Recently, Brad Parscale was named once again as the campaign manager for Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. Parscale is a digital marketer who successfully managed Trump’s online advertising campaign in 2016. According to Parscale, Clinton’s campaign spent hundreds of times more compared to Trump’s to run about 1,000 Facebook ads. CPM, also referred to as “cost per 1000”, is what Facebook charges every advertiser to display one ad 1,000 times.
So, how does Facebook advertising work?
Most of the campaigns’ teams have lists of voters to whom they intend to reach out, and Facebook helps campaigns to accurately match voter lists to their Facebook users. That means political campaigns are able to target specific voter groups when running their ads on Facebook. This is important for every campaign team looking to get the most value out of their ads. This action also helps to eliminate wasting ad views on a group of people who are not registered to vote.
If Trump’s ads were better clickbait compared to those of the Clinton campaign, that may have been a primary reason why Trump’s campaign team was able to spend less. Facebook rewards content that is engaging since it can keep its users to stick around and view more ads.
Does the issue of cost explain the whole story?
Some people dispute Parscale’s claim of spending hundreds of times less compared to Clinton’s campaign team. Many think that Parscale’s figures have been inflated significantly. Their argument is based on previous experience when using Facebook for targeted advertising. According to experienced digital marketers, it is definitely less costly for Trump to run ads in Nebraska than for Clinton to show her ads in Silicon Valley.
Another factor that should be taken into account is that Clinton ran many video ads that were aimed at boosting turnout while Trump’s ads were often just single images, but with enticement to click. All of these ads were designed to perform in different ways. According to Pathmatics, many of Trump’s campaign ads were meant for fundraising pitches encouraging users to purchase campaign gear. Read more about Trump’s Facebook marketing strategy in the Washington Post.
At ASTRALCOM, we can help to leverage effective use of targeted campaigns on Facebook to achieve outstanding ROI. Certain topics are expected to be in the mainstream on Facebook for 2018, as I wrote about here.
ASTRALCOM has a team of experienced digital marketers that will help you to develop effective marketing techniques to target your specific audience. Contact us today to extend the effectiveness of your outreach through Facebook and other social media marketing.
