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2 Minute Read

How To Navigate The End Of The Shutdown 

The end of the longest government shutdown in history has finally arrived. If you have been postponing your advocacy campaign during this time, you don't have another minute to waste. In today's short read, we suggest three ways to navigate the calendar crunch that is upon us.

The Flood Is Here

With Congress getting back to work, every public affairs firm, lobbying firm, advocacy group, and trade association will flood the zone for the final year-end legislative push. Each organization will rush to push their issues to the top of the priority list, because everything has been punted by Congress during the shutdown.

There are three key strategies for winning this battle for attention:

🔱 Start Now

If your clients or stakeholders were holding you up from advocating during the shutdown, tell them this—other advocates did not wait. Communication is repetition, and the organizations that have been advocating throughout the shutdown have had a substantial head start in driving home the urgency of their issue. Remember that in the attention age, you are not just competing with your political opposition. You are competing with every other advocate for staff and the decision-makers' attention. So start today. Because every minute counts extra from here on out.

🔱 Be Precise

If there has ever been a time when there is no room for error in delivering your message to your exact targets, that time is now. When everything is coming at Congress at once, spraying and praying is a strategy for failure. Here's a quick illustration of what that looks like:

   🔱 Assume you're trying to reach five Members of Congress and your budget allows for 145,000 ad impressions. If you target a one-mile radius around the Capitol (typical for social media and many other campaigns), you have a one in 49 million chance of reaching each of your targets even a single time!

   🔱 But take those same 145,000 ad impressions and deliver them individually to each of your five congressional targets and 15 of their influencers? That's 1,813 impressions PER target!

Which odds do you like better?

🔱 Reach The Influencers

Even with normal legislative schedules, it's not enough to just reach the decision-maker directly. Policymakers form their opinions based on input from staff, friends, colleagues, family, and several other categories of key influencers. When time is short, it means you'll have even less chance to reach the elected official directly. So you must influence through the influencers. It's the only way to break through the noise.

Three Ways To Operationalize This Email

🔱 Start your advocacy today, and treat every minute as precious for the rest of the year. 

🔱 Audit your strategies to make sure you are reaching your audiences as precisely as possible.

🔱 Check your influencer strategy to make sure you are reaching the people who the decision-makers listen to.

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