What are the key online marketing strategies that political campaigns should use heading into the 2017 elections?

here we can discuss and learn digital marketing strategies for Bharti Janta Party (BJP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress Party etc.

A Complete Voter Psychology & Behavior Based Strategies 

Example: Aam Aadmi Party has taken to Social Media as much as it has taken to Indian politics. … AAP has been showcasing its political journeys on Youtube and facebook through the effective use of videos. … It is a great marketing strategy.

As we all know, social media is now a core element of modern political campaigns. – Elections are decided by small percentage of the population that consists of undecided voters. Mastering the art of social media strategies is essential for political campaigns to sway these voters.

The last two presidential elections proved that digital marketing, including social media, now plays a very integral part on how the public currently chooses their elected officials.

An effective digital marketing campaign during an election cycle can bring you significantly greater visibility and a lower cost than any TV ad buys.

Political campaigns have become more intentional about where and with whom they invest their money. Technology and digital advertising are driving these decisions largely because the internet and social media have fundamentally changed how campaigns strategize and communicate with their constituents.

Must Read: India Political Consultant Chandigarh India

Candidates, advocacy groups, and operatives are under more pressure than ever to get the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time. In fact,  – 2016 political ad spending will top $8 billion, with over $1 billion on digital ads alone.

Below are four ways in which digital and social media advertising are changing politics.

Even in the 2016 election cycle, there are plenty of mistakes by candidates on all levels of government.

Most likely, your potential voter spends more time online during the day, even if it’s simply to check their social media sites, than they do watching television.

As your political campaign digital media strategist and consultant, we can provide the campaign agranular level of targeting that can not be achieved with a television ad buy.

The goal is to make the candidate be seen to their constituents as their trusted friend and advisor, so they feel at greater ease in casting their vote for your campaign.

A social media election campaign should have following activities :-

• Setting your objectives
• Set a target Reach & Locations
• Plan your Budget
• Execution Plan
• Execution
• Review at various stages
• Rethinking on Strategy
• Execution
• End Review

Setting your objectives 

1. Ultimate objective of a political party is to win elections & form government which is possible if you have 2/3rd majority in parliament.

That political objective can be adapted directly into a various social media political objectives :-
1. Build positive brand image of the party- Influence
2. Try to catch a buzz whether positive, negative or neutral – Sampling
3. En cash positive image of your leaders especially active online leaders
4. Target locations where there is internet & smartphone penetration – Categorize your target locations under places where you have strong hold & where you haven’t won in last Lok Sabha elections. With these categorization, budget planning as well as strategy devising becomes much more easy.

Target locations or location based advertising is most important element for a successful social media political plan.

Set a target Reach & Locations

Social media political campaign – Social media has created greater accountability

Social media platforms allow for voters to experience a deeper level of connectivity with a campaign, and every post, tweet, and policy stance is scrutinized by the world. The internet is the great equalizer; everyone has a soapbox and 39% of US adults engage in political activities via social networking sites. It takes a split second to become a trending topic, and all of the presidential candidates have trended on Twitter this election cycle over accusations of flip-flopping on issues. As a result, candidates may have to spend the following new cycle justifying their stance or retracting a statement for fear of losing votes.

Firstly, Twitter and Facebook are the 2 channels that have proved to be the most beneficial. Election candidates should really be using them to engage their voters into dialogue. The discussions could be on pressing topics, values and views of the candidate. Other great posts can include information on causes the party supports, results they have achieved, etc. The point is community building. Twitter should be used for dialogue as well, and the discussions there are usually much more continuous.

Going viral (positively viral) is definitely an added benefit, as it would increase the party’s reach among all types of audiences. And don’t think that via social media you can only target the younger population, because, for instance, one of the companies whose profiles I manage have a target group of 40-60 year olds and we are quite successful with Facebook!

Social media drives action

The most convenient way for a voter to engage with a campaign is online. At the click of a button, one can donate money, complete a poll, RSVP for an event, or sign a petition to demonstrate their support. In September 2015, Twitter launched $Cashtag, an online platform that allows users to donate directly to political campaigns or causes via a Tweet. President Obama notably leveraged the power of online advertising by raising over $504 million from digital efforts during his 2012 campaign.

(1) View Goals Through The Acquisition Marketing Lens: Focus on what matters most: acquiring enough voters to win. Acquiring more voters will hinge in part on acquiring more volunteers to identify voters and turn them out to the polls. Both voter and volunteer acquisition are  enabled by acquiring more donors who will provide larger amounts of  capital. Fundamentally, acquisition marketing is what campaigns are all  about. Message matters, too, but only insofar as it furthers these three  acquisition goals.

