Remember how you used to beg your parents to stay up late to watch those forbidden TV shows? You’d plan just what to say, check what kind of mood they were in, and then make your move with your sweetest smile. And, if you were lucky, you won them over and got to stay up past your bedtime to see that favorite show!

Was it luck or did you know just what to do to push your parent’s buttons? It seems like all kids know how to push buttons…good or bad. Remember a few of those tricks from your childhood when you think about championing a cause. Pushing buttons is what grabs people – whether your cause is staying up late, agriculture, food safety, or education.

Before you start pushing buttons, make sure you know who you’re talking to and what’s important to them. Selecting a target market is crucial to ensuring your message really gets across. For example, look at pictures and messages from the highly successful “Got Milk?” campaign. It’s pretty clear to see which ads target mothers concerned about nutrition, children who want cool food that taste good, or teenagers who ‘want to be like Mike.’ Think about who you really need to connect with if you’re going to be successful for your cause. Helpful tips:

• Identify specific groups
• Look for key influencers
• Write them down!

Prioritize them. Once you clearly understand who you’re trying to connect with, you need to find out what buttons to push. What’s important to them? These are what I affectionately call “hot buttons.” A hot button is different for each person, such as quality of life, family, socio-economic status, respect, or profitability. If you can appeal to these hot buttons for your target audience, you’re going to be able to connect your cause.

How do you identify what somebody’s hot buttons are? It’s actually quite simple…ASK QUESTIONS! Spend some time with your target audience or a representative sample to ask some open-ended questions. Listen to what they have to say and then ask a few more follow-up questions about the ideas they seem to really care about. Remember – listening is your number one skill in successfully championing a cause. The second most important skill? Observing! Look at the person you’re talking to and see what you can learn from their tone, eyes, reactions, or office.

Remember, it’s difficult to listen or really observe if you’re the one doing all the talking. Once you look and listen for those hot buttons, you can begin to figure out how to connect your cause. If you are passionate about your cause, it should be fairly easy for you to get creative in finding some ways to hit your target audience’s hot buttons. Why should your cause matter to them? How does it impact them? What can you do for them?

The next article “Championing Your Cause: Knowing Why & How” will give you more useful tools for furthering your cause. In the meantime, get to work identifying your target audience and their hot buttons! After all, isn’t your cause worth more than your childhood antics of plotting to stay up late and watch TV?