Competition is high and audience attention bandwidth is low. What’s going on? It’s an election year.
Marketing during an election can be challenging. With so much noise going on in the media, especially through advertising, reaching your target audience with your 2024 marketing campaigns will take more effort and budget.
Keep reading to learn more about what your brand can expect and what strategies can be deployed to keep afloat during this tumultuous time in social media marketing.
Higher competition means advertising costs will go up
With political campaigns making a play for inventory in addition to regular marketers, competition will be high. It will be harder to secure placements and costs will go up an average of 10-20% for paid social and 15-30% for paid search due to the higher competition.
This applies across the board on platforms that allow political advertising including X (formerly Twitter), Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google. It doesn’t matter what industry or vertical your brand is in, cost per thousand (CPM) will rise because political advertisers have limited targeting capabilities so they have to target broadly, which will often mean their targeting will overlap yours.
Regulations can cause more ads/content to be rejected
Both Meta and Google are heavily monitoring marketing content during the election season. Specifically, the tech companies are requiring marketers to label AI-generated content. While this is decidedly pointed at trying to ensure that misinformation is spread at a minimum on the platforms, there could be splash back for your brand of content needing approval, posts being delayed or simply being rejected.
What should advertisers do?
Keeping your 2024 social media marketing campaigns going during an election year will be tough work, but here are a few tips to help:
- Accept higher costs – Your CPM, CPC, CPL and CPA are all going to take a hit. Expect it and budget appropriately.
- Review demographics and targeting settings – Make sure your targeting is on point. You don’t want to be wasting spend due to high competition and elevated costs. If one set of demographics has already been floundering, consider pausing just that audience segment to free up budget to support your higher performing campaigns. You can always weave that audience group back in after the election.
- Don’t stop marketing – Even though you might see dips in your performance, don’t throw in the towel and completely stop marketing. Your audience is still looking for you, they just have to wade through everything else. Also, you’ll certainly lose any momentum you had, and rebuilding will be even more costly.
- Lean into organic posts – Use your owned social media channels to bolster your paid efforts.
- Host in-person events – Go local and try to connect with your audience in person by hosting events.
- Avoid the two weeks before elections in battleground areas – While we don’t advise completely stopping marketing efforts this year, it’s okay to pause specific areas/regions during intense political activity. Check out this calendar from BrandMuscle to help know important dates:
Election impact
Marketing during an election season can be hard. Increased competition leading to higher costs as well as more regulation will mean marketers need to be smart. The best thing brands can do is to keep going and maintain a presence, while also understanding the current climate will be represented in performance metrics. Review targeting, pause campaigns when appropriate, and try to connect with your audience through owned channels and events. Once election season is over you can resume regular social media marketing activity.
Schedule a call with Beyond Fifteen today and see how we can help your brand adjust its social media marketing campaigns to make the most during a crowded and competitive election year.