By Dan Kihato
Election fever is finally in full swing and that comes with a volley of advertising strategies that could overwhelm the ordinary American citizen. While the frontrunners in the race have massive budgets to run their campaigns, the marketing strategies they usually employ actually offer good lessons for both large and small businesses. If candidates can employ these methods to win entire presidential elections, just imagine what these tactics can do for your business.
Get Involved in Events
All candidates normally start by knocking on people’s doors to introduce themselves to the electorate. As they scale up, they proceed to hosting town halls, opinion pieces on leading publications, news spots, national debates, and caucuses. Direct personal interactions with the community help to foster credibility for the candidates and the same case applies for businesses. As a business owner, you should make an effort to participate in local events, trade shows, and other events that give you the opportunity to put a face to your business’s name. Such events will also give you the opportunity to expand your network, generate leads, boost your brand awareness, and funnel clients to your store or website.
Position Yourself for the Massive Spending
Even before 2020 was here, analysts had long predicted that expenditure on political advertisements would hit new record highs, surging by billions above the previous presidential election period. With politicians and political parties splashing all these billions, there has to be something in it for your business. If you’re running a small business like a restaurant in your local area, don’t be surprised when political campaigners approach you and request for space to distribute their political campaign flyers from your premises, or if you’d be interested in displaying their campaign signage, like yard signs, in front of your business as for form of support. They might even want to pay you to have their campaign material in your premises if you’re located in a high traffic zone.
Prepare for Unprecedented Levels of Ad Displacement
Each presidential election period comes with a displacement of billions of dollars of advertisement spots by campaigners, political action committees, and politicians. While certain social media platforms will place restrictions on political advertisements, radio TV stations must adhere to the guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission. This can result in TV and radio stations filling their schedules with more political advertisement spots than the stations would otherwise prefer to broadcast. With so much advertisement noise, and billions of dollars in ad spots being inaccessible to non-political marketers, the rivalry for the few available premium ad spots becomes as competitive and outrageous as Super Bowl commercials.
Find a Way Out of the Election Lethargy
Before you totally give up, contemplate the fact that content marketing always offers a higher return on investment as an option for certain segments of marketers and tactics. Besides that, there’s always more pressure to generate higher quality content in order to stand out from all the chaotic election noise.
Content targeted toward organic and inbound channels will definitely stand a better chance of bypassing the political hullabaloo and the costly paid channels. The bright side of it is that people feeling the lethargy of the election cycle will undoubtedly be actively looking for everything from funny memes and other entertainment, to your engaging and brilliantly marketed content.
In summary, small businesses don’t realize that they also have the same means and tools to execute similar strategies to those employed by presidential candidates. You can set aside resources from your business to participate in events, position yourself for the massive ad spending by political parties, choose the right marketing channels, and create awesome content to stay ahead of your competition. If candidates can win elections using these tactics, then your business can surely use them to its advantage too.
