To the untrained eye, canvassing a district seems straight forward. Just go knock doors in neighborhoods that seem to vote a given way, and knock all the doors in that neighborhood, give the home owner a palm card and ask for their vote. However, that is the entirely wrong way to go about canvassing.
In my last blog post, I shared the idea of microtargeting a district to facilitate efficiency. In this post, I would like to help readers understand how to make their door knocking efforts exponentially more powerful and useful to bring success to their campaign.
Canvassing is about two things. First, it’s about building relationships that are meaningful to the voter. Second, it’s about collecting data that allows the campaign to have deeper insights about the race being run. This in turn allows the campaign to strategically position itself for the win.
Sun Tsu once said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” By gathering data at the doors, the campaign manager has a clearer view of the district and how to build a proper strategy. In order to gather this information, create a list of the information that the campaign needs to know, and train the volunteers who are knocking the doors to weave those questions into the conversation with the targeted voters. This method not only allows the volunteers to gain valuable information, but it also makes the interaction at the door more meaningful to the voter.
If you believe that your campaign could benefit from our expertise, you can contact Campaign Creative Group here or at 615-898-1496.