(2) Approach Acquisition With An Emphasis On Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): While  not everything that matters can be measured, not everything that can be measured matters. Focus on measuring metrics in a meaningful way.  Measure which type of donor provides the greatest CLV: those acquired through online search, email campaigns, or social media. Is a Facebook supporter more valuable than a Twitter follower? Measure and find out using a URL builder tool that tracks the origin of a donor, then monitor how much that donor gives over time. Remember that CLV can also be measured through volunteer activity metrics like door knocks or phone calls, too.

(3) Use Social Media With A Greater Emphasis On Influencer Marketing:The key to success on social is robust engagement, but political organizations have varying levels of resources, whether money or  manpower. Become smarter about engagement by identifying and  prioritizing those social media supporters (or potential supporters) with a larger online audience and, more importantly, greater influence. Is a supporter’s social action more likely to be shared? Working with a strong base of influencers, who might share the persona of Amy Awesome  below, will provide great customer referral value (CRV) and boost your  online influence.

(4) Make A-B Testing An Essential Component Of All Digital Marketing Efforts: Whether you’re running online ads or email campaigns, anything digital can be tested and optimized. Solutions like Optimizely have made A-B testing for websites and mobile apps easier than it’s ever been. A-B testing for social sharing that indicates the best  headlines, copy, and images can also provide a new and critical means to  boost digital marketing efforts, particularly given the tremendous  source of website traffic provided by social media. This will foster  greater awareness and higher acquisition conversion rates, leading to more victories.

(5) Reach New Audiences By Seeding Content Via An Established Publisher:Since candidates are constantly looking to tap into new media to reach new audiences, consider promoting policy positions that address topics of  interest to a publisher’s readership and placing a sponsored post on that publisher platform. For example, a candidate who blogs about wanting to create more jobs through policies that expand internet access, promote STEM education, and modernize our immigration system could consider a paid placement for that post on a site like VentureBeat.

(6) Develop A Content Strategy That Is Platform-Specific: As  opposed to reposting the same content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,  and other social media websites, understand what type of content works  best on a given platform. Is positive or negative content more likely to be shared? Graphics or videos? Messages from the candidate, her family  members, or her supporters? What issues are most likely to resonate? In  an age of a surplus of information and a deficit of attention, being  thoughtful and deliberate about what you post is critical for maximizing  reach.

Political Campaign Digital Marketing
Strategist and Consultant

How Political Campaigns Use Digital Marketing

digital marketing tips to make your campaign more effective.

1. Understand your target audience.
Get factual data about your target audience online. Dig up verifiable insights like their estimated numbers, as the degree and cost of your campaign will depend on them. One way to estimate the number of your target audience is to use Facebook’s Ads Manager. This tool will let you know the estimated number of your target audience based on target location, interest, ages, gender, and other demographics.

2. Know your competition.
To win your competition, be knowledgeable about your opponents. Gather important data that you can use to be more competitive. These pieces of information may include their websites, social media pages, followers and supporters, political platforms, audience engagement, strategies and tactics used, and even the performance of their current digital campaigns.

There are many tools and platforms on the Internet that can be utilized to spy your competition. Even Google Web Search and Facebook Graph Search can be handy in searching important information about your competitors. Having a Facebook Page will also give you the ability to watch the Facebook Pages of your rivals.

3. Build your digital marketing team.
An effective digital marketing campaign cannot be accomplished by a person alone. For a successful campaign, consider forming a team which may include the following:

– Digital marketing strategist. The one who will plan and create your digital marketing plan. A digital marketing strategist can also lead your digital marketing team.
– Writers. The ones who will write articles, news and stories for your campaign.
– Graphic designers and photographers. They can create and generate engaging images and infographics for your campaign.
– Other content creators. These include video producers and animators who can create useful videos and presentations for your campaign.
– Social media managers. The people who are in charge of your social media pages and social media marketing.
– Search engine marketers. The ones who are in charge of your visibility, authority and reputation on Google and other search engines.
– Other professionals who can help your team execute the campaign smoothly.

Furthermore, your digital marketing team should not only include digital marketing professionals but the politician, political party, and non-digital campaign managers should also be involved with the team to make sure that your overall campaign will be cohesive.

4. Create social media pages and channels.
Aside from creating personal social media accounts, the politician should also have social media pages. Hence, these must be created:

– Facebook Page. This will be used to reach your target audience on Facebook and run Facebook Ads.
– Twitter Account. This will be used to reach your target audience on Twitter and run Twitter Ads.
– YouTube Channel. This will be used to upload your potentially viral videos and reach target audience on YouTube.
– Instagram. Instagram is a popular mobile app that has 400 million active monthly users worldwide. It is widely used by younger voters, hence, utilizing this app is a must.
– Other social media platforms. Depending on your target audience, there are other social networks that can be useful in your digital marketing campaign. But take note that focus is important so you might just want to concentrate on social media platforms that can really help you in achieving your goals.

