Digital Profession

Tips for pitching your case

Be clear about what you are pitching and set a high-level goal.

Contents

Elevator pitch

It should be memorable and clear. Use a 20-second statement to explain what you want to do and why.

Example

We need a content strategy for our agency to help users find what they need on their preferred channel. It will help us to create usable content and minimise channel hopping.

Align your pitch to your agency goals

Learn what motivates senior leadership to deliver. Look at your agency’s strategic and business plans. Your content strategy will support those plans.

Show how your agency needs to improve its content to help achieve its goals and to support corporate values.

Find out what works for your stakeholders and tailor your pitch to that. It could be a slide deck, an elevator pitch meeting or a concise email.

Your pitch should be simple and include:

  • the opportunity for change
  • the need for change (for example, support your case with quotes from user research, case studies, and statistics)
  • the need to follow broader government guidelines, such as the Digital Service Standard.
  • what you need from the decision-makers (for example, time, money and people)
  • what the risks are
  • what it will involve (for example, a roadmap with activities, costs and delivery milestones)

When to pitch your project and ask for budget

Work out when the best time is to ask for budget. This may be at the end of the year when teams may have spare money in their budgets. Find out when budgets are being planned for the next financial year.

Senior decision-makers may be thinking about return on investment. If you can, you should show the value of improving your content in dollar terms.

Key takeaway

Numbers are a powerful, persuasive tool. Create a ‘shock and awe’ slide that pulls together data showing the cost of poor content.

The cost could be the time spent by call centres answering website queries. Or it could be the time spent getting approval for a piece of content in a poor workflow.

What's next

Tell them the first thing you'll need to do. For example:

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