eliminated — including things that seem important but really are not.
Too many campaigns are lost because candidates say “Yes” to things that should be deemed a “Hell No” and avoided. Don’t let yours be one of them.
Candidate Take-Aways
The difference between a winning campaign and a losing one is that the winners focus on what is really important.
Craft your winning message and take it out to the voters.
Raise the money necessary to deliver that message through the proper mediums.
Dedicate the right number of minutes of every day to doing those two tasks and you’ll go far as a candidate.
And if you’re interested in learning not only the secrets of The Winning Message and how to Jump Start Your Fundraising, these premium courses are available in the Running to Win course bundle.
In addition to The Winning Message and Jump Start Your Fundraising, you’ll also get immediate access to the courses Secrets of a Winning Stump Speech and Writing Winning Press Releases with your enrollment into Running to Win.