Written by Janine Pollack
January 13, 2022
MNI Blog / 3 minute read
Win local elections with a comprehensive campaign marketing strategy that combines political advertising on social media and tv advertising. Learn more.
Win Local Elections with a Comprehensive Campaign Marketing Strategy
Solid political campaign marketing strategies can make all the difference in winning local elections. Not only can marketing for politicians create more awareness around a politician's brand, but you can also create ads that stand out and target ideal audiences by combining different types of political advertising.
In fact, FiveThirtyEight reports that there is a strong association between campaign spending and political success. However, spending doesn't matter if you're not marketing to voters correctly. The best way for local politicians to get heard is with well-rounded political campaign marketing strategies and a mixture of types of political advertising such as digital (targeting voters with OTT, social media, email, etc.) and traditional marketing (i.e., political magazine ads or political tv advertising).
Reach and Inspire Voters with Content
Politicians have a "brand" just like businesses do. Content is important for creating value for and from that brand by allowing readers to understand your goals and objectives after the election. It also:
- Allows readers to connect with and trust you
- Let's people get to know you personally and professionally
- Get your message out in political print ads
Content enhances your relationship with the right audience and brings more attention to the message you want to get out. This is because your voters can resonate with your story and share it with their friends and family in person, on social, and more.
Better yet, it comes in a variety of forms — blogs, videos, podcasts, newsletters — so it appeals to a range of people in the many ways they like to consume content. Most notably for local politicians being testimonials from supporters. After all, 72% of consumers say they trust brands with positive testimonials more than their counterparts. You could be that brand!
Establish Trust with Magazine Ads
Studies show that there is still a lot of perceived trustworthiness for magazine ads. FinancesOnline reports that most (82%) people trust print ads over other forms of marketing, and you can benefit significantly from the 95% reach among 25-year-olds and younger.
When it comes down to it, readers have developed connections to their favorite magazines and have come to enjoy its promotions, so print advertising can be an effective way to reach voters. You can use them to:
- Show your stance on issues
- Address current events
- Remind voters about elections
- Deliver powerful messaging
Get Interactive When Advertising in Political Campaigns
As technology advances, so should the way you interact and engage with your voters. For politicians, this can include using calls to action in each piece of content and tracking how many voters initiated action. Like any method in marketing, monitoring and measuring your results will allow you to strengthen your strategies and ensure you're focusing more on what reaches and resonates with your voters.
A great example of getting interactive with your audience in print advertising is the new trend of using QR codes to take readers to the candidate's website. This skips the extra steps voters would take to get to know more about you and increases the chance they will take time to do it.
Intertwining Types of Political Advertising: Digital and Traditional Marketing
Of course, you should consider both print and digital if you really want to maximize your potential, as Finances Online reports have also found a 400% increase in effectiveness among marketing campaigns that do.
Websites aren't the only way — engaging with voters through political advertising on social media is also effective in getting voters interested in you and ready to vote. According to the American Bar Association, this started with the success of Barack Obama's online campaigns and surged in power by the time the Trump campaign was used with the help of hyper-targeting from acquired data.
Chances are in-person campaigning could be limited this year and for some more years to follow, so you need to be open to other opportunities to market yourself and bring people to your website.
OTT Advertising: Target Local Voters with Precision
Over-the-top (OTT) refers to the process of delivering content to viewers via the internet, leaving out traditional means of delivery like cable television. Your political OTT ads can be delivered through computers, tablets, mobiles, gaming consoles, and Smart TVs. And more often than not, they're through services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, etc.
The reason OTT is a powerful tool for political ads is not just because the number of paid U.S. TV subscriptions has dropped by 2.7 million in the last few years, and the number of cord-cutters is predicted to reach 55.1 million by 2022. It's also because politicians can hyper-target and segment their reach on OTT.
The truth is, OTT ads drive results. Local elections can have a far-reaching impact on many issues, including cannabis legalization and other movements. This is why local politicians need to create compelling OTT ads that influence changes as part of their political campaign marketing strategies.
Additional benefits include:
- Benefit from a holistic, cross-channel (i.e., social and email integration) reach
- Reach defined groups of voters
- Target exact locations
- Target with the use of first-party data
Work With MNI On Your Political Campaign Marketing Strategies
One of the biggest contributing factors for not getting the votes is not reaching a large enough portion of your audience with your message — MNI's political advertising capabilities can change that for you. With the help of local consumer data, we can make it easier than ever for you to communicate the policies and values that matter most to your voters through effective political marketing campaigns.
About the Author
@Janine Pollack, MNI Integrated Marketing Director and self-appointed Storyteller in Chief, leads the brands commitment to generating content that informs and inspires. Before MNI, Janine worked with Fortune 500 companies and world-renowned education institutions on numerous research and white papers, podcasts and thought-leadership and education campaigns.
