Your Online Campaign Machine
At Last! Super-Targeted Advertising
With newspapers, then radio, and then television, shotgun-style advertising in a geographic region has been possible. And for people with a specific interest — knitting, archery, fast cars, home décor — special-focus magazines have been wonderful for niche advertisers. But never before have we been able to specify a specific geo-location, down almost to a single neighborhood, if desired … and at the same time to specify the age, gender, and interests of the people who see the advertisement.
Political candidates have had the same problem: spend a fortune on hit-or-miss advertisements, know that half the readers are in the wrong party, and no control over what age, what gender, what interests will actually see your marketing.
But now, we can do that. For example, in a recent Primary election, our late-comer candidate won by 19 points over his well-known and experienced opponent. A key part of his campaign was showing super-targeted videos in the voting district. Here’s screen shot showing 5939 video views by voters, in only the first 5 days —
In just the first 5 days, Brian’s video presented his platform for 277 hours (more hours than exist in a week) to over 5000 voters. Another 4000 voters were exposed to the video. And all in all, during the last 5 weeks of the campaign, he got over 53,000 video views, by over 33,000 unique voters in his district.
How many votes do you think YOU would get if YOUR voters spent this much time watching YOU present YOUR platform?
Re-Targeting, also known as Re-Marketing
Unlike a yardsign which can only stand there (until knocked down or vandalized), we can now place your message in front of your targeted voters. That message might be to visit your website, watch your youtube video, attend your event, sign up for your email notices. And for every one that does, we can “tag” them.
And now, when they return to Facebook, we can ‘Re-Market’ to them … at a greatly reduced cost. So the person who visited your website (but didn’t do anything), sees repeating posts, videos, and more, at a fraction of the cost. Repetition is not only the key to name-recognition, it’s the key to engaging action on the part of your visiting voter.
Maybe they meant to sign up for your email, but life got in the way. The doorbell rang, their kid came home, they got an email, the dog chased the cat. And they simply forgot, just like you and I do. Does reminding them via Re-Marketing yield great (measured) results? You bet it does! And, it’s cheaper!
Easier to Bring Back a Visitor than to Attract a New Visitor
From now on, we can use our segmented list to remind that voter. And then, they remember. They remember to make a donation, become a volunteer, attend an event, watch another video, host a meet-and-greet, knock on some doors, friend you on Facebook and share your posts and videos with their friends. (The average facebook user has 220 friends. Wow!)
A Cost-Effective Revolution in Political Marketing
Are you starting to see the potential here? Astounding broadcasting, segmented advertising, persuasive videos, viral sharing of your message, and remarketing to make it happen more and more and more, and the remarketing done for pennies on the dollar.
Programmatic, super-targeted advertising — the holy grail for advertisers — is what the big boys have been doing for decades with astronomical-cost direct mail. And now you, for a fraction of the cost, can run rings around what people used to do.
And in general, your opponent doesn’t know anything about it. He’ll never know what hit him. Too bad. 🙂