| Step 1 | Open with a statement that engages your audience | Make a statement that gets your audience’s attention right away, perhaps using a dramatic fact. This is your lead-in and should be only a sentence or two. |
| Step 2 | Defining a Clear, Compelling Purpose | Emphasizes the importance of clarity in advocacy, focusing on a specific purpose or goal to make the message impactful and easy to understand. |
| Step 3 | Present the problem | Describe the problem, who it affects, its impact. |
| Step 4 | Using Emotional Appeal to Inspire Action | Emotional appeals in advocacy messages are designed to create a powerful connection between the customer and the brand. By appealing to people’s emotions, advocates can create a sense of relevance, urgency, and connection that drives them to take action. |
| Step 5 | Provide facts, data about the problem | Data is important to demonstrate that a problem exists and to support your position. Look for facts that are relevant to your audience. For instance, state data would be important to a state legislator or a member of Congress from your state, while facility data would be used when talking to a nursing home official. |
| Step 6 | Share a story or give an example of the problem | An example or story puts a human face on the issue and makes it real and more compelling. Again, make sure the example is relevant to your audience, such as an experience a constituent had in a legislator’s district, or a resident had in the administrator’s nursing home). |
| Step 7 | Connect the issue to the audience’s values, concerns, or self-interest | Show your audience how this interest fits with what they care about, want or need. Learn what you can about the person. For example, is the legislator an opponent of “big government?” or a champion of social issues? Is the nursing home administrator concerned about the facility’s reputation in the community or about competition with other nursing homes in the area? |