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Persuasion is Not Measured by Clicks

April 9, 2013 By

Americans love post-election scuttlebutt, and there is no shortage of pundits eager to fill the demand. The marketing community in particular enjoys dissecting major elections, assessing what worked and what did not to see if there are implications for their brand.

One takeaway from the 2012 election that made the rounds recently is that the Obama for America outspent Romney for President on display advertising. While this is interesting, marketers could draw the wrong conclusions from this data.

President Obama won the election for many reasons, but display ads were not likely a major contributor. Display is a great medium, but it is typically direct-response oriented, where success is measured by clicks from viewers who are already motivated to act. While this has its place in promoting specific actions like voter turnout, petition gathering and fundraising, banner ads are far less effective at shifting a viewer’s perception on a issue, let alone persuading an undecided voter.

When it comes to persuading the undecided, there is good reason television advertising dominates. Few other mediums can capture the emotion and story-telling ability of live video. Some ads are so powerful that they become synonymous with the campaign itself, such as Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” ad in 1964, which warned of a nuclear winter, or Ronald Reagan’s iconic “Morning in America” in 1984. In the 2012 election, TV advertising represented nearly $1 billion of spending on behalf of the candidates, or about half of the total amount funds raised.

In-stream video advertising, the most analogous digital medium to television, also garnered high budgets during the election. Video — particularly programmatic buying of video where marketers retain control over every aspect of a buy — allows marketers to repurpose existing television ads, pinpoint specific districts, control where ads are running and optimize in real-time based on which ads perform best. Reporting in video is particularly robust, letting campaigns move beyond clicks to measure engagement. For instance, campaigns can tell how long an ad maintained user’s attention, which provides insights as to where the message worked or fell flat.

The results are a powerful electioneering medium that display cannot match. As Forrester stated in a recent report, video is similar to TV because it offers the ability “to go above and beyond ‘static’ display in communicating brand messages, making it a medium that marketers pay attention to.” According to our research, video easily beats display at getting viewers to remember an ad’s message, with lift in recall averaging 8.3% compared to between 1.8% and 2.4% for banner ads. This difference is poised to increase in the next few years, according to Forrester – half of the marketers they interviewed believe online video will get more effective over time, while 66% of marketers believe display will become less effective.

In the 2012 election, it was clear early on that the support of the undecided “swing” voting bloc (which overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008) would require the most courting by candidates. With this in mind, Mitt Romney for President, along with Targeted Victory focused on persuading voters in swing states during the election, and video offered the best format to do that, representing about 70% of Mitt Romney’s spend on persuasion advertising. While the results were encouraging for future campaigns, ultimately they did not make the difference. But we are clear on one thing: it was not getting outspent in display that determined the election outcome.

It is revealing to look at some of the creative of actual display ads from the election. The majority from both campaigns were clearly designed to either help in fundraising (getting people into an email list) or increasing turnout among existing voters.

But existing voters are only a piece of the puzzle. If elections were about clicks, search ads would be the hottest thing in political marketing.

Michael Beach is Co-Founder of top political agency Targeted Victory

Keith Eadie is VP of Marketing at TubeMogul

 

This article originally appeared in Media Post. Click here to view the article online.  

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Case Study: Mitt Romney’s Twitter Strategy and Engagement Rates

March 19, 2013 By

How can a presidential candidate shape the national conversation in real time to influence voters leading up to an election?

Elections may be zero sum games, but digital efforts are not. @MittRomney’s social strategy was at the forefront of Twitter innovation in 2012 – one that should serve as a blueprint for political and corporate campaigns in 2013 and beyond. Twitter recently released a case study on the Mitt Romney Campaign’s successful use of Twitter to drive dialogue, mobilize supporters, and shift voter attitudes throughout the race. The Campaign’s principle goal was to build an active and engaged online community. To achieve this goal they adopted an all-encompassing social plan, cross-promoting content on multiple social platforms. On Twitter, advertising, real-time response, and target audiences increased engagement rates and likelihood to vote for the candidate.  In another study,  SocialBakers chronicled how the Campaign was able to use additional platforms to accomplish these same goals. There were four main points of focus with @MittRomney’s Twitter strategy: seeding the conversation, real-time response, integration with additional platforms like TV, and targeting.

