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How Mobile Marketing and Text Message Advertising Are Evolving in 2021

Voters want to feel that they matter. They want to feel like their voices are heard and that they are more than just a vote. 70% of individuals would interact with a brand/company via SMS if they were given the option to. As a political candidate, you too have a brand, your brand is your campaign. How you build this campaign and acquire loyal voters is through the marketing and extra things that you do.

Last year was a big election year, with a ton of new advertising strategies all geared towards reaching more voters and increasing voter turnout–even during a Pandemic. Ask yourself, do your advertising methods fall in line with your campaign mission and values? How do voters know that you are worthy of their vote? Your advertising strategy and methods is going to be key to proving to voters that you are the candidate that deserves the vote. Your mobile marketing and SMS advertising should be aimed at creating real connections, and to avoid sounding “spammy.”

Chat with Chatbots

Have you ever used a chatbot? You can chat with our Chatbot on our Robocent website. Chatbots are great tools for companies and campaigns to use because they provide website visitors with quick responses to the most commonly asked questions. Chatbots use a pre-programmed script to interact with real people and answer their questions based on keywords or selected question choices. Go chat with our chatbox and see what it is like for yourself!

The beauty of these little artificial intelligence bots? The fact that they can provide 24/7 customer support. Bots allow website visitors access to around the clock answers to their questions. How can chatbots help your campaign?

  • Answer questions about event locations
  • Polling location questions
  • Conduct surveys
  • Gauge candidate support
  • Connect visitors with campaign staff

There are a ton of possibilities when it comes to the power of chatbots. Not only do they learn by gathering data from their interactions, but they are more affordable and allow campaign volunteers to focus on other efforts. Chatbots are huge in the customer support industry. Throughout the Pandemic, many call centers and customer support agents have been slammed with calls. Wait times can be hours long. Chatots allow for a wide variety of questions to be answered within a matter of minutes. No dialing, getting lost in the phone tree, or getting hung up on after having your call transferred four times. Chatbots have proven to improve customer satisfaction by providing fast answers when they matter the most.

SMS Advertising

Ideally, you should be doing more than just trying to advertise. Your campaign should be speaking to the issues that matter the most, and engaging in real connections and conversations. Think of it as a personal connection with a sprinkle of advertising. When you build true connections and meaningful interactions, the advertising happens all by itself.

SMS is a great alternative to chatbots. Whereas chatbots might not be able to answer all of the questions 100% of the time, allowing agents to chat with voters will. Links to other resources can be shared through SMS, photos advertising your campaign, and more! SMS also allows for pre-templated texts, which cuts down on response times and allows for volunteers to respond as fast as possible with little delay. Chat with our chatbot today and learn how Robocent can get you elected with SMS.

Not only is SMS great for advertising, SMS is also a preferred channel to reach donors. It can also be used in correlation with location based advertising, which connects you to voters in the right place, at exactly the right time. The two go hand in hand and are going to be a huge benefit in 2021.

Location Based Advertising

By the end of the year 2023, spending on location based ads is expected to amount to 32 billion. Location based advertising is how a campaign is going to get the most out of its political advertisements. This method of advertising will be the best way to narrow in on the voters that you want to advertise too. Without location targeted ads, you could be advertising to the completely wrong cloud, and thus your advertising efforts will go nowhere.

Word of Mouth Advertising

What is better than someone believing in you and your campaign/company enough to spread the word about you? Nothing. This kind of advertising is priceless. When an individual posts about a candidate of their own free will, this is the kind of advertising that gets people elected. This kind of advertising can be through a blog, a social media post, a YouTube video, or even customer reviews on Yelp or Google. Reviews or real life customer/voter testimonials are something that can be displayed on your website or even re-promoted through your own social media channels.
The best way to capitalize on word of mouth advertising is to re-promote it yourself. For example, if Mary gives you a shoutout on Instagram for hosting an amazing campaign rally, you can reshare Mary’s post on your campaign social media page. This way, Mary gets shown some appreciation for being a loyal supporter, and other individuals can see what she had to say and go check out her post.

Collect Voter Data

Mobile marketing can help with the collection of voter data. Robocent can always give you the following voter data information:

  • Full Name
  • Address
  • Political Affiliation
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Demographics

Mobile marketing can help you acquire even more information about voters! The more you know, the better! To fill in any holes about what you know regarding voters, you can create forms or surveys to send to voters via SMS. This form can even be on your website or passed out at events. For example, if someone is signing up for campaign updates, you can have a signup form that requests various pieces of information. Information such as their email address, their voting history, their volunteer history, education, etc. Whatever information that will benefit your advertising campaign and help you know your voters better.

Audio Advertising

Audio advertising and podcasts are becoming more and more popular, and are only expected to grow in 2021. Podcasts allow people to enjoy them anytime and anywhere–in the car, while cleaning around the house, etc. A campaign podcast is a really great way to reach voters. You can also share the links to your podcast via social media, SMS, and through your website. What can you do with a podcast? You can talk about important campaign issues, bring awareness to your campaign, and promote yourself as a candidate.

Podcasters use this outlet as a great way to promote their brand and market to a targeted audience. You can even work in ads to the podcast and include sponsors of the podcast. This is a win win for everyone. The points that you cannot get across in a short TV ad, social media ad, or text message, you can say and get across in a podcast. With a podcast you can even have guests that you interview or chat with regarding particular topics.

A few podcast platforms to explore:

  • Buzzsprout
  • Soundcloud
  • Spotify
  • Podbean

Some platforms are free, while others cost, ultimately this will depend on your campaign budget and how many voters you want to reach.

Mobile Apps

Do you have or have you ever thought about creating a mobile app for your campaign? You most likely use apps for various online shopping, news platforms, restaurants, and more. You probably even have your “push notifications” on so that you can receive special updates and notifications regarding new products, services, news, sales, etc. An app for your campaign that does something similar would be an excellent way to keep people up to date and involved with your campaign.

Apps can even connect with a chatbot or virtual assistant so now you can have the best of both worlds. The goal of a campaign app goes beyond just driving votes, it creates and cultivates meaningful relationships with voters. A new podcast just came out? Push notification. An event is coming up and you want to make sure everyone is aware of it? Push notification. Voters can now stay up to date on all things regarding your campaign, and they can do it every morning from the comfort of their bed. How great is that?

Whether you need to send out notifications or provide a single and simple outlet for voters to find information on, an app can do all of this and more. Just think of it as a simpler more mobile friendly version of your website. It can even mimic your website while providing a more seamless experience.
Advertising in 2021 is more than just putting your name and face out there and hoping that people remember you and vote for you. Advertising today is about creating a sense of urgency, and creating an ad or connection that inspires people to take action and connect with your campaign.