How Presidential Campaigns Use Online Marketing

As the debates heat up, candidates are leveraging online marketing and social media to capture the votes of U.S. voters. Many companies would agree that getting 45 percent market share would be a huge success. However, in politics, winning 45 percent means losing the vote. Having a strong online presence is now table stakes for political candidates. Therefore, we will discuss how presidential campaigns use online marketing.

How Presidential Campaigns Use Online Marketing

All presidential candidates need to connect with voters through different digital marketing channels.

Online marketing for presidential campaigns makes it easier to reach a target audience at a fraction of traditional marketing cost.

Domain Name

The first way presidential campaigns are using online marketing is with a domain name. Candidates must obtain a domain name for the campaign. In addition, it’s not a bad idea for the campaign to purchase several domain name names related to the candidate’s name. This is because there are times where the opponents can get their domain or related domain name and then redirect those links to their own domain.

For example, Donald Trump used the www.jebbush.com domain to redirect to his own website www.donaldjtrump.com. Purchasing a domain name costs an average of $15 a year and it will protect your name and your brand.

Branding

The second way presidential campaigns are using online marketing is with branding. Presidential campaigns are establishing logos as a branded politician.

This brand is on their campaign business cards, door hangers, yard signs, banners, website, social media, email marketing, videos and advertisements. Infographics present statistics, as they are a powerful representation that shows the difference between the candidate and his or her opponent. This works very well for busy voters who only have two minutes to glance at the message.

Website

The third, and one of the most beneficial, ways presidential campaigns are using online marketing is with a well designed and user-friendly website. While going cheap with a templated website may seem great, users will not be able to find the website on search engines. Presidential campaigns use a home page that includes everything about the candidate, including the following:

• photos
• videos
• email signup form
• donation button
• volunteers
• blog posts
• social media links

The websites are presenting issues the candidates are passionate about. Presidential candidates use blogs for such things as the following:

• announcements for the campaign
• press releases
• opinions on different issues
• responding to the opponent’s attacks or issues
• events
• fundraisers
• surveys

SEO is also necessary for targeting keywords that users search online to find information about the campaign or the candidate.

Social Media

Social media is one of the easiest and most common ways presidential campaigns are using online marketing. This is a great tool for candidates to build relationships with the voters.

Candidates are connecting with voters and paying attention to what they’re interested in through social media such as the following:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Email Marketing

Another great way presidential campaigns are using online marketing to connect with voters is with email marketing.

Candidates create and grow an email list. This makes it easier for voters to sign up for campaign newsletters by having the form on their website, social media and QR code on print materials.

 

These are just the basics of how presidential campaigns use online marketing. It will be interesting to watch how both parties continue to leverage online marketing for data collection, communications, voter engagement and more. Also, it will be interesting to see which parties and candidates do it best in this election as well as future elections.