Read Twitter’s case study below or on Twitter Business.

In June of 2011, Mitt Romney (@MittRomney), the former Governor of Massachusetts, launched his second candidacy for the presidency of the United States. In August of the following year, Romney chose Paul Ryan (@PRyan), the U.S. Congressman for Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district, as his running mate and formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Their challenge

Romney for President, Inc. needed to mold public perception around the 2012 presidential race, expand the reach of his core campaign messages and respond quickly to detractors. Specifically, the @MittRomney team wanted to help form and fortify the opinions of influencers like news media, who are instrumental in shaping voter perceptions during elections. In a two-screen environment, the @MittRomney campaign also needed to enhance the viewing experience for Americans during critical televised moments of the race to steer the election dialogue as well as influence attitudes.

The @MittRomney campaign made a strategic decision to use Twitter to create a platform that would serve as the candidate’s online voice. It was important to share content on Twitter using a first person narrative with the @MittRomney account while setting up other Twitter accounts for additional messaging. Each Tweet was delivered as an extension of the candidate’s messaging on domestic and foreign policy, and the platform served as a digital soapbox. Twitter was also used as a means of communicating responses to the Obama campaign, major campaign slogans/calls to action, appeals for grassroots fundraising and volunteers.

Their solution

There were four main points of focus with @MittRomney’s Twitter strategy: seeding the conversation, real-time response, integration with additional platforms like TV and targeting.

Seeding the conversation

Hashtags are one of the most important and unique aspects of Twitter, providing a common forum for users to discuss a topic by including a hashtag in their Tweets. To spark conversations, drive the campaign’s messaging and increase reach, @MittRomney ran three Promoted Trends in 2012 using the hashtags #BelieveInAmerica, #RomneyRyan2012 and #CantAfford4More.

Each Promoted Trend was aligned with popular televised events – the Republican National Convention (RNC) and two presidential debates – and provided @MittRomney with the single best way to control the narrative of each campaign milestone.

Real-time response

To extend reach and build momentum, the campaign used Promoted Accounts across five Romney related Twitter accounts: @MittRomney, @PaulRyanVP, @AnnDRomney, @TeamRomney and @RomneyResponse. During key televised events, the campaign used Promoted Tweets in timelines and in search from @TeamRomney and @RomneyResponse for aggressive real-time responses to the Obama campaign that could not come from @MittRomney directly.

These Promoted Tweets shared quotes and key messages to help frame the Twitter conversation around the RNC and debates as well as drive influencers to learn more on rapid-response microsites (romneyresponse.tumblr.com and debates.mittromney.com). With Twitter Ads, @MittRomney was able to steer conversations in real time and keep momentum building well after the events were over.

During the second televised debate, a unique opportunity arose when President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) countered @MittRomney’s comment that the U.S. Navy is now smaller than anytime since the early 20th century by saying, “Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

Debate viewers quickly turned to Twitter to discuss the quippy TV exchange and within minutes ‘horses and bayonets’ began trending. The @MittRomney campaign acted quickly and white-listed the handle of influential allies like Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (@BobMcDonnell) to be able to promote Retweets of their responses. @MittRomney targeted Promoted Tweets in search to extend the reach of these pro-Romney Tweets and shape the dialogue in real time.

Twitter helped turn many similar critiques and negative attacks against @MittRomney into positives. When Democratic National Committee consultant Hilary Rosen said on CNN that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life, ” the Romney team again mobilized. Instead of issuing a press release, they launched the @AnnDRomney Twitter account, creating a platform to respond to the remarks in Mrs. Romney’s own voice and in an immediate way. Those Tweets were well received and helped shape public opinion about the candidate and his family.

