Election Year of Chaos: How Political Campaigns Will Disrupt Your Ad Spend

Summary

Podcast Summary: Special Ops - "Election Year of Chaos: How Political Campaigns Will Disrupt Your Ad Spend"

Podcast Information

• Title: Special Ops
• Hosts: Emma Rainville & Travis Gomez
• Description: Special Ops is a tactical business podcast dedicated to helping entrepreneurs grow their companies through actionable strategies rather than mere discussions. Hosted by seasoned entrepreneurs Emma Rainville and Travis Gomez, co-founders of Shockwave Solutions, each episode delves into overcoming revenue growth challenges, increasing profit margins, and building autonomous leadership teams. Additionally, each episode features a free downloadable playbook available at Special Ops Podcast.

Episode Overview

• Title: Election Year of Chaos: How Political Campaigns Will Disrupt Your Ad Spend
• Release Date: November 1, 2024

In this episode, Emma Rainville and Travis Gomez explore the profound impact of the 2024 election cycle on business advertising budgets. They dissect how political campaigns are inflating media costs, the resultant challenges for businesses, and strategic approaches to maintaining return on investment (ROI) amidst this turmoil.

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1. Introduction to Election Year Ad Spend Challenges

The episode begins with Emma setting the stage for the discussion on the escalating ad spend driven by the 2024 elections. She highlights the surge in media costs and the fierce competition for audience attention.

Emma (00:04): "With the 2024 elections fast approaching, your marketing budget is going to feel the impact."

Travis concurs, emphasizing the unprecedented scale of investment in political advertising.

Travis (01:03): "It's escalating because the politics are escalating and becoming more and more theatrical."

2. Impact of Political Campaigns on Ad Spend

Emma and Travis delve into the statistics illustrating the dramatic increase in political ad expenditures. They reveal that digital ad spend for the current election is projected to reach $2.64 billion, marking a 28% increase from the previous cycle.

Travis (01:59): "Digital ad spend is projected to hit 2.64 billion. That's a B. That's a B. By the way. Billion dollars."

This surge creates a saturated advertising environment, making it challenging for businesses to secure visibility and maintain their ad budgets without compromising ROI.

Emma (02:26): "If everything is flooded, we're competing against people who have found money. And not only that, but you have audiences that are exhausted of being advertised to."

3. Challenges Faced by Businesses

The hosts discuss the dual challenges businesses face:

• Increased Competition: With political entities deploying extensive marketing campaigns across various platforms (email, SMS, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Google Ads), businesses find themselves vying for the same limited audience attention.

• Audience Fatigue: Consumers are becoming weary of constant advertising bombardment, leading to diminished engagement and higher costs for effective ad placements.

Travis (02:39): "Political campaigns are smart. They hire marketing teams. Their email, their SMS, their Facebook, their TikTok, their Twitter. There's Google Ads. There's everything that we, we do to sell our products, they're now doing."

4. Strategies to Mitigate Ad Spend Challenges

Emma and Travis propose actionable strategies to help businesses navigate the chaotic election-year advertising landscape:

a. Avoiding Political Polarization in Ads

They advise against aligning business advertisements with political sides, as it risks alienating segments of the audience.

Travis (03:14): "You do not want to pick sides. I'm just. You don't want to pick in your ads, in your business."

Instead, they recommend focusing on positive messaging that resonates universally with customers.

Travis (03:30): "Stop shining a light on negativity and shine a light on positivity. So pain points that are cured from."

b. Leveraging Shared Values for Positive Messaging

Highlighting values that unify rather than divide can make a brand more memorable and foster customer loyalty. For instance, a pet product company could emphasize its commitment to animal welfare without delving into political discourse.

Travis (04:25): "If you can shine a positive light on values that your audience can resonate with, and you tell that story in your ads first, it's not political at all."

c. Maximizing Owned Channels

The hosts emphasize the importance of utilizing and optimizing owned marketing channels such as SMS campaigns, direct mail, email lists, and social media communities to retain control over messaging and reduce dependence on paid ad platforms overwhelmed by political spending.

Travis (06:36): "Election season is like the perfect opportunity to maximize your own channels. Your SMS campaigns, your direct mail email lists, your..."

Emma adds that leveraging these channels allows businesses to engage directly with their audience without the inflated costs associated with competing for ad space.

