Digital Advocacy

We often find that a digital advocacy campaign is expected to meet multiple organizational goals at once. Unfortunately, you can’t really have it all. So how do you choose an objective and what digital strategy is likely to achieve it?

When you are setting up your digital campaign budget for advocacy, how much should you spend on digital advertising? Per unit, digital advocacy advertising is comparatively cheap – while you may spend several hundred dollars (or more) per point on TV, your cost per thousand impressions (CPM) can be as little as a dollar or two for digital advertising. That means that digital advertising can be a fantastic way to reach out to supporters and promote your advocacy campaign when you’re working with limited dollars.

Today, we’ll talk about a little-known but very powerful tool for advocacy campaigns - the Youtube Brand Lift Study. Standard metrics such as views and clicks are great ways to track how many people have viewed and interacted with your video ads online.

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 it comes to a digital advocacy campaign Twitter is a great platform. Unlike more traditional platforms, there aren’t budget minimums you need to worry about and you can reach a lot of people very quickly. There are also a lot of great targeting options based on Twitter’s user data. 

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.

With Trump as president, nonprofit organizations have an opportunity to use digital advocacy to grow engagement and reach donors and constituencies. This doesn't make it any easier to get legislation passed, but it does present an opportunity for growth that may not have existed in the past for your organization.

Digital Advocacy is on everyone's mind. Last month, I attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. and one panel caught my eye: New Tools From the 2016 Elections That Nonprofit Techies Need to Know About. Given that our clients are both campaigns and nonprofits, it was a perfect fit. 

It seems like every month there is a new social media platform taking off that those of us who do digital work hear about from our clients (Peach anyone?). While the instinct is to be on every channel to reach the most people, it can work against engagement.