Paid Media Tactics to Keep Your Small Business Visible During the 2024 Election

Love it or leave it, the 2024 election is approaching. And regardless of your feelings about the candidates or your political beliefs, there’s something every business owner should know:

If you use paid media, the 2024 election will likely impact your campaigns.

While we can’t predict the scope of impact with certainty, experience tells us that you can mitigate it by:

• Anticipating more dramatic shifts in your audience’s attention span
• Preparing for hikes in advertising costs, particularly in cost per click (CPC) and cost per mille (CPM)
• Adapting to dynamic keyword trends

Here’s a close look at the changes we anticipate in the months leading up to the election and strategies to ensure you prepare for them.

Shifting Attention Spans

Election years, particularly those with polarizing candidates, have the power to disrupt traditional media consumption patterns.

2024 will be no different.

Expect your audience to be distracted, but don’t let that deter you. You can still reach them if you use strategy and sound judgment. Here’s how we’re cutting through the clutter in the 2024 election season:

• Analyzing audience behavior so we know when they are more likely to engage with non-political content. This tells us when to launch targeted campaigns.
• Diversifying our channels—if one is overrun with political ads, which drive up paid media prices, we will pivot to find a cost-effective alternative.
• Creating engaging content that speaks to our clients’ audiences, addresses their needs, and gives them a break from the never-ending hum of political news.
• Mindfully navigating the political landscape. Sure, we have political beliefs. We just don’t allow them to influence or interfere with our clients’ success.

Increased Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

When politicians pump more money into their digital ad spending, CPC prices go up, which means:

1. Your campaigns cost more but deliver lower returns

2. Prime ad space gets eaten up by competitors (increased demand = less supply)

3. Audiences start overlapping (we’ll discuss this more in the next section)

In a perfect world, you would simply increase your budget to accommodate for the price jump. When that’s not possible, we help our clients by:

• Using Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords typically have lower search volume but higher conversion rates. That’s because they are specific and have less competition than generic keywords. This allows us to create more targeted content at a lower CPC.
• Focusing on Quality Content: We help clients create content that meets and exceeds Google’s quality standards. The results speak for themselves: Our clients continue to see a boost in their search rankings simply because we follow Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.
• Segmentation: Too many businesses use a shotgun approach to marketing, blasting the same message to every prospective customer. Instead, we hit smaller segments with targeted messaging tailored to that audience. While this is particularly important during election season, it should also be integrated into your overarching marketing strategy.
• Getting Organic: Rising prices may push us to explore more cost-effective advertising platforms, yet we are also focused on driving traffic to channels our clients already own: their website and blog. By optimizing these platforms for SEO, we enhance visibility in search engine results and drive more traffic. This cuts costs while boosting long-term search visibility.

Changes in Dynamic Keyword Trends

You may not run a political organization or even use political keywords to target your audience. Unfortunately, public interest in election-related topics can still inadvertently impact keyword trends that affect your business or industry. Take health insurance providers as an example: They are not inherently political organizations. Yet their services are widely debated political topics, especially during elections.

The same scenario could apply to other industries, including energy, finance, and security. For businesses in these sectors, it’s important to keep a pulse on these broader political discussions and adapt your marketing strategies accordingly. Here’s what we’re doing:

• Monitoring keyword trends and, when appropriate, optimizing content to reflect those trends.
• Regularly reviewing pay-per-click ad campaigns to ensure they are both effective and aligned with current keyword trends.
• Conducting keyword research to identify less competitive, industry-specific terms that can help our clients maintain visibility without getting lost in a sea of political noise.
• When appropriate, creating measured content that addresses audience concerns about industry-related topics relevant to the current political climate. Balance and restraint are key here. The trick is to address political topics while remaining staunchly apolitical.

Tune Out the Noise, Tune In to WISE Digital Marketing

Election year is noisy. But WISE Digital Partners gives our clients what we think of as a master volume knob—a strategic approach to SEO and paid media that turns down the hum of competing voices.

When CPC goes up and ad space gets eaten up by competitors, we get creative. That means optimizing your website, doubling down on quality content, leveraging the right keywords to ensure you maintain visibility (without breaking the bank), and creating targeted paid media campaigns that get seen and convert. It all starts with a complimentary SEO and paid media audit. From there, we’ll create a custom plan that aligns with your goals and budget. Contact us now!