5. Claim your digital brands.
Prevent other people or groups from using fake websites and social media accounts out of your name. To do that, consider accomplishing the following steps immediately:

– Register your domain name (e.g., www.yourname.com) before it is registered by other parties who might use it to build a fake website.
– Claim your username on Facebook (e.g., facebook.com/yourname), Twitter (e.g., Twitter.com/yourname or @yourname), and other social media channels before they are claimed and used by your opponents as fake accounts to ruin your reputation.
– Verify your social media accounts to show their authenticity and to distinguish them from fake accounts.

6. Build a complete website.
To be loved more, the politician should be known more. Public service is about honesty and transparency. Since most people are already on the Internet, the politician should have an accessible website where people can read his biography, political platforms, and other important information that will convince audience to vote for him. Unlike social media pages, professional websites are more controllable and scalable. It’s also more cost-effective and interactive than traditional political materials, like billboards and tarpaulins.

Your website is a must since it will serve as your headquarter online. It can be the mother ship of your digital marketing content that you can spread through blogging, search engine marketing and social media marketing.

A website developer will help you build a website for your campaign, but usually, digital marketing firms or professionals already offer website development as their add-on service.

7. Do professional blogging.
High quality and engaging blog posts can bring tons of traffic to your website. It can also increase your search engine visibility, boost your social media presence, and reach your target audience. Politicians who personally write their blog posts can become closer to their audience since they can personally touch the lives of people. But of course professional writers and bloggers can also help in crafting the best blog posts for your political movement.

Remember that political marketing is not different from business marketing. So don’t be too pushy but be a magnet to your audience. Here are some examples of ideas you can publish in your blog:

– Blog about the current problems in your area and offer a list of practical solutions.
– Blog about a list of popular tourist destinations in your target location. This topic usually attracts a lot of readers. It will also show how a politician cares about the tourism industry and environment in his nation or region.
– Blog about interesting stories about the history in your region. It will show how familiar the politician is with the history of his native land.
– Blog about health and education, as these are some of the most important issues that a politician must address.
– Blog about fighting corruption and other problems in the society.
– Blog about practical solutions according to the politician’s platforms.
– Blog about the stories of the people whom the politician has already helped improve their lives. Make it like a case study to show the effectiveness of the politician to serve the public.
– Avoid blogging about the negative traits of your opponents, as this can backfire.

8. Do search engine optimization.
Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second or 3.5 billion searches per day. Google and other search engines are the best places to research important information about a political candidate online. Thus, having a higher visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) is also a must to gain more supporters and potential voters.

Here are some basic tips to optimize your website and content for the search engines:

– Use long-tail or specific keywords.
– Be creative with the title of your content.
– Write and publish in-depth articles.
– Improve the load speed of your website.
– Use a clean and minimalist theme for your website and blog.
– Publish highly engaging content that can attract back links.
– Improve the internal linking of related pages in your website.
– Improve your website’s user experience.
– Do guest blogging with other high-authority and relevant blogs.

To expand your knowledge about search engine optimization, read these 34 Actionable SEO tips to increase your brand’s search engine visibility.

9. Amplify your content marketing.
Your online content like blog posts and other online campaign materials have to reach the optimum number of your target audience. So here are some ways to strengthen your content marketing:

– Hire a professional photographer to capture high-quality images that you can use to add more life to your content.
– Create rich information-filled infographics for your target audience. Infographics are highly viral content that can be published in your blog and social media pages.
– Produce interesting and touching videos that can move the thoughts and emotions of your target audience.
– Have the right timing. Don’t just share and spread your content anytime but determine first the perfect time to do it.
– Use hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms to make your content more discoverable.
– Interact with your audience.

10. Utilize tools.
Digital marketing in the political arena can be tough and competitive. Hence, you have to use tools to make your campaign easier, faster and more productive. Google alone provides a lot of digital marketing tools that you can use with a single account. These tools include Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Calendar and Google Drive. Facebook also has a lot to offer with its Facebook Page Insights, Ads Manager, Graph Search, and Business Manager. To learn more tools that you can use for your digital marketing campaign, check out this list.

11. Join relevant social media groups.
You can use Facebook Graph search to find groups and communities that are related to your target audience. For example, if your target voters are from Tacloban City, you can simple use Facebook to search for groups of people who are living in Tacloban City.

Joining groups on social networks like Facebook will give you the opportunity to:

– listen to your target audience;
– know and understand what they need and how you can satisfy them;
– provide the right answers to their questions;
– and build good and close relationships with your potential supporters.

12. Get additional boost with Paid Ads.
Paid advertising like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords will further extend the reach of your digital marketing campaign. Organic online marketing is effective but by integrating it with paid advertising, it can be a lot more effective. Paid online advertising is also not as expensive as you think. In fact, based on my experience with the Philippine audience, a ₱1,000 ($20) worth of Facebook Ad is already enough to boost my Facebook post to reach at least a 100,000 targeted people on Facebook.

