Discover why research is a crucial tool for both planning and running your campaign.
Somehow you just know the issue you’re campaigning against is damaging and wrong.
And you’re probably right.
But personal conviction is not a secure foundation on which to build a campaign.
You need to know the facts. And to learn the facts you must do your research.
In this article you see that research is a crucial tool for both planning and running your campaign. You also see that campaigns that fail to do their research can end up in court facing massive legal fees and damages payments.
With that unsettling thought let’s explore the 5 powerful benefits research brings to your campaign:
- Research makes your campaign plans effective
- Research improves your campaign communications
- Research helps you avoid legal action
- Research is a campaign tactic
- Research gives you credibility
- Bonus benefits!
Already convinced you need research and just want to know how to research? Find out how Silent Reef can help you get research-ready fast.
1. Research makes your campaign plans effective
Campaigns with a plan are always more effective than campaigns with no plan.
But to be of any real use your plan must be based on the facts. Basing your plan on personal conviction risks wasting your time and your supporters’ goodwill. Two resources most campaigns have in short supply.
To learn the facts you must do your research. Here is the research needed to write an effective campaign plan:
- Issue research – Investigate the problem you are campaigning to remedy
- Environment research – Learn about the environment you are campaigning to protect
- Stakeholder research – Learn about (and from) the people, groups and organisations affected by the issue and/or your campaign
- Solution research – Check potential solutions will be effective
- Target research (advocacy campaigns) – Identify vulnerable targets with the power to decide
- Audience research – Identify influential audiences that can make a difference
When you build you campaign plan on a solid foundation of research you can move forward confident of making a difference.
Master research for campaign planning and turn your new knowledge into a highly effective plan for campaign success with Silent Reef’s Write Effective Campaign Plans online course.
2. Research improves your campaign communications
Communicating with the public is a crucial campaign skill.
Environment campaigns do not achieve their goals because they have great financial or political power. Typically they have little of both. Environment campaigns achieve their goals because they have great people power.
Through your campaign communications you take people from not caring to caring, from no involvement to active involvement, and from behaviour that damages the environment to behaviour that does no (or less) harm.
Notice something here?
The aim of campaign communications is not just to tell people about the issue and your campaign.
The aim of campaign communications is to cause people to act or change in ways that contribute to achieving your campaign goal.
Causing people to start taking advocacy actions (e.g. sign petitions; attend marches) or change an environmentally damaging behaviour (e.g. use public transport instead of driving their cars) is notoriously difficult, but research to understand the people you want to act or change is a crucial step.
And although the facts are a weak force for motivating people to act or change (think global heating, an issue that many people deny despite it being supported by enough facts to go to the moon and back 5 times in your pyjamas) people do need some facts to be convinced of the need for action or change. To be able to tell people the facts, you must first do your research.
Learn to conduct audience research and develop campaign messages that motivate action and change with Silent Reef’s Communicate Effective Campaign Messages online course.
3. Research helps you avoid legal action
Legal action is a real threat to environment campaigns.
Organisations that make money from damaging the environment typically stop at nothing to silence a campaign that threatens their profits.
The only way to be totally safe from legal action is to not run your campaign. If that doesn’t suit, communicating only carefully researched facts reduces the risk. After all, an issue driver should be reluctant to risk a court hearing that finds you are telling the truth and they are peddling “alternative facts”.
However, note that sticking to the facts only helps you avoid legal action. It is not a guarantee against legal action. As such, Silent Reef strongly recommends that you gain professional legal advice and have appropriate insurance.
Disclaimer – Silent Reef is not a law firm and we do not provide legal advice. We recommend that you gain legal advice from a legal professional when planning and running your campaign.
4. Research is a campaign tactic
Delivering tactics is the fun part of campaigning, the part where you get out and do stuff:
- Running petitions
- Delivering supporter training workshops
- Organising marches and rallies
- Meeting community leaders and campaign targets
- Building business partnerships
- Managing volunteer conservation projects
- And many, many more
And here’s another activity to add to the list – research. Yes, research is an important campaign tactic.
You see, an effective advocacy campaign doesn’t just respond to situations created by their opponents. It also proactively opens new fronts to force their opponents to defend themselves. In many cases these fronts are driven by research, such as research to understand the impacts to community health of a proposed development.
And an effective behaviour change campaign doesn’t just assume their efforts to change an environmentally damaging behaviour are working. They conduct research to make sure, such as a survey to measure changes in litter density.
So research is an important tool to use throughout your campaign, from writing your plan to achieving your objectives.
Too busy to do your own research? Then find time to read Silent Reef’s ebook, Calling In The Experts: The environment campaigner’s guide to recruiting and working with technical advisors (free download).
5. Research gives you credibility
Credibility is a powerful tool for building active campaign support.
When the people you need supporting your campaign recognise you and your campaign as credible commentators on the issue they are more likely to read your emails, take your actions, attend your events and more.
Credibility is built from two equally important components:
- Knowledge – You can demonstrate your knowledge of the issue and environment at risk from your first stakeholder meetings (provided you’ve done your research). You don’t need expert knowledge; you just need to show that you know what you’re talking about.
- Trust – Trust is built over time, however an important step to earning people’s trust is your readiness to learn their thoughts on the issue and your campaign (we call this stakeholder research and audience research).
So a major benefit of research is that it helps build your credibility, and credibility is a powerful tool for building the support you need to achieve your campaign goal.
6. Bonus benefits!
Here are some more ways research benefits your campaign:
- Provides facts to help convince targets to decide in your favour
- Enables you to ask the right questions and understand the answers
- Enables you to recognise misinformation and disprove false claims supporting the issue
- Provides facts and statistics for media stories
- Enables you to measure progress and know when a solution is complete
- Enables you to recognise when a solution isn’t working and it’s time to change direction
- Saves you from making embarrassing errors
And many more but I’ll stop here because if you’re not convinced by now you never will be!
Research is good. But good research sometimes finds information that goes against you, such as that the issue you are campaigning to remedy benefits some people you need supporting your campaign. Our handy guide shows you how to overcome issue benefits.
So now you know why you cannot skip research and just make stuff up. Your supporters will see through your empty words and your opponents will see you in court.
It’s not enough to know in your heart that you are right and the issue is wrong. You must do your research and prove it.
Knowledge is still power, even in this post-truth world.
Get research-ready fast
We know how it is – you’re keen to get your campaign moving and reluctant to pause for research.
But here’s the thing. You can run up the ladder to campaign success as fast as you like, but all your effort is wasted if your very first move is to lean the ladder against the wrong wall.
Silent Reef’s Write Effective Campaign Plans online course helps you get your campaign right from the start by showing you:
- The three roles of research in environment campaigns and when to use them
- Basic research methods you can use even if you have no research experience
- How to conduct issue research, environment research, stakeholder research, solution research, audience research and more
You also gain access to our comprehensive campaign research prompts full of great research ideas for both planning and running your campaign.
And of course you learn how to turn your new knowledge into a highly effective plan for campaign success.
Whether you are new to research or born to research Write Effective Campaign Plans helps you master research skills to use throughout your campaign.
Conclusion
Give your campaign the best possible start by basing your campaign plan on research. Use research during your campaign to inform your communications, avoid legal action, launch new campaign fronts and build your credibility.
