4 Secrets to a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign
Digital marketing continues to be a critical strategy to help campaigns reach more people consistently. Email, social media, paid ads, and website content are all tools that can be used to target your audience and personalize your message.
As more people continue to predominantly use their smartphone to consume content, digital marketing will only grow as an effective and efficient tool to reach more people. Whether you’re running for office or managing a public affairs or business campaign, digital marketing should be a key part of your strategy. This article will outline the four secrets to a successful digital marketing campaign.
Create a funnel strategy
A “funnel” refers to how you will reach your target audience at every step of the persuasion process. Like a funnel, this tactic begins at the top, casting the widest net through paid ads, landing pages, and content marketing that is educational or brand-building. At the top of the funnel, you’re introducing your candidate or issue to the audience.
The next step is to start persuading an audience that your candidate or issue is the choice or strategy to solve the relevant problem, address their priorities, take their preferred action, etc. By producing more content and increasing your social media engagement, you can begin to persuade, which leads to the narrower part of the funnel. As you work to persuade your audience, you should begin sending them emails that are personalized and tailored to their specific issues, paving the way to converting them into active supporters. If you aren’t sure of their top priorities, send a survey to collect information.
A funnel serves essentially as a digital roadmap for how your audience will learn and interact with you or your issue online. You start with outreach and building brand awareness, then you message and engage with your audience, followed by more tailored content based on their interests or demographics. This funnel can be repeated to bring in more people, but at each stage you will provide specific kinds of content via social media, email, or website content.
Know your target audience
It’s critical that you identify your target audience. Understanding who your audience is, what they are interested in, and what their priorities are will allow you to speak directly to them. It will help ensure you or your message resonates.
Digital marketing is particularly efficient because of the ability to target and reach highly specific cross-sections of society. You can, for example, direct your outreach directly to women 35+, who earn $150,000 or up. You can also speak to seniors, 65+ on a fixed income. Make sure you have a message crafted for each audience. One track might focus on reproductive freedom while the other focuses on preserving Social Security benefits. It’s an extremely cost-effective way to tailor your pitch while making each audience feel like you are speaking directly to them (because you are).
Make sure you clarify your target audience or audiences. If you don’t know who your audience is, your messaging may be far too broad, thereby failing to resonate with people. You’ll also be spending money on content that doesn’t resonate, leading to an audience potentially overlooking your candidate or issue. The more you know about your audience, the better and the faster you can move them down your funnel.
Select appropriate digital channels
Once you’ve identified your audience, you can select the most effective digital channels to use for communication. There are far too many to be used efficiently – pick three that your audience uses the most and focus on creating content just for those platforms.
For older adults that might be Facebook and for younger folks that might be Instagram and twitter. Make sure to focus your energy on creating and disseminating content from those channels. You can still use others but focus the majority of your time on channels where you know you’ll reach the right people.
Build an outreach schedule for each medium to ensure you are reaching people where they are and leading them down your funnel. For example, you may start with a paid ad on Facebook that leads people to a landing page with information about your candidate or issue and asks for their email address. Once they have submitted their email, they receive an email sequence introducing your candidate or issue.
From there, you can send a survey to collect more information about each person and filter them into a special email list so that they receive emails about specific issues. You can also encourage them to follow you on your chosen social channel(s) and help expand your reach to them there, leading them down the funnel with new calls to action each time. It could start with joining your email list, but the more engaged they become, the next call to action might be to attend a live event, put up a sign in their yard, and of course vote for a candidate or issue.
Engage & connect with your audience
Digital marketing offers a way to connect with more people using tailored content that speaks to their pain points. Online surveys and live calls or Q& As are great venues to learn more about your audience and to actively engage with people to create a stronger connection.
Make an effort to ask your audience what they want, and, if you can, make people available to speak about issues or answer their questions. The more people feel like political leaders or campaigns care about their opinion, the greater the connection created. You’re essentially building a relationship that you must work to foster. Based on feedback from surveys or Q&As, you can create more tailored digital content that resonates with more people.
Conclusion
Digital marketing helps leverage your work to reach more people and accomplish your goals in a more efficient and effective way. Make sure you’re using it to your advantage with the help of these four strategies: create a funnel, identify your audience or audiences, pick the right digital channels, and regularly engage with your audience.
