Identify and get to know your audience
Messages need to be developed in a deliberative, strategic process that requires careful planning. The first step in that process is identifying and understanding your audience. There are a variety of tools that you can use to identify your audience.
Targeting analysis can range from the simple to the complex. Targeting starts by understanding who you are trying to influence and why. For an issue-based campaign, the audience might be voters (if it is a referendum), a legislative body like a city council or state legislature and/or opinion leaders. For an electoral campaign, it is not enough to think of the audience simply as voters. What are the segments of the electorate? Who are the voters? Primary voters? Undecided general election voters? Base supporter? If you are in a state with a caucus system, caucus attendees are often an early target group for a campaign. The audience in a campaign, in other words, will change or grow as the campaign moves forward. In developing a message, a campaign should always be asking, "To whom is this message directed, and why?"
Once a campaign has defined its audience, the next step is to better understand that audience. This is the essence of a grassroots campaign, and the importance of applying a message to grassroots organizing cannot be overstated. A message can only be effective if it is grounded in the experiences and circumstances of its intended audience. A good message will focus on values that are shared between the campaign and its audience.
How do you identify those shared values, and find out what is on the mind of voters or community members? It starts with having a conversation with members of your audience. It means listening to your audience by going door-to-door, hosting houseparties, making phone calls, and contacting them by e-mail. Campaigns or organizing drives that take time to get to know the people they are trying to influence are able to develop messages that truly resonate with their audience.