Dominate the Competition
Marketing in the political space can become heated very quickly, but a consistent and well-planned strategy, prior to election time, can help tremendously with marketing to voters.
There are many strategies that marketers use to get politicians in front of voters. Some are historically successful and some are newer strategies where the competition may not be as high. Here, we will discuss both types of advertising approaches.
How to Advertise for Political Marketing
Here are some of the top ways to advertise in the political field:
- TV
- Direct Mail
- Negative Advertising
- Digital Advertising
- Live Engagement and PR
TV remains one of the most prevalent channels for political advertising today, with TV spending rising to $9 billion during the mid-term election of 2021. Digital advertising is another popular form of marketing to reach people of all ages – especially young voters on social media.
Which Digital Marketing Channels Are Best?
Social Media Marketing
So, which marketing channels are effective in the political field? Social media is an efficient way to reach millions of voters. Marketers can pay to serve ads on social media and/or post organically to boost engagement and awareness. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok are popular social media platforms with millions of users consuming media each day. Due to its rising popularity, social media can be quite competitive despite being newer than TV. It is also much more affordable than producing and airing a commercial.
Social media campaigns will become optimized as the platform studies the political audience and retarget people who saw the ad or website but didn’t click or engage with it. Consider short, political message videos on TikTok, links to blog posts on LinkedIn, and Facebook ads that target your ideal voter audience. Targeted social media campaigns are highly efficient and accurate for political marketers.
Television Marketing
TV commercials are not going away any time soon – especially for political marketing campaigns. Marketers can reach millions of viewers with a visual and engaging message on TV screens, tablets, and phones. This is a great medium for increasing awareness and building a brand image. The caveat to TV commercials is figuring out which spots generate the best or worst results. Thankfully, software solutions can help track this information.
Tracking Political Campaigns Across Channels
You’ve launched your political TV campaign and the results are coming in, but how do you track where they came from? You may have launched a social media campaign simultaneously which doesn’t make it any easier to organize and track impressions and clicks. Automated software saves time and improves campaign results by aligning all of your campaigns with the results you’ve earned. With certain software, you can even layer your own Google Analytics data over radio and TV spot times to determine which commercials and air times generated the best results for website traffic.
How to Choose the Right Software to Track and Organize Campaigns
First, determine the capabilities and features of a software before committing to a contract. Advertisers should look for a package with benefits that are worth the price – whether it’s saving time or improving performance. Establish your biggest challenges when dealing with political marketing. What solutions do you need? Perhaps you want help managing social media campaigns at scale. Or, maybe you need help tracking conversions for your television campaigns. Once you determine the benefits you seek, it’s time to compare the options.
Software solutions give you more control over digital campaigns and help you organize your marketing channels in one place. With GaleForce’s suite of digital marketing software, political marketers can achieve this, as well as target the right audience in the right place, making sure they hone in on ideal voters. With GaleForce, you’ll always have a strong understanding of where your results come from. Our suite of products integrates paid social media, paid search, and even your traditional media like TV and radio, automating the technical aspects of optimization. You can also utilize Media Insights, the GaleForceMedia feature that lets you track which television and radio spots drive the most traffic to your site – an invaluable feature for political marketers. Learn more about a free two-week demo here.
