YouTube Marketing And SEO For Political Campaigns

If you are running for political office, or if you help the campaign of a political candidate, then you likely are attempting to get awareness to the campaign’s various messages. This currently may be done by mailers, billboards, TV commercials, radio commercials, and social media – depending on any restrictions you have with state and/or local campaign laws. These are all great options as certain segments of constituents trust them as their primary sources of awareness on politicians and political issues.

Many politicians and their campaign managers, however, don’t properly utilize YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. There are several ways to maximize those platforms’ abilities to reach the targeted audience in a cost-effective manner.

Furthermore, if designed ahead of time, it is possible to rank your main website and/or video(s) on page 1 of search results. These would be for keyword phrases being entered into the search engines by voters who have not yet made up their minds regarding a candidate.

What Are People Searching When It Comes To Elections?

Here are some examples of the kinds of searches being entered by your prospective voter, yet where your candidate’s website (or video or interviews on established appropriate media) are not yet ranking on page one of the search results:

• “candidates who support ISSUE” (targeting issues-based voters)
• “State/District primary candidates”
• “who is running for Congress in DISTRICT?”
• “political candidates running for POSITION in CITY”

What Results Show Up For Those Searches?

The above types of searches are just the beginning of the list of ways voters are using search engines to get more information before making a decision in early voting or on election day. Additionally, most searches that have any discernible search volume usually produce returns on the first page of results from sites such as:

• Ballotpedia.org
• State-specific or city-specific media website
• Wikipedia
• Secretary of State website page
• local Republican or Democrat website page

Typically, your candidate’s website or other web properties (YouTube channel, LinkedIn page, Facebook page, etc.) do not appear on page 1 of the search results…

… but they easily can!

What Does All Of That Mean For My Campaign?

By identifying the keywords which people are likely to type into the search engines as Election Day gets closer, you can optimize your website & other web properties to put your message on page 1 of the search results. This way you are making it easier for those prospective voters interested in the topics, and therefore more likely to vote in the upcoming election, to find what you want to convey instead of having to “hop around” to find your campaign’s messages… even if your candidate is the perfect fit for that voter doing the searches!

What About YouTube And Video Marketing For My Political Campaign? How Can That Help Me On Election Day?

YouTube is a great option as, once your channel gets approved by Google to run political ads, you then have many options to help you get the word out about your campaign. These include:

• Easy-to-share video content messages which can be sent by email, text, social media, embedded on blogs, put into press releases, etc.
• The videos can rank quickly in YouTube (and possibly in Google) for some of the kinds of keyword phrases mentioned earlier which are being entered by voters
• If you have an issues-based video message then you can run paid ads in YouTube, targeting the videos about that issue. You then can do radius-based targeting to reach the right audiences by age, geography and more
• You can take other favorable videos about the candidate which are on other YouTube channels, and add then you can add them to a keyword-optimized playlist on your channel. There are additional steps to get the playlist more exposure in YouTube and Google search results

The above are just some of the ways in which you can leverage YouTube to help your candidate get more exposure from messages which he/she approves and meets all necessary guidelines for approved political advertising. The same would apply to candidate forum videos, videos in other public appearances and more.

What About Other Video Sharing Online Platforms?

Depending on which office your campaign is targeting, appearing on interest-based video-sharing platforms can benefit your campaign as well. Whether you repurpose existing video content, or you decide to generate brand new content, a conservative-leaning candidate could add content to a video-sharing site like Rumble.

Those videos then could be shared on conservative-leaning social platforms like Telegram, Gab, and others. While that was just a hypothetical example, the principle works for whichever political party or leaning that your campaign has.

The other video & social platforms which permit video uploads can be very helpful in certain circumstances, so some upfront strategy session work would have to be done to determine if and how such alternative platform marketing would be beneficial to your campaign.

Do You Have Any Actual Examples?

Yes!

In early 2022 there was a Congressional primary election for district representing much of one of the larger-population metropolitan areas. The campaign brought me in to help, but the Google Ads account wasn’t approved for political advertising until just 5 days before the election. Early voting had already started, so here are the numbers we were able to get in the 4+ days before ending the campaign:

Views (25+ seconds of video watch time as an ad + organic views) = 18,000+ in the 4+ days targeting just the desired geographic areas in the district

** The number of people who voted in this primary election for the district was just over 22,000 votes total (early voting & election day combined)

Clicks to the candidate’s main website from those 18,000+ views = just over 800 clicks/visits in the 4+ days

Watch time (in minutes) of the candidate’s videos = nearly 1.5 minutes per “view” = roughly 27,000 minutes of watch time

How Does All Of This Compare To TV, Radio, Mailers, Streaming News And Other Advertising Which Supposedly Reaches The Same Audience?

In addition to the benefits of being hyper-targeted for paid ads, long-term benefit due to rankings in YouTube and the search engines, and possibly intercepting traffic which otherwise would go to your campaign’s opponents, there are additional cost-saving benefits:

• Fast turnaround time – sometimes as fast as 24 to 48 hours (assuming your Google Ads account is approved to run ads). This “speed-to-market” has its own cost savings and indirect financial benefits
• Typically less than 50% of comparable television and radio ads, with very precise ads targeting
• You won’t pay for video ads in YouTube unless the viewer watches a minimum of 50% of the video’s length or 25 seconds (whichever comes first). Even those who “skip” the ads after 5 seconds still give you no-cost exposure to the viewer
• You also can track inbound clicks from YouTube to the campaign’s website, social media channels, and more. From there you can get people to opt into an e-mail newsletter or social media property; and then those people can be invited to meet the candidate, donate, etc.

If I Want To Explore This Further Then What Are My Next Steps?

First, let me know what kinds of video content you already have. Does the content align with what voters in your desired geographic area are seeking? Does the candidate have any video content, with some sort of third-party approval (such as applause from attendees at a candidates’ forum), which can position the candidate favorably?

Once the answers to the above questions are “Yes”, then we will have to determine how people are searching online in your area for issues, candidate endorsements, and more. We then can determine what is desired by the people you are trying to reach in your geographic area, and start to match up your video content with what those people trust and are reading/watching online.

There is a lot more to leveraging YouTube, search engines and other video-sharing platforms. While it often is considered an “afterthought” by many candidates and campaign managers, you can gain a quick competitive edge in your current (or upcoming) race by investing some time and part of your budget into these ads. They can help you in more ways then you may realize and possibly help you on the road to a victory celebration at the end of Election Night!

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