Political Consulting

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.

Hal Malchow has over thirty-five years of experience in politics, having worked for four Democratic presidential nominees and a long list of Senate, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates. Hal Malchow’s pivotal role in introducing data science to American political campaigns and measuring the impact of voter communication tactics changed the way campaigns are run. In his latest novel, No Popes in Heaven, Hal Malchow draws upon his experience to highlight the absurdities of our political system and the negative consequences of well-meaning reforms for our democracy. We sat down with him to hear all about his new book.

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. 

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.

By the end of the year folks will be going to conferences again.  Conference ROI is important to understand whether or not certain conferences are worth the investment and time. Every year my employees and I go many conferences Virtual and some day in person for both learning and marketing. I believe every conference  - I learn something. Prior to focusing on return on investment (ROI), we never a had a formal process for retaining knowledge from a conference. So a few months ago we implemented a simple plan to document conference ROI.

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.

As a political advertising agency, we work with campaigns and groups all over the country and it never fails that in many conversations, the candidate’s spouse uncle, cousin, works or has worked in advertising.  We sometimes compete with traditional advertising firms and I have had folks ask me the question what is the difference between a political advertising agency vs a traditional ad agency? The answer is a there are lots of differences.