More Votes for Less: How Precision Advertising and Geofencing Can Help Your Political Campaign

The goal of political campaigns using digital advertising has long been building awareness. After all, voters won’t and shouldn’t vote for someone they don’t know, trust, or understand. But times have changed. How we consume media has evolved so drastically that the political marketing approach has also needed to catch up. It’s no surprise that we’re seeing so many apps being developed to influence potential voters.

According to research on political campaigns, voters tend to remain loyal to their existing parties. This means that rather than creating a campaign around what they’re trying to sell, political campaigns should focus more on where their market is and who they are precisely.

That’s where precision advertising comes in. 

It’s Not About Size; It’s About Being Precise

A traditional awareness campaign–wherein advertisers blast their message to the broadest possible audience–has never been particularly efficient or effective. With the way people are consuming media today, with customized algorithms that place people in silos of content, it’s no longer about advertising on a massive scale but advertising with focused precision.

With precision advertising, marketers can use a practical and measurable approach to advertising that engages the target audiences throughout their entire consumer journey at various touchpoints. Through data optimization and learning, marketers can mount campaigns efficiently, with maximum and quantifiable results.

Precision advertising employs different methods, like geofencing and audience targeting, which have proven valuable and effective in political advertising.

What Is Geofencing?

Geofencing is a digital marketing tool that allows organizations to set custom virtual boundaries and serve ads based on whether targets enter or exit those boundaries. Boundaries can be as small as a few square meters and as big as several miles. Similarly, geotargeting is another tool that lets organizations target customers based on their physical location. This can be as specific as a city block or as broad as a neighborhood, city, or even voting district.

Geofencing uses cellular, Wi-Fi, and device IDs to track locations. Any customer whose internet-connected device (computer, mobile device, etc.) has been in the specified area within the past 12 months can become part of a targeted list of consumers. So, when they see an ad online, it will be based on that geographical information. For example, campaigns can geofence their rallies and serve attendees ads well after the event has finished, all the way up to election day.

Using geofencing, organizations can better target their ads and create customized content for those audience members. As a location-based technology, it also helps brands provide more personalized services. 

Geofencing enables organizations to target the right audience and create more meaningful connections and touchpoints for less expense than running a broad campaign that may be wasted on people outside the targeted area. 

How Can Geofencing Help a Political Campaign?

Geofencing isn’t limited to marketing campaigns; it can also be used in political campaigns. Political geofencing allows a politician to target voters within a voting district. This means that if a city, district, or area could swing either way, that specific location can be targeted to help improve visibility and voter outreach. 

Geofencing also helps to focus ads depending on activities, which politicians can use to target specific audiences. For example, it’s possible to use geofencing marketing for a political campaign to target anyone attending mass. Political candidates can use this to reach out to their core voter base, introduce themselves to diverse groups of voters, or maximize voter turnout efforts, depending on which point of the election cycle they’re in. 

Targeted Ads

Geofencing is only one powerful tool for creating advertising campaigns. Politicians use geofencing paired with targeted ads to maximize their use of digital advertisements. 

Targeted advertising utilizes big data to place ads based on viewers’ traits. A political campaign can use targeted ads to focus on where people have been and key demographic information like their age, gender, interests, hobbies, lifestyle, attitudes, and even their political standing. It’s a dream come true for a political campaign to place ads for hyper-specific demographics.

We’ve seen how effective social media has been in fueling political discourse online, generating data essential for making political ads with precision. Rather than wasting valuable time and effort canvasing with the hope that you might stumble into your target audience, targeted digital ads can ensure that ads find the right person at the right time, every time. 

Work With Agility, Advertise With Precision

Precision advertising has become essential in mounting successful political campaigns. You can effectively reach voters across all their devices and channels through precise targeting and geofencing.

As voters head to the polls, precision advertising can enable you to share a campaign’s message and theme quickly and effectively.

Agility makes it easy to create, organize, and manage digital ad campaigns quickly and easily–a must for an ever-evolving audience. To learn more about how precision advertising can impact your political campaign, test precision advertising for yourself today.