Facebook announced yesterday it will make it easier for users to turn off political ads.

Starting today for some people and rolling out to everyone in the US over the next few weeks, people will be able to turn off all social issue, electoral or political ads from candidates, Super PACs or other organizations that have the “Paid for by” political disclaimer on them.

For the past year, Raconteur strategists have been predicting this day would come. Here are some steps to take.

What You Need to Do

1. Evaluate Your Digital Strategy – This changes your paid digital advertising budgets and plans. Find out what changes your digital team recommends and why. Talk to Raconteur if you don’t get any satisfactory answers. 

2. Check Your Email List – Many campaigns depend on Facebook to push messages. The reach is going to drop as fewer voters see your boosted posts on Facebook. Develop a better email routine to strengthen your one-to-many communication. Our voter contact poll shows voters prefer email. You may also read more in a Free Advice post about email.

3. Get Reports & Analytics – These changes on Facebook could quickly or slowly change the results you see. Make informed decisions about your path forward. Demand reporting and analytics to measure and forecast how this affects you. Make sure you’re measuring this against a baseline of activity. If you don’t get the kind of reports you need, Raconteur can help.

In Raconteur’s Free Advice blog, we published a series of 3 posts making recommendations to get your campaign ready for 2020. These changes on Facebook mean you should assess your campaign’s health and reliance on the platform to reach and engage your audience and voters. Any overreliance likely needs to change as soon as possible.

Part 1: Is your campaign in the past and using old tactics of political digital marketing?

Part 2: Is your campaign using modern political digital marketing tactics? 

Part 3: Is your campaign ready for the future of political digital marketing? ( this is where we predict problems for campaigns on Facebook )