Emma (07:01): "It's like, no, no, no, no. Like, if we're gonna put something out there for free, and I love, like, I'll give nod to Perry Belcher on this because like his strategy for what he's putting out for freaking free is incredible."

5. Building and Utilizing Customer Communities

Travis illustrates how creating and nurturing customer communities, such as Facebook groups, can serve as a powerful platform for organic promotion and affiliate marketing. By encouraging satisfied customers to share and promote products within their networks, businesses can amplify their reach without incurring additional ad costs.

Travis (08:35): "So Emma would like to give you 100% of the sale. If you'd like to send it to your email list of friends."

Emma reinforces that these community-driven efforts can significantly extend a brand's influence and foster a loyal customer base.

Emma (10:58): "These are all, like, strategies you can start implementing right now in any business."

6. Offering High-Quality Content

In an environment where ad space is saturated and attention spans are dwindling, the quality of content becomes paramount. Emma and Travis advocate for producing professional, polished content that stands out from the competition, thereby attracting and retaining customer interest.

Emma (12:01): "The difference between amateur and professional is polish."

Travis (12:25): "If we can take your content and make it high quality and highly valuable, you can take your brand and really set yourself apart."

High-quality content not only engages audiences but also positions the brand as a trustworthy authority, encouraging consumers to transition from free content to paid offerings.

Travis (14:13): "And if you can take your content and make it high quality and highly valuable, you can take your brand and really set yourself apart."

7. Conclusion and Actionable Takeaways

Emma and Travis conclude by reiterating the importance of proactive strategies to safeguard business ad budgets during the chaotic election year. They emphasize taking actionable steps now to implement the discussed strategies, ensuring businesses remain resilient and continue to thrive despite the challenging advertising landscape.

Emma (15:01): "With political campaigns going out of control with driving a bad cost, a little creativity, some smart strategy can really protect your business in this season."

They encourage listeners to visit their Visionary Vault for a free downloadable guide packed with resources and tools designed to help businesses optimize their ad spend and navigate political and economic turbulence effectively.

Emma (15:08): "Make sure you visit our visionary [e-mail] it's our guide to free resources and tools that you can implement into your business immediately."

Notable Quotes:

• Emma (00:04): "With the 2024 elections fast approaching, your marketing budget is going to feel the impact."
• Travis (01:03): "It's escalating because the politics are escalating and becoming more and more theatrical."
• Travis (02:39): "Political campaigns are smart. They hire marketing teams. Their email, their SMS, their Facebook, their TikTok, their Twitter. There's Google Ads."
• Emma (03:30): "Stop shining a light on negativity and shine a light on positivity."
• Travis (12:25): "If we can take your content and make it high quality and highly valuable, you can take your brand and really set yourself apart."
• Emma (15:01): "With political campaigns going out of control with driving a bad cost, a little creativity, some smart strategy can really protect your business in this season."

Final Thoughts

This episode of Special Ops provides invaluable insights for entrepreneurs grappling with the adverse effects of heightened political advertising on their marketing budgets. By emphasizing strategic content creation, leveraging owned channels, fostering customer communities, and maintaining a positive, unifying brand message, Emma Rainville and Travis Gomez equip listeners with the tools needed to navigate and thrive amidst the election-induced advertising chaos.

Listeners are encouraged to access the free resources at Special Ops Visionary Vault to further implement the strategies discussed and safeguard their businesses against the disruptive forces of political campaigns.

Transcript

[A]

And welcome back to Special Ops, where we give you real, actionable insights for entrepreneurs. Look, with the 2024 elections fast approaching, your marketing budget is going to feel the impact. Today, we're going to talk about how political campaigns can skyrocket your media cost and what smart businesses are doing to keep their ROI intact. Don't forget to visit our Visionary vault. It's our free resource [e-mail] for a downloadable guide on maximizing your ad spend during election year. In our free members area, it can give you help to optimize your ad campaign during the election in. And if you stick around to the end, I'll share our downloadable checklist that'll walk you through the step by steps to protecting your marketing budget from political and economic turbulence. So as we think about, like, what's happening politically right now with political campaigns happening, there's a spike in media spend and ad spend due to increased competition for those eyeballs. Right. Everybody's trying to get placement, everybody's trying to get their product in front of. And whether it's a product or a campaign, it doesn't matter. People are trying to pay for eyeballs right now like nobody's business. So as we're diving through that, like this is a trend that we see over and over again every four years, obviously, because when we have elections, this is always a competition for eyeballs.

