Focusing An Online Political Campaign Locally

14 Jul Focusing An Online Political Campaign Locally

Many candidates and political activists are laboring under the impression that online advertising and campaigning is focused on national and international audiences and cannot be well-tuned to a local constituency. Last year, this was largely true, but in the past few months, many changes to how online marketing takes place have re-emphasized the local over the global.

Back in August, Google launched a new tool to allow online ad campaigns through its advertising networks (AdWords and the like) to be focused solely in individual congressional districts around the nation. This was added on top of the ZIP code narrowing that had been added earlier.

What this means is that for Google advertisers, the message conveyed can be kept within political boundaries on a map so that only those accessing the Internet inside those boundaries will see them. This not only focuses the message, but it saves a lot of wasted ad time. Even someone running for state-wide or national office can use this tool to tailor messages to specific parts of the country and constituents.

Even very local political campaigns here in South Florida can use this to their advantage. And Google isn’t the only outlet with this kind of narrowing capability. The creative use of other geo-centric tools for advertising can also focus a campaign’s message within a specific area. The smart use of Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter geo-targeting, and more can mean using those social tools to further spread your message.

Gerrit Lansing, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s digital director told the Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/08/03/google-ad-tool-targets-voters-by-district/) that his team takes advantage of these and other tools right now. Being specific isn’t just good for national campaigns, it’s great for local ones.

Only an expert in the field of digital marketing can guide a campaign, however small, in the right direction in today’s fast-paced world of technology and Internet connectivity. The use of online-focused experts has become a must in today’s political landscape.