Advocacy Advertising

The art of crafting a well-integrated advocacy strategy is akin to making a great book-to-film adaptation. When you find out a book you love will be made into a movie, you hope the story, characters, and message won’t be lost in translation across mediums. A good adaptation will capture the theme and boil the plotline down to its most important elements—after all, few among us have time to catch a twelve-hour movie (though I personally would be on board with a marathon re-cut of The Shining).

When you get into politics, it’s hard to resist the all too common tunnel vision of focusing only on politics. But be careful – binge watching Veep or The West Wing is not going to help you run a better campaign or organization; nor will reading solely political books. So Here are some of our favorite non-political books. 

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we always stress the value of storytelling with strong visuals in political and advocacy advertising. In other words, using photos or footage of authentic people looking straight into a camera and speaking candidly about things they’ve experienced, makes communications materials more compelling. There’s far more potential to persuade folks through testimonials than there is through wonky policy white papers – the question is, why?

Digital advocacy in Trump’s America means (for many of us) a near unending need for Trump photos. Unfortunately, buying rights managed photos of our fearless Commander in Cheeto means running up an epic tab pretty darn quickly. But fear not (at least with regard to photos… I can’t make any promises regarding the rest of what’s going on at this point) – compelling photos of Trump are still available to those of us who don’t have deep pockets and an unlimited Getty account.

Digital advocacy is about engagement and capacity building—likes are just a starting point. Over the last few years, Facebook’s algorithm has evolved, as has its advertising options, making it easier than ever to capitalize on the audience you’ll find there and turn likes into actions that advance your advocacy goals.

Since Facebook video launched on newsfeeds, it’s become one of the largest video platforms in the world. Due to the natural social pressure of the environment, it’s also a great place to run ads to promote your branding, persuade voters, and gain support for your advocacy or political campaign. Make sure you’re getting the most out of Facebook video for advocacy and politics with my three can’t-miss tips.

In our last blog post, Digital Advocacy: Advertising Campaign Goal Setting Part I,  we talked about how to develop digital advocacy strategy, cost per acquisition (CPA) campaigns, email programs and the best ways to utilize ad testing. In today's post, we take a closer look at using tactics like paid digital advertising, social media and analytics for digital advocacy. You can also read more about this in our latest ebook, Guide to Digital Advocacy.

The lion’s share of your political or advocacy campaign will be spent on message development and saturation. But as Election Day looms, you’ll have to start focusing your efforts on get out the vote/ GOTV. While you should make sure to include the rest of your online platforms in your GOTV efforts, a good place to start is social media. Not surprisingly, it’s a great digital platform for social pressure. You can use social media in a few ways to encourage your target audience to vote.

Member public affairs strategies can be an amazing way to move your issue forward. Membership organizations should have a head start when it comes to public affairs strategies, but that head start is often complicated. Membership organizations tend to have bureaucratic structures that make it difficult to work nimbly, especially when it comes to public affairs. Because of this, some member organizations have avoided using member-based public affairs strategies and they are missing out.

Searching for answers on the web has become a fixture in our lives. Want to go to a movie? Search the time and showings. Buying a house? Search for listings. Interested in a candidate or a local issue? Ask Google.

In my 20 years working in politics, I have seen a lot of things change. Technology in particular has done a lot to change the way that we communicate with voters. Yet somehow, we in politics have access to more information about our audience than ever before, but our audience engagement is at an all time low.

Your nonprofit facebook ad will need an image to display on users newsfeeds or right-hand rails. In a platform like Facebook, where viewers are accustomed to scrolling continuously, you’re going to need an image that is arresting enough to stop the scroll. Make sure the photo or illustration you use has a clear focal point that is either intriguing or easily recognizable and relevant to a viewer’s interests.