How to create the perfect communications toolkit
Written by niki juhasz
When we get fellow advocates, board members, families, business leaders, faith leaders, and youth themselves involved in a cause, we’re unstoppable. But our partners and fellow advocates are BUSY. Like...eat some guac, chips and an apple for dinner and call it a well-balanced meal kind of busy. (It's me. I'm fellow advocates).
That's why to get partners involved, we need to make group advocacy easy. That’s where communications toolkits come into play. I’m including our tips to build a strong toolkit below.
Identify Your Toolkit Users + End Audience
If you’ve worked with us before, you know we consider the general public a dirty word. Getting really, really clear on your audience – and what you want them to know, do or think differently – is a critical first step in building a successful campaign.
When it comes to communications toolkits, it gets a little bit more complicated. You need to decide on not one but TWO target audiences: your end user and your ultimate changemaker.
Target Audience One: the toolkit user. This is the audience who will be using your toolkit to push out your messaging. Think fellow advocates, board members and more – basically the people who will be putting your materials into the world.
Target Audience Two: the audience you're trying to communicate with through your communications toolkit. Think legislators, donors or other people who can make the change you want to see in the world actually happen.
See an Example
Let’s say you want to get more funding passed for mental health supports in public schools. You need to get this message in front of your local board of education that gets to make that funding decision. These board members are your second and ultimate target audience.
To get in front of them, you need local families to communicate with board members. This is your first target audience, your toolkit users. Here’s what that looks like:
You create a toolkit. → You share it with district families, who will advocate for funding for more mental health supports in school. → These families then use your messaging to reach the board members who make important budget decisions. → You win the campaign!
Design a Useable Toolkit
Then, create a toolkit with BOTH of these audiences in mind. Here are a few tips:
Start with easy-to-follow instructions. Remember that your initial audience – audience one – might not know much, if anything at all, about strategic communications. Teach them what you want them to know in order to be successful in their advocacy. Tell them what you’re sending them, give them specific tips on how to use it and share what you can accomplish together by presenting one unified voice.
Ensure your messaging speaks to your end target audience. Your ultimate target audience will care about different things than your first target audience. Make sure that the messaging they see speaks directly to their values and helps overcome their barriers to action. Your campaign will be a lot less effective if you message to your toolkit user instead of your ultimate decision maker.
For example, school board members often care about a balanced district budget. The toolkit materials should show them how mental health supports ultimately lead to cost savings in schools – which speaks to their values.
Make your toolkit foolproof. If using your toolkit is too hard, too complicated and therefore too time consuming…then you've wasted your own time. Think about your audience as you put together your materials.
For example, in many cases, families won’t have any graphic design skills. Sending them a complicated InDesign file will stop them from using the toolkit.
Others might not use social media regularly. Including best practices and already-written messaging can help them use your materials.
That's why we worked with the National Recreation and Park Association to create this toolkit with everything from customizable messaging to easy-to-update Powerpoint graphics.
Users simply had to fill in their own URLs, logos and information in the designed materials:
The Marketing Rule of Seven tells us your audience needs to hear something seven times before it starts to resonate. When we empower our partners with the right messaging, we can ensure our end audience hears it that many times and more.
Ready to win this thing? We’re rooting for you!
PS - Building a full communications campaign? Sign up for our free, three-part course that walks you through every step of the process.