Integration with additional platforms

To extend their reach, the @MittRomney campaign also tweeted in real time during the 60 Minutes interview with Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan. These Tweets were sent at the start of the interview, allowing the campaign to control the Twitter conversation from the beginning. @MittRomney used keyword optimization to target Promoted Tweets to conservatives, users interested in the election and 60 Minutes viewers.

Targeting

Targeting was the most important tool @MittRomney had on Twitter. While each targeting tool that Twitter offers was useful on its own, the best strategy for targeting was to combine multiple types in one campaign. Multiple keyword/hashtag groups were created to target specific audiences including conservatives, independents and debate watchers. @MittRomney also targeted Promoted Tweets by gender, device (desktop, mobile, etc.), geo (battleground states, etc.), interests (politics, women’s interests, etc.) and handles (journalists, news sources, etc.) to reach influential users and their followers.

On Election Day, the Romney campaign posted “dark Tweets” containing state specific content for each battleground state. These Tweets were then turned into ads using a three-fold targeting strategy. Lists of state specific media sources were uploaded to each Promoted Tweet, layered with conservative political interest targeting, and geo targeted to the appropriate states. This allowed @MittRomney to reach civically engaged voters on Twitter, an integral aspect of the overall “Get Out The Vote” efforts on Election Day.

“Twitter is the ultimate real-time engagement vehicle. It was invaluable when we wanted to frame out a specific narrative during an event or announcement. There was no better way to get our viewpoint out there. Plus, with Twitter Ads, we were able to target the right type of Tweet to the right user. The paid layer over the organic Tweets performed like lightning in a bottle and sparked a massive amount of conversation.”

Zac Moffatt Partner at Targeted Victory

Tip: Own the conversation in real time.

When Paul Ryan was announced as the Vice Presidential candidate, the @MittRomney campaign launched the @PaulRyanVP account and used Promoted Tweets in timelines and in search to build excitement as well as shape the narrative around the announcement. One of these Promoted Tweets generated a 21.9% engagement rate – more than seven times the average engagement rate on a Promoted Tweet.

Their results

With Twitter, the @MittRomney team increased engagement, site traffic and reach of the campaign’s overall real-time response efforts across the Internet. @MittRomney was able to generate massive conversation on the three Promoted Trend days: a total 303,900 Tweets were sent that used the Promoted Trend hashtags. The average engagement rates across all three trends was 15.45% – more than five times the average engagement rate for a Promoted Trend. Promoted Tweets saw engagement rates as high as 22% and averaged a 6% engagement rate.

A brand survey conducted by Nielsen showed that @MittRomney Twitter Ads increased likelihood to vote for @MittRomney by 20%. The survey ran during the October 16th presidential debate when the Romney campaign targeted a jobs & economy-related message to Twitter users in political target states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

Since January 1, 2012, Twitter followers for @MittRomney grew by more than 500% with one fifth of this new follower growth resulting from Promoted Account campaigns. There were also significant increases in new followers after each Promoted Trend: a total of 136,400 followers over the course of the three trend days. Overall, the @MittRomney campaign drove a total of 25.1 million paid media impressions and generated over 33 million earned media impressions through Retweets.

4 keys to success

  1. Spark conversations.

The @MittRomney campaign used Twitter to monitor sentiment, gain insights into key election issues and create real-time responses that were timely and relevant. “The fragmentation of the media landscape has weakened the traditional path from advertising to attitude change – it is now a much more organic process,” says Zac Moffat, Partner at Targeted Victory. “Ads are ‘released into the wild’ in an attempt to start a conversation, first on Twitter, that then captures the attention of the press. The message then gets into mainstream media coverage and shows up later in the form of public opinion shift.”

  1. Integrate with TV.

Eighty percent of television viewers use another device while watching TV. By integrating Tweets with what was happening on television, the @MittRomney campaign was able to reach constituents across devices and create a truly “two-screen” campaign. Promoted Tweets had strong call to actions to download mobile apps and visit campaign websites, which resulted in high engagement and increased traffic to that content.

