Just as every business needs to “sell” something, politics and public policy is about sales too. And people respond (or not) to political messages in pretty much the same way that they do to any other sales pitch.

Good messages that are relevant are more likely to cut through the clutter. Bad messages get tuned out.

When it comes to effectively communicating a message, there are a lot of great lessons from the business world that we can apply to politics. One of them is known as the “elevator pitch”. It’s a condensed way to get a clear and convincing idea or proposal across to someone else in about the time that it takes to ride in an elevator. A quick and succinct summary of what you’re doing, why, and what you want people to do.

What’s the thumbnail version? Why is it important? Can you bottom-line it in thirty seconds or less? In a way that defines a problem to fit your solution, and describes how your solution will fix it? Or, in a way that matters to your target audience?

Outline of a Political Elevator Pitch:

• Describe your idea, what you’re trying to do or the result that you want
• Why is it important? Make it relevant to people and their values.
• Describe the key benefits of your “solution”. What’s in it for them?
• Clearly state what they need to do. Make it easy and actionable.

Be sure to frame the problem in a way that fits your solution. Be passionate and use “benefit” focused terms. Be concise and clear. Write it down. Read it. Then delete anything that’s not critical.

Remember, the trick is to get all of this across in a few sentences, or about thirty seconds.

Making yourself go through the process of creating a good elevator pitch can help you clarify what you’re “selling” in your own mind, and get a better understanding of the point of view of your target audience.

If you’re going to go to the trouble of speaking out for a policy or proposal that you believe in, (or even run a campaign), then you may as well go to the (slightly more) trouble of crafting a clear and concise message that can help you be more successful.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

It is one thing to identify other people who care about the same things as you do, but an uninformed group of people, no matter what the size, isn’t well equipped to have much of an impact on anything.

They’ve got to be informed.

Here are some basic steps you can take to informing conservatives so that they’re better prepared for effective action.

Set up a Database

It doesn’t help your cause to have a large group of people who agree with you but that you can’t easily get in touch with. That’s why the most important element of any group of identified fellow malcontents is the actual LIST. Who are they? Where are they? How can you get in touch with them?

Make things easy on yourself from the start by settings things up in a simple database program. If nothing else, a simple Excel spreadsheet will do. Identify names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. You could even throw in links to Facebook or Twitter profiles.

Good contact information is critical. Start it off right and keep it up to date.

Communicate Regularly

Once you’ve identified people who have common concerns you need a way to communicate and keep them up to date with what’s going on with the issue at hand. Make sure they have access to basic information, talking points, key dates or meetings they need to be aware of or attend, what happened, and action alerts when specific critical action is needed.

Email is the cheapest format to use. But the larger your list becomes, the more you may want to set things up on a professional email service, (such as, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc.). Many of these offer free service to lists with fewer than 2,000 contacts. It will make your communications look more professional and will be easier for you to manage in the long-run. Also, settle on a regular schedule, so people know what to expect and when, (such as a monthly update…excluding any action alerts you may need to distribute).

You could also take the next step and set up a simple place online where you can put more extensive information that you can link to in newsletters. Don’t let this intimidate you, as you can use any number of free services to create a “home base”, (from Facebook pages, to Google Groups to WordPress). It’s so simple a caveman could do it.

Have Regular Meetings

No one likes long, boring meetings. So don’t have any. But it does make a difference when like-minded people get together, so have a regular meeting for your “core” group to review priorities and make plans. You can always hold “informational” meetings for larger groups when it makes sense.

It’s important that people feel like they’re a part of the process. If they do, they “buy in” to the plan and are more likely to help out.

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An informed group is a group that can have more of an impact. So take some basic steps to make sure you’re all on the same page.

When you’re trying to have an impact on pretty much anything in politics it usually involves a need to communicate a clear message, whether to a group of people or to the media – or sometimes both.

But in order to cut through the clutter of competing stories and messages and communicate a clear message that will make a difference, you need to do a few basic things.

Package Your Message

Make sure that you spend time early on developing your overall message, summarizing it and creating fact sheets and additional information to supplement it. If you don’t know your own message, then you’re not going to be able to communicate it very well – which means you’ll be wasting your time in trying.

Make sure that it’s easily available and digestible. Don’t write a treatise – cover the basic facts. Add some bullet points. Add some quotes that the media can use, either from you or other people supporting the effort. Then add the more in-depth details (or links to them) at the end, or in an additional document. Make it easy to share with others, (such as with a PDF that’s easy to link to, download, email, print, etc.).

The point is to make it easy for anyone – whether a supporter, potential supporter, or the media – to know what you’re doing and why it’s important.

Push Your Message

Be proactive in pushing your message. When a story breaks and the media needs information, you can help make sure that they’re not looking elsewhere if you’re actively working to make yourself available to them. Contact whoever is covering the story, tell them how you’re involved with the issue and ask if they would like a quote. Follow it up with a press release and/or a fact sheet.

The ideal situation is to get “into” the story, not just react to it after it has been run. The result is that you can get a free ride on a story that the media was already going to do anyway.

Focus on Your Message

Once you’re confident with what you want to say, remember to stay ON message. That means STAY FOCUSED. What good does it do for you to prepare a message and then get distracted from delivering it?

No matter what the question is, or whatever the subject, either find a way to relate it back to your issue/message, or answer it quickly and then move back to what you want to talk about. Or just ignore it entirely, (“That’s an interesting question, but it’s not as important as XYZ…”)

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The easier that you make it for people (and the media) to get information, the more likely they are to use it. As a result, it increases the odds that your opinions can be shared with others and possibly help shape media coverage…or at least be represented.

Information or opinions that aren’t packaged, pushed and focused on are not likely to be represented – especially for conservatives.

So be sure to make the effort.