Consider How Politics Affect Consumers in Your Industry
Election years are always shaped by the events surrounding them. Next year’s election will not bear a resemblance to 2020’s COVID-19 and social justice campaigning, nor will it look like 2016, which now seems like it occurred in a different time.
As you start to come up with business marketing ideas for 2024, it’s important to consider how an election year may affect your choices.
A smart business marketing strategy is to consider the current moment and make adjustments to meet consumers where they are at right now. It’s important to get in touch with what they are experiencing and what they are hearing as candidates campaign to them relentlessly.
At iFocus Marketing, we’ve found success at shepherding clients through election years. We get our energy from designing creative solutionsto help you grow your business under whatever unique circumstances arise.
Here are five strategies that we recommend for the 2024 election year.
Reallocate Your Business Marketing Budget
Businesses that rely on traditional media, including TV commercials and radio ads, won’t be able to maintain their presence in these spaces as campaign money and advertising floods in. There’s only so much room in traditional marketing, and that real estate traditionally goes to the candidates during an election year.
If you’re used to depending on traditional marketing methods, one business marketing idea that works in your favor is to reallocate your ad spend to the digital space, where there’s more space for you. Your reallocated budget will go a lot further here. With the help of an expert digital marketing strategist, you can control your campaign by putting your hard-earned ad-spend to work with algorithms that are specifically designed to maximize your conversions and offer attribution for every marketing dollar.
If you’ve been thinking of doing more in the digital space, an election year may be the time to try. You can get results and data that you’d never see from a typical TV or radio commercial.
Know Your Audience
In today’s digital marketing world, you can understand nearly anything you want to know about the audience you want to connect with. This information includes easily accessible data, like demographics, and far more specific data, like consumer behavior and the psychology behind that behavior.
Wise marketers use this data to inform who they want to market to and how they want to approach them. The better you know your audience, the better you can understand how they’re thinking during an election year. You just need access to premier digital marketing tools and a team that can help you interpret the results and make recommendations for your digital marketing strategy.
Analyze Current Consumer Behavior for Business Marketing Success
It’s also important to keep in mind how consumers are thinking during the upcoming election year and how they’re spending. Consider taking consumer-related data about your target audience and overlapping it with that same segment’s election-related beliefs, values, and voting behavior.
However, you’ll need marketing expertise on your side to make correlations between consumer spending and an election year. This is because one election year’s behavior may not be applicable to the next election year, so think creatively and strategically about what is driving consumers now.
The biggest shifts in consumer spending during the 2020 election year came from political uncertainty around the certification of election results, as well as COVID-19. These two factors aren’t going to repeat themselves in 2024.
Start by asking yourself whether your target consumers see a perceived benefit of waiting until after inauguration day to make a decision on your products or services. This could inform your investment in a brand-awareness strategy, as opposed to wasting resources on a more aggressive Q4 approach that consumers aren’t ready to bite on.
There are many such questions to consider, and it often helps to have a team at your side that is experienced with digital marketing trends and can help you understand the consumers you want to get in front of. The business marketing strategists at iFocus Marketing can guide you through the year ahead and ensure you’re making the right moves.
Lean Into the Noise
While this business marketing idea isn’t for everyone, many have found success during an election year by aligning their business marketing strategy with the election year’s fireworks.
While it may not be wise to link yourself to a specific candidate, election-themed ads, patriotism, and even references to the heated discussions and viral moments generated during the election season can be excellent fodder for a great ad campaign.
If you’re a business that follows how digital marketing trends intersect with politics and pop culture from moment to moment, you might enjoy a newfound boost by paying close attention and joining in on the conversation.
Calm Can Be an Effective Business Marketing Strategy
During an election year, candidates make their pledges to earn our votes. As one candidate presents their message, the other must raise their voice louder to be heard. The media adds to this volume increase by replaying, reporting, and weighing in on the noise.
Whether we know it or not, the echo chamber of messages based mainly on fears, uncertainty, and danger affect us all. Perhaps your business marketing ideas for this election year can offer calm and quiet in response to all the political noise. How can your business offer an alternative set of emotions in which consumers can find a bit of peace, certainty, comfort, and safety? When politicians are attacking each other, how can you model empathy and care?
Get a Customized Business Marketing Plan for 2024
No marketing campaign is one-size-fits-all. Each business that is planning for growth in 2024 and beyond will have to make decisions based on information that is completely specific to their industry, their mission and goals, and their potential customers.
The most important business marketing strategy of all is to ensure you have the right resources for an individualized approach that sees you at the top of your game after the election has come and gone.
iFocus Marketing can be that resource. Schedule a free discovery call with our team to find out how we can market your business for meaningful growth this year.
Peter Mishler, senior digital copywriter at iFocus Marketing, is dedicated to using language to help clients find their audiences. He is the author of two books: a Kathryn A. Morton Prize-winning collection of poetry, from Sarabande Books (2018) and a book of reflections for public school teachers from Andrews McMeel Publishing (2021). His poetry has appeared in many national publications, including The Paris Review, and he is a contributing editor for Literary Hub. New to marketing, Peter taught English for 15 years.