  1. Connect with relevant audiences.

@MittRomney used a combination of targeting options in individual Twitter Ad campaigns to deliver the right Tweets to the right audience at the right time and generate double-digit engagement. The @MittRomney team targeted Promoted Tweets by gender, device, geo, interests and handles to reach influential users and their followers.

  1. Share rich media.

By embedding videos, TV ads, links and images in Tweets, the @MittRomney campaign was able to create strong engagement on Twitter and drive earned media via Retweets. Infographics are particularly engaging on Twitter and the Promoted Tweet below had an 18% engagement rate.

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Optimizely Case Study: “This team has data, not opinions: A/B testing at the Romney Campaign”

January 31, 2013 By

From day one, Mitt Romney’s digital campaign team understood a common truth: the campaign is not a creativity contest – what looks best and what works best for the website is not always the same.

“We tried to be very conscious that this team doesn’t have creative opinions, this team has data,” says Ryan Meerstein, a senior political analyst from Targeted Victory, the agency who ran testing and optimization for the Romney campaign. “It’s hard for the team to argue with a graph that proves what works and what doesn’t.”

The graphs were results from A/B tests – lines that showed how two different versions of a web page performed over time. Rather than have protracted discussions on the design that could work best, the team tested and gathered data to inform every design decision.

The team went for the low hanging fruit first: email sign-ups. They hypothesized how different combinations of graphics, headlines, forms and color impacted a visitor’s decision to sign up for email updates from the campaign.

From the start, the team considered increasing email sign-ups on mittromney.com a primary goal.

“Email is still the golden goose of fundraising when you’re making direct solicitations,” Meerstein says. “We’re seeing each email valued at anywhere between $7-8 in future revenue.”

Knowing how beneficial email was to raising money for the campaign, they tested heavily on the homepage and splash pages of mittromney.com always optimizing for email sign-ups. Optimizely was their testing platform of choice.

“There were some hesitations in our shop to use Optimizely because of past connections,” Meerstein says. “But we got past that and started to use the product and found it just far superior to any of the other ones we were using prior.”

Between May 2011 and November 2012, the Romney campaign’s 140-person digital team along with Targeted Victory ran hundreds of tests.

“Once we saw the ease of using Optimizely, the ideas started flying. We wanted to start testing just about everything,” Meerstein says. “We started on the splash page and when we saw success, we continued to build from there.”

Call-to-action button test 

The team started optimizing for  donations with a test on the main call-to-action in the right upper corner of the homepage. They wanted to see whether button color – blue, green, yellow or red – and word choice – “Contribute,” “Support”, or “Donate” – impacted the likelihood of a visitor to click.

 

Overall they found that color did not have a definitive impact, but the word “Contribute” did show a statistically significant improvement of 10%

Knowing that “Contribute” converted visitors to click more often than “Donate,” the team changed verbiage all over the site – and in all email messaging – to reflect the test results.

Home page carousel test

Still armed with the goal of maximizing email sign-ups, the team focused the next iteration of testing on the carousel images on the homepage. A carousel is a rotating slideshow of images that designers frequently use to showcase featured content. They tested using a carousel versus a static image offering visitors the chance to win a trip to the Republican National Convention with the headline, “Be There in Tampa.” The main metric they measured was the percentage of visitors who reached the email sign-up confirmation page.

They tested four variations:

1. The control – A full page moving carousel.

2. A half-height moving carousel.

3. A static image with an “enter to win” form.

4. A static image with a “learn more” button.

Adding the form to the homepage image increased the percentage of visitors who signed up by 632%.

In this case, visitors seldom reacted to the “Learn More” more button. They reacted extremely well to the immediacy of the sign-up form giving them the chance to win with filling out just two form fields.

State specific splash pages

Next, the team used geographic location as a pull to encourage visitors to sign up for email updates. The team wanted to gauge whether visitors signed up more with a message specific to their state or a generic one.