[B]

Well, it's escalating because the politics are escalating and becoming more and more theatrical. Right? There's more and more.

[A]

More dramatic. Yeah, it's flooding everything. Money's flooding into it like nobody's business.

[B]

It's not just that, though. It's taking people's attention. And this is what we have to understand. When you have Elon Musk giving interviews or you have Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt, like all of this is is theatricals, right. It takes all of the attention away from everything else. And so that's what you need to understand. So there's, there's multiple things here, so I want to really stay organized. The first thing is, is I think we should talk about ad spend and what's happening to ads and then some ways to mitigate against that the best you can. And then we can talk about some marketing efforts and things that you can do during this time to draw some of the attention back to you and your products.

[A]

Perfect. Okay. Do you want to jump into the challenges and opportunities then?

[B]

Let's just start with challenges and why these are challenges. Just pulling up a couple of statistics. Digital ad spend is projected to hit 2.64 billion.

[A]

That.

[B]

That's a b. That's a B. By the way. Billion dollars.

[A]

Political ad spend. Just political ad spend.

[B]

Correct. This election, this election season, there's just an overload of it. Which is a 28% increase from 2.07 in 2020.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If everything is flooded, we're competing against people who have found money. And not only that, but you have audiences that are exhausted of being advertised to.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because political campaigns are. They're, they're smart. They hire marketing teams. Their email, their SMS, their Facebook, their TikTok, their Twitter. There's Google Ads. There's everything that we, we do to sell our products, they're now doing. And so not only do we have to fight against each other for, you know, those eyeballs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. But now, this year, this coming month, particularly where this is what's going to happen. So here's a couple of things that we can do.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

What is one of the things that political ads do? They shine a light on things that the other side likes that your side doesn't like.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You do not want to pick sides. I'm just. You don't want to pick in your ads, in your business. That's my opinion. I just, I see no point in.

[A]

There's no benefit in alienating half your audience.

[B]

I don't see a benefit to your brand, no matter what.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Unless you have a political brand. If you're doing a survivalist, obviously, go Trump. So when you can take and tap into the values that resonate with your audience and everything. So negative. So stop shining a light on negativity and shine a light on positivity. So pain points that are cured from. And you gotta be careful when I say cured from. I'm not talking to you supplement people. Right. But pain points that are dissolved and taken away. And if you can shine a light on that and it could be that your product just. You can't think of anything. But we just had all these hurricanes caused some pretty devastation, Pretty, pretty terrible devastation to, you know, one of our states.

[A]

Several of our states. But. Yeah.

[B]

Right. So we're not unified as a nation anymore during political times. We're just not. You have brothers fighting on Facebook and not wanting to go to Thanksgiving dinner together because of elections. This.

[A]

But it gets real. It's a real thing.

[B]

This is a real thing. So if you can shine a positive light to values, maybe you have a dog product, maybe you have a pet product. And you. How many pets are drowning in Florida have no food and you're gonna, you know, get with your people. You know, for every 10 bags of dog food I sell, I'm gonna send a bag to Florida to the Humane Society to feed these displaced animals. Now, you're shining a positive light on values that your audience can resonate with. And you tell that story in your ads first.

[A]

Right. And it's not political at all.

[B]

And it's not political at all. But during political times, when people are exhausted of hearing negativity and exhausted from. Even the people who are screaming for a division, they're exhausted in that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the thing that they're fighting for, that a lot of people don't realize, is unification. They just want it to look like everybody thinks like them. But that's what they desire, is unification. So if we can get people to unify and use our ads to unify them for one mission, that is feed dogs. Who wants dogs to starve? Particularly if you have a pet product. So if you can really make your brand memorable by unifying your people, and it doesn't even have to be in donation form, right? It can be.

[A]

But if you're doing something good, right. Like people want to be part of something that's good. And so it galvanizes people around doing something positive.