The total organic and paid reach in one of the posts in our Facebook Page.

Paid advertising can help you achieve the following goals at a faster rate:

– Grow your Facebook Page likes from the people who matters most to you
– Increase your Facebook posts’ reach and engagements (likes, comments and shares)
– Generate more exposure for your engaging content to trigger viral marketing
– Boost your website’s traffic through Google Adwords
– Increase your website’s traffic from Instagram and other mobile advertising platforms

13. Connect with bloggers and digital influencers.
Influential bloggers and social media influencers may not be as famous and as expensive as famous celebrities in your country, but they also have the power to reach hundred thousand or even millions of people online.

The articles and stories written and published by authority bloggers are usually what you can find on the search engine results pages when you search for something on Google. Social media influencers like people or brands that have popular Facebook Pages also have the power to influence their followers.

Professional bloggers and digital influencers can be tapped to support your political campaign online. By identifying bloggers and digital influencers whose followers are matched with your target audience, you can invite and hired them to help you gain more voters and supporters.

14. Monitor your campaign.
An effective digital marketing campaign is regularly monitored, analyzed and ensured that it is heading the right way. Using some of the tools I mentioned in Tip #10, such as Google Analytics and Faceook Page Insights, you can assess and evaluate the performance and progress of your digital marketing campaign. Regular reports must also be submitted, reviewed and analyzed to improve your campaign. These questions must be answered with intelligent data generated by your digital marketing campaign.

– Are you reaching your audience on social media according to your target?
– Is your website traffic increasing according to your goals?
– Are you ranking on search engines based on your target keywords?
– Are you earning followers, supporters and volunteers online according to your target?
– Are you earning influential supporters online?
– Is your positive online reputation and popularity growing and leading against your competitors?
– What are people saying about you?

Here’s an example of BuzzSumo’s most shared content report about Duterte (one of the most popular presidential candidates in the Philippines’ 2016 Elections).

Aside from monitoring the most trending content published on the Internet about a brand, the tool can also be used to identify the ones who shared a certain trending content. The sharers can also be filtered according to their types, including bloggers, influencers, journalists and companies.

15. Walk the talk.
Any digital marketing campaign could be futile if it is not matched with what’s happening behind the Internet. Politics and public service are based on trust and the strong will to lead and help people. That is why the aspiring public servants must walk their talk. Besides, if they can show people offline that they can put their words into actions, people will be the ones who will talk their walk. People will start sharing and spreading good things about the politician, whether to their friends offline or their friends online.

Final thoughts
Political campaigns can be a war of wits and deception. But in the digital marketing arena, campaigns are more interactive. Online audiences have better access to readily available information from search engines, social media feeds, blogs, and websites. Thus, they can be more knowledgeable than offline audiences. In other words, digital marketing campaigns should be based on trust and transparency to be more effective.

There are still many other strategies, tactics and tricks on how to make an online political campaign more effective and powerful. However, some of them are worth to be undisclosed, as the world of politics can be too competitive and tricky.

Uniqueness Political Campaign Strategy

Our strategies are unique in every respect; systematic algorithm, campaign plan, segmentation can ensure you the best result.

Our election campaign approach is purely on “Voter Persona” based tactics. Our campaign tactics is integrated with Augmented Reality, Folksonomy algorithm, Online PR, Reputation Management, and Interactive Husting.

The campaign execution is through various social media platforms, web and mobile protocols.

This method is very effective for all type of political and election campaigns, we can even support politician for their personal branding online, Online PR, and Reputation Management too

As your political campaign digital marketing strategist, we will advise the campaign in the messaging and which digital media channels to utilize for maximum visibility in the most cost efficient manner possible.

If you desire us to implement these bold, yet proven strategies, you can retain us as your political campaign digital marketing consultant.

How we can help you..?

Looking for guidance on getting started on the web? Need help marketing your political campaign website? Want to boost your online exposure? Our one-on-one web consulting services could help.

For More details and understanding about our unique contribution to manage your campaigns, Political Parties requires to contact us  on Following

Contact us for free online marketing strategy: 9915337448, surjeet@ppcchamp.com

We can help:

• Create a Unique political campaign Strategy
• Optimize your website for search engines.
• Set up Google Analytics and Google/Bing Webmaster accounts.
• Initial link-building to build website traffic and rankings.
• Answer questions and help you set up other aspects of your online campaign.
• Online opposition research.
• Help create and syndicate online press releases.
• Help set up, launch and maintain your social media program.
• Help set up and launch an effective email campaign.
• Find the right online advertising solutions to match your constituency and budget.
• Act as a resource for questions or issues with your online campaign.

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