Simply by adding “Florida” to the call-to-action text, visitors who saw this page entered their email and zip code 19% more often.

The data clearly showed success in personalizing the message. With this test as testament, the team decided to make the splash page specific for each state. They used geotargeting in Optimizely to send visitors from each state to a page with a message specific to that state. So no two visitors to mittromney.com from different states saw the same message. Using Optimizely, the team delivered a unique one-to-one experience for every visitor to the site from September 2012 to election day.

Personalization proved to be a powerful tool for the Romney campaign. They saw greater signups on the splash page and more interaction with local events advertised on the site, especially as voting started.

They did personalized call to actions based on absentee states and early vote states. Visitors from Ohio saw messages directing them to early voting locations and the hours they were open.  Visitors from Colorado saw targeted messages for how to get an absentee ballot.

“The thing that was great about it was that we could go in there and set up the personalized experiences in 30 minutes,” Meerstein says. “In the final weeks of the campaign, there’s a huge difference between something being live on Tuesday morning and Thursday night.”

These tests demonstrate how critical time-to-test and time-to-results is when the stakes are incredibly high. Waiting for results or for bottlenecks incurred by the dynamics of teamwork is not an option for presidential campaign teams. In a matter of days, the team had conclusive results about which variations won. Without relying on the creative or engineering team, the analysts themselves used the tools within Optimizely to create huge gains in email sign-ups.

“You really can never test too much,” Meerstein says.

Originally posted at Optimizely.com

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Socialbakers Case Study: 2012 Social Media Campaign of Mitt Romney

January 7, 2013 By

Socialbakers recently released a case study focusing on the Social Media efforts of the Romney for President campaign. In addition to looking at the overall social media strategy, the case study compares growth and engagement rates between the Romney Campaign and the Obama Campaign.

Key findings from the Socialbakers case study:

  • “Romney attracted significantly more Fans than Obama from July to October. At the end of August Romney had more than 4 times more new Fans than Obama.”
  • “Romney outperformed Obama from June through October in terms of the number of Fan interactions.”
  • On Twitter, “Romney had significantly higher engagement rates throughout the campaign than Obama.” “This was a reflection of Romney For President’s belief that Twitter efforts should focus on increasing quality and engaged Followers instead of solely net growth.”

Most telling is the growth and engagement rates of the Mitt Romney Facebook page. Nearly 10 million fans were added between May and Election Day, which is nearly twice as many as the Obama page. During the final five months of the campaign, the Romney page consistently had higher engagement levels than the Obama page. On Twitter, the @MittRomney account consistently had higher engagement rates that the @BarackObama account, despite being significantly outnumbered in number of followers.

Socialbakers Study: 2012 Social Media Campaign of Mitt Romney

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RNC Utilization of Distributed Engagement Channel Profiled in Case Study

December 13, 2012 By

During the 2012 Republican National Convention, the Romney for President campaign needed a way to deliver a multi-platform experience for any visitor who wanted to engage with the convention. Our co-founder and digital director for the Romney campaign Zac Moffatt explained the strategy behind the convention’s digital presence in a new case study released by Thismoment, a digital partner during the convention.

Moffatt outlined the objectives of the 2012 Republican National Convention digital experience:

1) Build new experiences on YouTube, allowing everyone to see every minute of the convention via live streaming
2) Bring in social conversations – from Google plus, Twitter or Facebook, aggregate them and spread the momentum of the convention across the country
3) Emphasize Google hangouts so people could come in and share their thoughts on digital, as well as all feelings around the campaign.

Further, the case study elaborated on the successes of the platform:

[T]he Republican followers are actually talking about their candidate and are overall more engaged; a true sign of social media success.

