Digital Advertising Matters for GOTV

By Vincent Harris

Over the next two weeks we’ll all be receiving a multitude of last minute pleas, and urgent get-out-the-vote e-mails. I believe strongly that it is smart for campaigns to save a little money for a last minute push online to turn out voters through online advertising.

Television is too expensive, and many voters might miss a piece of mail on Election Day, but there are a few cost-effective ways campaigns can GOTV this November 2nd. Facebook: Well, you’ve spent over a year amassing all of these “likes”, and now you have a chance to REALLY use them. Target an ad to launch at midnight of Election Day just to your fans encouraging them to GOTV. This is a simple, cheap way to reach your supportive audience in your district/state.

Regional Ads: Some of my favorite election cycle ads to run are regionally targeted ads. Run display ads touting your candidates “hometown credentials” to his/her hometown in order to drive up traffic within that city.

Google advertising makes this VERY easy to do. Retargeting: If you haven’t put a tracking code on your campaigns website, it may not be too late if your site has the necessary 5,000 visitors/traffic (which it probably will) over the next two weeks. Beginning 72 hours out, or just on election day, you can successfully annoy the heck out of anyone who has visited your website with GOTV ads “retargeted” to them every single website they visit.

Of course there is the infamous Google network bomb/blast where your campaign buys all/most of Google digital property across all networks. While this would have MANY upsides, in a close race, you may not want to necessarily drive turnout amongst the entire population. This can also be incredibly expensive depending on the size and traffic in your district.

Regarding e-mail lists, I have a mantra that what is the point of preserving your list if your campaign could lose? I am a fan of hitting the list numerous times during the GOTV phase, and not being concerned about nurturing the e-mails. Good luck over the next couple of weeks!