Win Your Election: Modern Political Campaign Strategies for Success
WINTER SPRINGS, FLORIDA, USA, December 2, 2022
Political campaign strategies have traditionally included these three core components. Print, signs and knocking on doors. Everyone will tell you that in order to win you must have these three things and knocking on thousands and thousands of doors is the most important.
Here are some additional and more modern political campaign strategies that can help you win your election:
1. Build your campaign website early:
Start getting it index on Google by creating content as frequently as possible on your blog. Create a Google My Business listing and link your website to further solidify your ranking and placement on search quickly in your local voter area. Give Google a few hundred dollars in advertising dollars to unlock that first page visibility.
2. Develop an Engaging Message
To get votes, you need to develop a message that resonates with voters. Your message should be specific to your district, and focus on solutions to the problems constituents there face. Make sure to also include your plan for implementing those solutions. Hammer this message early and often across your website, social media and email communications.
3. Use Social Media
Utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you reach new voters. Chances are your opponent will not be as savvy as you in this area and that is your opportunity to gain the advantage. Don’t listen to anybody who tells you social media is not the most important aspect of all political campaign strategies. Social media helps you reach the most people for the lowest cost possible, especially if you leverage video content.
4. Data is king
Building email database from voter databases, local business networks, scrapping local Facebook groups, request data from the city via information requests, by any means possible, you need the data. The candidate with the most data or audience will most likely win. Not only can we email that data, we will use that data to define our ad targeting.
5. Send Email Often
Leveraging email is essential in all modern political campaign strategies. Don’t be shy and feel like you are sending too many emails. Email has changed, and people are able to handle more email than you think. The important thing to realize is that most email sends get 20-40% open rate, so it is essential to send more email to reach the entire database. Also, focus on smaller sub sets of your main database. Don’t send ALL every time, it’s important sometimes to send to the engaged, or perhaps those who have never opened in effort to reduce the bandwidth costs and consistently grow your engaged users. Also, change the format of your emails. Some may include a YouTube embed, while other emails might be text based only. It’s important to understand that depending on the voter, they may want to the content in different formats. Older voters may like to read longer form copy in an email while a younger voter appreciates a YouTube play button.
6. Fundraise
Fundraising is obviously a fundamental component of any political campaign. Make sure to allocate some of your time and resources toward this activity. Don’t be shy to ask people for donations. Remember, donations are votes. The more people who donate, the more votes you will get. Every dollar helps. Ask for donations via email monthly and when you meet with people interested in your campaign, ask for a donation. Ask and you shall receive both the donation and the vote.
7. Host Events
Host events that attract potential voters. These events should provide them with an opportunity to learn more about your campaign and to meet you in person. This is also a great opportunity to generate new leads by collecting contact information from attendees. Even if a person is unable to join your event, the marketing and promotion of that event demonstrates to the voter that you are accessible and engaged.
8. Advertise:
Advertising can make or break you. A paid ad strategy is essential to not only reaching the right voters, but reaching those voters with enough frequency to make impact on their voting decision. It’s no longer enough to be “active on social” because without a paid strategy to boost your content, it will not be effective in reaching enough people. Creating audiences on social media using your data is critical to getting the frequency needed to create influence.