  • 4 million + Tweets in 4 days
  • 37% engagement rate on Facebook, with 5.5 million followers
  • 5 million + YouTube viewers for the Convention video that existed on the site for only one week
  • 32 minutes Average time spent on the DEC per viewer; Over 3 days, the Convention witnessed over 300,000 hours of live streaming

Read the full case study:
Thismoment Case Study: Republican National Campaign

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Successes of the Romney and Republican Digital Efforts in 2012

December 11, 2012 By

Over the next couple of months I will share my perspective on the successes of the Romney and Republican digital efforts in 2012 and the lessons we learnt along the way. However, in order to have that conversation I think it is important to share some thoughts and key top lines of the campaign so people have context for the period of the campaign post May 1 to November 6th.

Elections are zero-sum games, but digital is not. There can be a tendency for people to determine that when you lose, there were no successes and that all the ideas were bad. It is imperative that we as a party understand that we have an opportunity to continue to grow if we fully capitalize on the achievements and time invested over the last two years.

In the past week the Republican National Committee (RNC) began incorporating the information collected as part of its Joint Fundraising Committee with Romney for President (RFP) into its direct marketing efforts.  The campaign provided to the RNC more than 1,000,000+ online donor contacts with email addresses and over 2,200,000 active new emails. The donor file alone represents a digital community that contributed over $100 million in 2012.

This community, built in just over 5 months, represents a 1,000% increase in the donor base that the RNC digital effort produced for all of the 2010 cycle.  Had RFP had the ability to incorporate this asset on the day of the Supreme Court Ruling on the Healthcare Mandate the Romney campaign would have been able to raise at least $15 million more on that day alone.  Imagine the impact that $15 million in primary dollars in late June could have had on the campaign’s ability to respond to the Obama campaign – not to mention the tens of millions more that we would have been able to raise over the subsequent months. This is just one example of how assets generated over the past two years could be harnessed to build infrastructure to last beyond single cycles.

Online Fundraising:

  • Due to the planning and execution of the RNC, especially its email marketing and digital team, RFP was able to immediately combine the two digital efforts and process, from non max out donors, over $182M between May 1 – November online with 96% of donations being $250 or less
  • Together with the RNC we raised over $65 million online in October – the most successful online fundraising month in the history of Republican politics and $100 million in the last 60 days.

Staffing:

  • We came out of the primary with a staff of 14 and were immediately given the resources to grow to over 140 including non political staff from technology companies across America. We achieved this growth in less than 60 days.
  • Our core development team (Developers, Project Managers, Quality Assurance, Network Operations, etc) grew to 55+ and they oversaw over 2 dozen major development projects in 6 months – producing over 35,000+ hours of development
  • To make up for our limited time frame we worked with the best minds in Silicon Valley to catch up with the Democrats. Read the article: http://tcrn.ch/NQyTVx
  • RFP worked with over 50 of the top digital service providers ranging from Lotame to Piryx to Eventbrite to ThisMoment to Optimizely to Google to Keystone and beyond.

Social Media:

  • On the social media front we grew our Facebook community by over 10.4 million between May 1 – November (almost double the growth Obama experienced during this period) to reach a total of 12 million+ with an additional 5.1 million for Paul Ryan (more than Obama experienced in the comparable time and almost 10 times larger than Vice President’s Biden’s page today after 2 general elections).
  • On Twitter we created a community of over 1.7 million for Mitt Romney and 540,000 for Paul Ryan.
  • From January 1st, 2012 to November 6th, 2012, there were 3,417 posts by Mitt Romney on Facebook. These posts garnered 5,381,043 comments, 69,109,430 likes, and 3,999,954 shares for a total of 78,490,427 engagements.
  • Through the final 90+ days we had engagement rates on our Facebook page over 30 – 40% vs an Obama page that averaged 5 – 9 %.

Site Traffic, Store and RSVP Ticketing System 

  • We built out infrastructure that was able to handle over 38M site visitors in less than 6 months
  • We built a customized RSVP / ticketing solution with EventBrite that processed over 1 million RSVP’s between July and November and produced almost 500,000 organic unique emails to the RNC for the future.
  • We built a comprehensive online store which launched in June and sold over 900,000 items, as well as pop up stores at every major Romney event around the country that leveraged Square technology.  At the Convention we did over $700,000 of sales and ultimately sold an item to over 5% of all Convention attendees.

