This is part 2 of 3 blogs posts Past, Present and Future of Political Digital Marketing. You can find part 1 here, Is Your Campaign in the Past? Using old political digital marketing tactics is a sure sign you’re behind the times.

This blog post is going to tell you whether your campaign is using modern tactics. Make an appointment with Ryan Gravatt at Raconteur Media if you’re already concerned about your campaign’s political digital marketing.

Is Your Campaign Using Modern Political Digital Marketing Tactics?

Political campaigns are shoestring operations. An overarching concern within all aspects of a shoestring operation is how to stretch the budget. Political campaigns wrestle with the question, “Can we spend less and get the same or better result?”

Political digital marketing is the answer in most cases.

Political digital marketing costs less relative to the traditional tactics that enable campaigns to scale quickly and frequently to your supporters and audience.

Resist tactical evolution, especially if their tactics helped them win and especially when those perceived have a perceived value of helping them win again. Why? Campaigns have stakeholders – consultants, candidates and staff – who hold on to the status quo, and their intransigence to new tactics is the obstacle. It’s understandable. Why change what works?

Your Campaign is in the Present IF…

Your Website Loads Quickly

And by quickly I mean less than 10 seconds. Mach Metrics released a study that the average landing page loads in 22 seconds on a mobile device. That’s key because for a modern political campaign, more than 50% of your traffic should be coming into a landing page. You’re driving most of that traffic to landing pages with advertising. So a page that loads slowly is a leak in your pipeline for locking down votes, raising money and spending wisely.

You are building an email list of voters and donors

It’s important to know who is on your email list. While open rates, click rates and the size of your list are important metrics, having voters and donors on your list correlates to success on election day. Donors are voters. And while donors are financial contributors, any dollar they give your campaign is a vote you can count on election day. Voters may become donors, but not always. Voting and contributing to political candidates are habits. So having an email of people who are not voters and donors means you are making assumptions in your communications and marketing. To belabor the point, grooming people to become voters and donors is hard, expensive work. So start your list building by reaching out to voters and donors in your district.

Your advertising is data-driven

Data-driven advertising for political and issue campaigns is the best, most efficient tactic for modern political digital marketing. Stop any advertising you’re doing that is not data driven. Demographic targeting wastes money. It’s a wish rather than a strategy. You’re hoping, wishing that people who vote will see your digital ads when you use demographic targeting. Example: Let’s use Facebook to advertise to people who watch Fox News.

A data-driven campaign uses a source of voters within Facebook or an advertising network to deliver ads only to those voters, no one else. Nothing gives you a better return on your advertising spend than delivering your message to the right voters at the right time.

You are making data-based decisions

A modern political campaign makes decisions using data. And there’s so much data in political digital marketing it helps campaigns execute the best, smartest tactics. If your digital marketing vendor doesn’t provide specific analytics reports, demand it. You can measure the quality of your Website traffic. You can measure the quality of your social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. You certainly can measure the quality of your advertising campaigns with advertising reports, which need to go beyond impressions and clicks for sure.

Get Free Advice

I hope you found this blog post helpful or at least it made you ask yourself some questions about what you should be or could be doing. For some free advice, make an appointment with Ryan Gravatt at Raconteur Media if you’re already concerned about your campaign’s political digital marketing.