“Awareness. It’s an awareness campaign.”
How many times have you heard those words? How many times have you SAID them?
There’s a lot of chatter and advice swirling for the upcoming midterm election. And the election itself is sure to heat up. You can use social media for political campaigns to set your candidate apart this fall.
What kind of experience are you giving your customers and potential customers with your social media accounts? Are you providing exciting, engaging content that tells a story? That tells your story?
As a marketer, you deal with a lot of interference in how your message reaches customers. It can be a daunting task to get your content to the right people at the right time. Before the internet, marketers and advertisers pushed through all kinds of barriers. They did numerous studies, polls, market surveys and more to try and find the perfect placement and creative. Then, the digital age came along. With Google then Facebook and others, marketers and advertisers thought they saw the glimpse of a shortcut. Maybe there was, but even so, that shortcut has now closed.
While social media played a slow, simmering role in earlier elections, it’s clear the impact of the platform on elections wasn’t fully realized until the most recent presidential campaign. From Twitter rants to the influx of bots, we can see now that social media is a place where political campaigns can be made or broken. If you’re on a campaign team, whether for a candidate, platform, party, or ballot issue, you’ll want to pay attention. You can’t ignore social media. In fact, not only do you have to pay attention, you need to have a strategy.
We’ve seen over the past year that digital ads are losing their traction. From Facebook (and their recent issues) to cookies following customers across the internet, these ads are quickly fading into the background.
And while 39% of consumers attributed their declined perception of social ads to recent political events, the top reason for the drop cited by 58% of respondents was simply seeing too many social ads overall. – Sprout Social
We know the latest revelations about Facebook are having a significant effect on the value of Facebook overall, and that definitely matters to shareholders. But what about marketers and brands? Do current events translate to even more difficulties for those of us trying to connect with our customers online with social media marketing? The answer is absolutely, and we don’t know what the overall and ultimate effect will be. So what can we do right now to ensure our efforts on our social platforms are making a positive impact on our brand reputation and sales numbers?
Are you using paid influencers in your digital marketing? Whether you are or aren’t, it’s important to look at how effective these tactics really are. You can’t put all your marketing eggs (or budget) in one basket. Especially paid influencers. As we learn more about how many fake accounts are out there and how many accounts are padded, each influencer needs to be carefully vetted.
As campaign season starts heating up, we know candidates are looking for more ways to reach, inform, and engage voters. Like any press or communications outlet, social media can work for or against your campaign—swinging either way in a short period of time. But your campaign has more control over your social media than you think. You can move beyond survival and use the tools at hand to thrive online and all the way to the polls.
You’re probably familiar with many of the ways brands are (creepily) finding customers online. From retargeting campaigns to Facebook ads that seem to read your mind, the touch points and opportunities keep growing. In our past post How Brands are Beating Google to Customers, we talked a little bit about the “Moment of Expression”.
This new data point in the buyer’s journey creates yet another opportunity for brands to connect and create intimacy one-on-one. Thanks to social media, we can find individuals before they hit the search bar or even ask their friends or family for recommendations. This is where they give us a hint into their future purchases.