When the recent Presidential election was taking place I signed up to follow both candidates to see how they would market to me digitally. I posted about this earlier. The Clinton campaign barraged me with repetitive emails from “different sources” perhaps trolling to see which I would respond to while the Trump campaign barely sent one email. But Facebook was alive with literally thousands of new ads and websites on a daily basis. The more I clicked on “Lock her up” content the more I was served. Recently, 60 Minutes profiled Brad Parscale. Brad was hired to build websites for the Trump company. Eventually, he purchased and managed all their digital ad campaigns including Facebook and Twitter. In the story, Parscale admits that the Trump campaign spent $94 million with him and the campaigns he managed on their behalf. Interviewer Lesley Stahl was shocked to learn two things that Vox Communications clients take for granted:
- You can drill down to message individuals testing them with hundreds of messages until one hits.
- Google, Facebook, and Twitter will build the campaigns for you depending on your budget spend.
Today, unlike any time before, you can drill down and capture specific individuals, qualify them into groups, test and test and test until a message(s) connects, and then you can motivate and monetize your audiences.
Recently, against our recommendations, a client purchased two $40,000 radio campaigns in two top ten markets. We purchased the biggest packages during the most listened to hours from the most popular stations with the target demo. Total conversions to the dedicated phone line and website landing page were 243 visits. Conversely, a $2,000 geo targeted Google/Facebook campaign in the same markets converted 614 specific searches. In other words, for 2.5% of the radio budget the client collected more than 100% more visits than the radio campaign and those visits were actually leads. Better information for a fraction of the cost of a traditional media buy.
Trump told Parscale to focus on TV buys so he got lucky. Clinton spent too much time listening to the wrong people and watching the wrong metrics. One other story line here is that Clinton didn’t take the Google and Facebook offers to help seriously. Four of the top five highest valued companies in the world are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. At what point do you pay attention to them?
If your brand, cause, or product is not effectively executing an online strategy then you need to start now while there is still a “handhold”. The smartest and most powerful players in the space already know this. Now it’s your time to get in the game and drive engagement and thus conversions. Build a dynamic site, move your mobile optimized messages through social media and spend $ with Facebook and Google. Clinton was out of touch and Trump got lucky. Today’s leaders can’t afford to be either out of touch or lucky. And neither can you.
