8 ways to target your campaign tactics

Targeting is essential to any campaign no matter the size. In essence, targeting is using known information to determine the amount and types of voters needed to win your campaign, and gearing your campaign to appeal to those voters. If your campaign isn’t using targeted information to appeal to certain groups of voters, unless you have unlimited resources, then the effort and money spent on your campaign will be virtually useless. Many campaigns use targeting, but not to its full potential. Most campaigns think of targeting in the sense of TV and radio ads, but it should be used for so much more. In fact, it should be used in every aspect if your campaign.

Yard Signs

If you’re placing your yard signs at random and are planning on them being effective, you had better have unlimited resources. If not, then you need to narrow down the locations to put up your yard signs so as to target the chosen types of voters.

Mass Communication

This is a basically a no-brainer. All of your television and radio ads, billboards and direct mail pieces should be targeted your selected voters and demographics.

Sign-Waving Campaign

A large number of grassroots campaigns start sign-waving campaigns on busy intersections and street corners to raise name recognition and to build excitement for the candidate. While this can be a great tactic, if it isn’t targeted you will be wasting the time and effort of those waving the signs.

Online

Just as your mass communication efforts need to be targeted, so does your online presence. Whether it’s an email blast or web advertisements, they all should be targeted at your chosen demographic and voters to get the most ROI.

Campaign Events

Schedule your events in areas where they will most the biggest impact; where your targeted constituents work, play, and live.

Volunteers

Make sure your volunteers, especially the ones working the targeted campaign events, are from your targeted audience. By utilizing them and getting them excited about your campaign, you will help to ensure that they spread the word to their network about you.

Door-to-Door

Door-to-Door is a necessary aspect of any campaign, but when you try to knock on every door in your district, it ends up being a lot of wasted effort. By targeting your door-to-door campaign you can help ensure that the connections you make will be ones that are of quality as opposed to quantity.

Campaign Advisors and Boards

If you have a finance committee or campaign advisory panel, make sure that at least some of their membership and leadership is made up of your targeted audience. By having targeted community leaders as campaign leaders, they will be more apt to campaign for you to their community and can help to get out the vote.

The bottom line here is to make sure you have a targeted group of voters, and make sure that you target them in every single aspect of your campaign. By doing so, you’re bound to get more of a bang-for-your-buck when it comes to election day.