[B]

Right. And if you can foster positive associations that make your. It'll make your brand stand out just because.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So if you can find ways to do that, that's a phenomenal way to do it. And then you can leverage your own channels. Election season is like the perfect opportunity to maximize your own channels. Your SMS campaigns, your direct mail email lists, your. If you have a product that you sell to people and it goes to their home, you should be dumping them in a Facebook group. Oh, but Emma, nobody uses Facebook anymore except for the $10 million a minute that is purchased off Facebook. And if you really hate Facebook, you know, school communities, but nothing beats a Facebook community right now. My opinion.

[A]

Currently.

[B]

Currently, Currently, everything changes. That's the only thing that we know will stay the same. But if so, you really, really want to leverage your own channels right now. And what does that look like? Well, Emma, of course I doing that. Well, what if I'm leveraging my channels in a way that gets them to sell my products? Like I try and get affiliates sell my products. So, Travis, you. You know, you. You purchased my wave workbook. How was it for you?

[A]

It was great.

[B]

Awesome. Did it bring you a lot of clarity?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

That's absolutely amazing. I'm so glad to hear that. I'm not even kidding. This is such a. This is such a brilliant way to do this. Hey, Travis, do you have like, three minutes for me?

[A]

Of course.

[B]

I'd love to hop on a call with you. I have a team member that can do that. Is that cool? By the way, this is all an SMS that is automated out of Ghoul.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

So I had a team member would love to talk to you about your experience.

[A]

Great.

[B]

You like it? So I already know that we're good. If you said this sucks, I'm just going to stop the conversation. But okay. So Travis gets on the phone with my customer service agent in Jamaica, and my customer service. By the way, my customer service person in Jamaica records the call. And they're irrelevant on the call. No one's ever going to see their questions. No one's ever going to see them talking. All they're going to hear is Travis's answers. Hey, Travis, it's so nice to meet you. Emma had told me that she talked to you today by text, thinking, thank you so much for hopping on a call with me. Do you mind telling me about your experience with Wave and what it did for your business? I. E. Travis is going to talk for two to three minutes.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

He's going to talk about his experience with the WAVE workbook and how it helped his business and how great it was. I'm going to use that for a testimonial later. That's not the purpose of this call, but I like to double tap everything. And so such an easy way to.

[A]

Get testimonials too, man.

[B]

Really?

[A]

It's like.

[B]

Really is. So, Travis, Emma, you know, she really wanted to reach out to the people who did the best with her workbook. And. Hey, Travis, is there any chance that you know two to three other business owners just like you?

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Of course you do. So Emma would like to give you 100% of the sale. If you'd like to send it to your email list of friends. And just if they want to buy or you want to post on your Facebook or your Instagram, she'll give you 100% of the proceeds. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in? I'd be happy to set you up with an affiliate link.

[A]

Sure. Do you have creatives I can send out?

[B]

Absolutely. I have everything for you right here. So we have a JV site. I actually have swipes already written from you from Emma in Emma's voice that you can edit to however you. And then I've got some display ads. These Will go on some creatives, rather. These will go on Facebook. These will go on TikTok. These will go on Instagram. It's all right here. You can just go to Wave clients. We love dot com. And by the way, did you. Emma wrote a book.

[A]

She did, she did.

[B]

She'd love to give you a free copy if you'd. A free ebook copy if you would share your review. And also we'd love to give you a 50% affiliate commission on that. Would that be interesting to you?

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

Amazing. I'm going to set you up with an affiliate link for that. That's also your. All your creatives, all your swipes are going to be on that same. Emma loves her customers dot com. Is that cool with you?

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Great. Awesome. What did I create?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that call takes about eight minutes. And we can do eight to 10 of those an hour.

[A]

Oh, sure.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because the agents are never going to just hurry up and run right on the next call for being honest. But we can do. We can do eight to 10. Those can't. We can. Yeah. Eight to 10 of those an hour. Some are much, much faster. They're just not. You're never going to use the testimonial because they're like, oh, it was great. Right?

[A]

Crickets go now.

