Every four years during presidential elections, local advertisers are faced with the same, recurring challenge: How to maintain an effective advertising presence in the market while competing with outrageous political spending.
The answer to this challenge is unique for every business, but regardless of what your marketing goals are for the remainder of 2024, business owners and agencies should be aware of the current media landscape.
While many consumers are already being targeted with political messaging day in and day out and feel as if they are at a frequency capacity, history tells us that about 60% of total political spending won’t take place until 6 weeks out from Election Day, which means that things are just getting started.
But, surprise! 2024 is proving to be anything but a typical election cycle.
Back in May of 2024, Basis Technologies was projecting that, “This year’s political ad spend is forecast to land between $10.2 billion and $12 billion—numbers that would demonstrate a 13%-to-30% increase from the 2019-2020 election cycle.”
According to MediaVine, “What’s unusual is that in previous presidential election years, a large chunk of this [ad money] would have been spent during competitive primaries. Not in 2024… the vast majority of potential ad spend is still available, waiting to be deployed by November 4.”
Meaning that if the market was already going to be ramping up towards the end of September as we enter the 6-week window before Election Day plus parties theoretically have withheld some of their budget because of a less-competitive primary season, plus we were already on track a 30% increase in spending, the challenge presented to advertisers to maintain that effective presence will feel bigger than ever.
The good news is that companies don’t need to stop all paid media tactics these next few months and wait for the chaos to calm down. By being intentional with the “where” and “how” and working with the media reps in your market, businesses can continue to reach their intended audiences through advertising.
Here are three things to consider as you navigate your way through political advertising this fall:
Stay the course!
Your marketing message is your marketing message. Stay the course and stick with it. All too often, businesses try to figure out how to move in and out of political advertising seasons and come up with catchy phrases that attempt to tie themselves to a political election. There’s a lot of danger in that. One of the reasons it’s so important to have a strong grasp of your brand story is so you can use that confidence to create stability rather than pursue tangent paths that might not align long-term with who you really are at your core.
Stay connected to your media representatives
The second thing is – work with your media representatives. They’re the ones that are going to be able to tell you what rates are going to clear and what rates won’t clear. Take network television buying for instance. It doesn’t do a business any good to get the lowest unit rate you can possibly get, only to find out that your spots aren’t going to run as ordered. This is where relationships become crucial to planning, placing and executing a successful media campaign.
If you locked in your media placements for all of 2024 back in January, you may want to revisit your schedules and have a conversation with your reps about how Q4 is looking on their station. If you need to make adjustments to your plan, make them from a place of being informed and proactive, versus reactive after things haven’t run correctly.
And lastly…
Stay visible
Don’t disappear. Yes. There’s a lot of messages going on out there and a lot of political activity. But the fact of the matter is your message counts and it’s important for our communities that local businesses thrive. Stay active in the marketplace and market your business. This is not the time to go completely dark on your customers and members.
You aren’t alone in facing this challenge and there are resources available to help you effectively market your business during this political season.
So, remember these considerations: stay the course, stay connected to your media representatives, and stay visible.
