How to Get Your Ad and Marketing Messages Across During The Election

The 2020 Presidential Election is right around the corner. On all platforms, you are seeing voting ads, candidate promotional videos and the latest news on the election. With so much coverage on the election, how do you get your ads to stand out and reach the right target audience?

Consumers want information that is real and straight to the point. Here are some steps you can take to have a successful advertising and marketing strategy during any election or campaign time period. 

• Discuss Goals. When formulating any strategy, it is important to have clear and attainable SMART goals. Look at what products, social media accounts and search engines you will be applying these goals to. Goals can include but are not limited to brand awareness, clicks to your site and/or new leads. Your goals may also change depending on how well your ad or marketing strategy is going. 
• Identify your Target Audience. Knowing your audience will make all the difference when planning the rest of your ad and marketing strategy. Think of the ideal person or company that would benefit from your services. Writing down all of the characteristics that come to mind is a good place to start. For example, age range, location, personality traits, values, work ethic, work language, and even down to the types of social media they use. Once you have identified your target audience you will be able to shift your focus. The broader your audience is, the further away you might be from those who could benefit most. 
• Develop Content. The types of content that can be produced has evolved over the years, so learning what content is appropriate for your company is important. Try to stick to content that is familiar to you and your audience. If you have been successful with the content you’ve been producing so far, enhancing your content to draw attention away from the election coverage and focus the audience on what you are offering will also help your SEO. Some examples of content you can create are blog posts, videos, podcasts and email marketing.  
• Discover your Keywords. Once you know your audience, discovering your keywords is the next most important thing to pinpoint. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help with this processing: If you were to search your products what would you type in? What are your service locations? What are your hours of operation? What do your competitors focus on and how is their performance? Google Trends is a great way to see how your keywords are performing. You are able to pick a time period, location, and search the keywords you’re interested in.
• Highlight Key Topics. This is the step where you have the opportunity to be straight forward and show exactly what you are offering to your audience. You can rate the topics of your choice from 3-0, three being the most important topic to 0 being the least important topic your audience may search. Three would be your top keywords that would make your post most clickable, two would be a secondary search, leaving one or zero as a search that may be used less often. 
• Plan, Promote and Manage. Creating a social content calendar will help keep you organized and on track. Plan to post quality content often. In the calendar include what posts are being shared to platforms at specific days and times. Once your marketing strategy is confirmed, it is time to promote your content. One way you can promote new content is by sending it to your subscribers in an email campaign. This can be viewed as personable and exclusive. Target Outreach to influencers who didn’t know about your product or mentioning other resources you’ve worked within your content is another great way to promote new content. Paid ads are the quickest way to promote your content and easily track the success. 
• Keep Content Fresh. If you see a post is not performing as well as expected, look into ways to improve your post to reach its full potential. Content should be up to date and relevant to any current promotion. Content should also mirror your brand to keep your image cohesive on all platforms. 
• Monitor content success. At the end of the day, you may have thought out the best strategy, but it might not be performing the way you initially planned. Google Analytics is an amazing resource to see what areas of your ad or content may be lacking. Just like how your goals may change, your plan may as well!

Following these steps will help you to send out a clear and straightforward message that won’t get lost in the shuffle of election ads! This will help you to focus in on the right audience that will find and add value to your company, instead of a larger audience that may overlook your successful business.