[B]

Right, right, right. You hurry up. The call. And the ones of people who are really, like, explosively loving it all takes eight minutes. So that's just one way to tap into your audience. Another way. Facebook group. Facebook group. Hey, guys, everybody. You know, everybody, thank you so much for. This is a video, by the way. I always do a video. Hey, guys, thank you so much for purchasing the Wave workbook. I just. God, I just. I'm just so appreciative of you guys. I'd like to tell you what I'm going to do is you all know my book launch. I'm going to give you all a free copy. And I love it. I'd love it if you would tell your friends about my book. And by the way, I'm going to give you all an affiliate link. Here's where you sign up for it. And anybody who buys the book on your affiliate link, I'm going to give you 50% of the proceeds. Now, I just open my customer base to their customer base without. With a post that takes seconds if I don't have a customer service.

[A]

Right. And these are all, like, strategies you can start implementing right now in any business.

[B]

And I've got 30 of these that are going to go on the guide we don't have enough today, but if you, if stick around till the end and we're going to tell you how to get that. But I'm going to, I'm going to put way more than that. But that is how you leverage your own channels. And again, there's email, there's sms, there's your, your Instagram, there's your, you know, your customer base is your own channel.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it's something that you can tap into not only during elections, but during holidays when ad ad spend is just really tough. And then I'm going to tell you the third and last thing that you can do so that we can move on because there's so much to go with elections, not just ad spend.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But the third thing that you can do to add spend and ad fatigue. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In election year, during the election year is offer high quality content.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so far, too often we're looking through people's content and it looks like someone went into Canva who doesn't really know how to use Canva, and just kind of threw something together.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. The difference between amateur and professional is the polish.

[B]

The difference between amateur and professional is polish. That's good.

[A]

You can tell when somebody just half asses it, throws something together, puts it out there. And this is our free content. So whatever, you should just be grateful you're getting it. It's like, no, no, no, no. Like, if we're gonna put something out there for free, and I love, like, I'll give nod to Perry Belcher on this because like his strategy for what he's putting out for freaking free is incredible. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like. And that's his free content. And so part of that is, if I'm going to give you this for free, just imagine what you can get from me when you pay for it.

[B]

Exactly. It's really important when you're going through and you're considering, you know, what you're going to put in your blog post, what you're going to put in your videos, your infographics, your webinars, your YouTube shorts, all of it, your reels, there are places where dripping, what you know, without how, how you do it is okay. Because, you know, sometimes we only have seconds to get it out there. Your content should solve a problem. And so for us, like a real problem, like a real problem for us. One of the things that is so important to me, and we're an ops team, we have two video editors, two graphic designers, and nothing's ever enough for me but that's because I really want everything that we put out there to be better than other people's paid shit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I want people to see the $49 product they bought and then look at my free crap on Instagram and be like, this girl just gave me a whole bunch of SOP templates. And they're not nonsense. Like, they're useful and they're interesting and, oh, this already has industry standard built in. Oh, I could just change the logo at the top and my process.

[A]

Yeah, right, right.

[B]

Or, or maybe it's like, hey, you're having like this awful time, you know, right now with this issue and this has been something that's been troubling you and costing you a lot of money, like merchant accounts and merchant account help. We can walk somebody in 20 minutes. How to change that? It's not going to change in 20 minutes. It took you a long time to get here. But we can teach you how to implement fixes in 20 minutes and that's super important. And that's what we do. So, so. But that's our free content.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so when you can take your content and make it high quality and highly valuable, you can take your brand and really set yourself apart. Why would I give myself for free? I need to. I need to get paid. You will get paid if you trust the process.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Particularly at times. Particularly at times. This pays off. Particular times when you've got election spend killing everyone's. Everyone's ability to buy ads.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Everyone's ability to buy new people. And so when, when you can really provide something to someone for problem A, and then they see that you're selling problem B, which is a much bigger problem with a much bigger ticket, are they going to buy it from you or are they going to buy it from the guy they already bought a product from whose paid stuff wasn't as good as your stuff.

[A]

Look, with political campaigns going out of control with driving a bad cost, a little creativity, some smart strategy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can really protect your business in this season. So don't let the election year chaos just catch you off guard. I mean, that's really the bottom line of these people. We want you guys to have these. And so make sure you visit our visionary [e-mail] it's our guide to free resources and tools that you can implement into your business immediately to take action and protect yourself against the chaos that's going on with ads in the political season this year. So with that, thank you so much for joining us on Special Ops. We look forward to catching you next time. Make sure to like and subscribe for free additional content, visit specialopspodcast.

[B]

Com.

[A]

We'll catch you next time.