Online advertising:

  • On online advertising we delivered over 32 billion impressions over the course of the campaign and generated more than 55 million clicks on various ad units.
  • We had over 676 million views of our various online video advertising content which produced an engagement time of over 471 years.

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Targeted Victory in the News: Campaign Fundraising

November 6, 2012 By

Fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts are important parts of every campaign and digital is making it easier. In a new article from Advertising Age, our co-founder and digital director for the Romney campaign  Zac Moffatt explains how the Romney campaign is using digital to customize messaging for different locations:

It helps power the campaign through the final two weeks…We have a fully integrated GOTV ad campaign…We’ve been running absentee ballot and early vote and GOTV ads for up to a month in some places.

Digital enables the Romney campaign to tailor messaging based on location

By using different methods including social media, online advertising and mobile apps, the Romney campaign can target more people and motivate them to either donate or vote based on where the voter lives. Thanks to digital, the Romney campaign can achieve its fundraising goals and encourage more voters to come to the polls on November 6.

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Targeted Victory in the News: Sponsored Results and Search Advertisements

November 5, 2012 By

One way the Presidential campaigns are trying to persuade online voters is through sponsored results and search advertising. People who type specific political terms or candidates into a search engine or social media website will see online advertisements from the other candidate. In a new article from Newsday, our co-founder and digital director for the Romney campaign Zac Moffatt explains the importance of displaying online advertisements in search results:

We think of search a lot of times as intent…If you can participate in that conversation the likelihood that you’re relevant is much higher. It’s pretty specific.

The Romney campaign has focused on reaching voters through Facebook by buying sponsored results and marketing messages for voters on Facebook mobile. This digital strategy is designed to increase interest towards Mitt Romney and allow voters to learn more information on his Facebook page.

Candidates use sponsored results on Google and Facebook as a way to reach voters online.

Sponsored results and search advertising allow the Presidential candidates to keep their names in the minds of voters and provide undecided voters with an easy way to learn more about each of the candidates by entering words into a search engine.

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Targeted Victory in the News: Digital in the 2012 Election

November 5, 2012 By

The 2012 election marks the first time campaigns are significantly using real-time digital media. Campaigns are using real-time digital media to encourage online debate and provide information to voters on different platforms. In a new article from Forbes, our co-founder and digital director for the Romney campaign Zac Moffatt explained how Republicans have put more emphasis into digital in the 2012 election. During this election cycle, Republicans have increased their digital presence through several ways including more online advertising and social media.

One social media website Republicans are using is the question and answer website Quora. It allows voters to learn more about the candidates in an positive atmosphere and candidates can use Quora to answer questions posted by voters. Moffatt said in another article from Forbes how Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan helped the Romney campaign learn more about Quora:

We were excited as a digital team when Congressman Ryan joined the team, it was one of the first things we asked him…It is a much deeper conversation.

Quora is emerging as a new, important digital tool for campaigns because it helps voters and candidates interact with each other in an honest manner. By using Quora, campaigns can narrow the gap between candidates and voters.

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AllFacebook: Romney/Ryan Wins War Of Words On Facebook

November 5, 2012 By

By: Jennifer Moire

The debates are over. The rallies are coming to a close. The presidential candidates are getting hoarse. Now that the election is almost over, Socialbakers answers the question: “Who won the war of words” on Facebook?

Socialbakers uses likes and shares as a measure of engagement rate, as well as comments, although it noted that those figures are always smaller. Looking at the Facebook buzz following each of the four debates, Socialbakers named the winners and losers.
…
The bottom line? Despite — or because of — having lower fan bases, the Romney campaign has the stronger engagement rate and ties or leads the president in several other metrics, except Twitter. That should make Romney’s digital strategist, Zac Moffatt, happy.
…
This article is excerpted from AllFacebook. Click here to view the full article.

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