In trying to reach more voters in new ways, progressive groups and Democratic campaigns experimented with new tactics and outreach methods in 2020 to see what would stick. Influencer marketing was one of those tactics that stuck, and even though the corporate world has practically built an entire industry out of the tactic, political campaigns have a ways to go in developing our own influencer infrastructure and best practices.
We believe that influencer marketing and partnerships have so much potential for political campaigns up and down the ballot, that we wanted to let one of the experts talk about it in her own words in this week’s FWIW. Tegan O’Neill - formerly the digital communications director at NextGen America who led the group’s impressive pilot influencer program in 2020 - is not only working with our team on some exciting projects these days, but graciously agreed to guest-write this week’s FWIW to share her smart thinking on this topic.
Along those same lines, we’re also thrilled to share with the FWIW community the ACRONYM Influencer Toolkit, a how-to guide to influencer marketing for political campaigns, also written by Tegan. We built this resource because we believe the progressive movement - from hyperlocal initiatives to the most competitive U.S. Senate campaigns - benefits when groups and practitioners share what we’ve learned.
More on that below! But before we let Tegan take it away…
BY THE NUMBERS
Surprise, Facebook political ads are back! Facebook lifted their widely panned political advertising ban yesterday, so we’ll be watching to see who are the first advertisers up on the platform, and report back with new spending data next week.
Here’s what’s happening on Snapchat: The ACLU is targeting St. Louis with ads to generate interest in the city’s upcoming mayoral election, and the Voter Participation Center started running voter registration ads targeting Wisconsinites ahead of the statewide school superintendent election next month. The ACLU has also now spent over $100,000 on this ad advocating for equitable marijuana legalization. Overall, here’s how much the biggest advertisers have spent on the platform so far this year:
With Google’s political ad data back, we now have a sense of which groups were ready to launch new ads when the platform lifted their ad ban. One of the top political spenders so far is Fair Fight Action, which is running YouTube ads connecting Georgia’s state row officials to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and criticizing Georgia legislators for their aggressive disenfranchisement attempts this year.
Here’s how much political advertisers spent on Google last week:
Tom Cotton, who ran for re-election virtually unopposed just last year, is using his campaign account to run YouTube ads targeting audiences in New Hampshire and Georgia to push Sens. Maggie Hassan and Raphael Warnock against supporting Xavier Becerra. And if the NRSC’s latest messaging is any indication, it’s starting to look like those senators are two of the GOP’s biggest targets for 2022.
Now, without further ado, here’s Tegan O’Neill with her A1 expertise on influencer marketing!
INFLUENCER MARKETING: WHY AND HOW
In 2019, I started DMing micro-influencers from my personal account to see if anyone would be willing to encourage their audiences to vote in a state election. I did it because A) I had no budget for ads at the time B) I was kind of curious to see what would happen and C) nobody told me not to. Of the 50 or so accounts I DM’d, more than half agreed to participate, and 19 followed through and posted about the election.
Those early results, and a gut feeling that this was important, led NextGen America to invest in building an in-house influencer team, led by Michael Saoma, and powered by Alexia Lewis, Ahmad Ali-Ahmad, Matthew Maulino, and Justine Rubin. This team recruited a team of 869 influencers with a combined following of more than 63 million to activate their audiences to vote in the 2020 election — and they did it with less than 3% of the paid media budget. The content was amazing, the engagement was off the charts, and it allowed us to keep reaching young people throughout a turbulent year for both advertising and organizing.
Every organization is different — but if the words “persuasion,�? “turnout,�? “advocacy,�? or “narrative�? are somewhere in your mission statement, then influencer partnerships could work wonders for you too. Keep reading for some reasons to start an influencer program, and a toolkit that will help you do it.
Trusted messenger, authentic content, and targeted distribution all in one
When I first made the case for an influencer program, I had no idea that Covid-19 or platform restrictions from Facebook and Google were coming, but I did know that ads alone weren’t going to cut it for an audience of young people. We approach the internet with our guard up, bullshit-detector dialed up to 10. In an atmosphere of rampant disinformation and distrust, this posture will only become more common. Pile platform restrictions on top of that, and you get an environment in which trust and authenticity are more important than (gasp) microtargeting.
The beauty of influencer partnerships is that they, not you, are the content creators. They know their audiences best, and every member of their audience has opted into their content. If you’re smart about the influencers you work with, then you can reach incredibly specific and valuable cohorts with trusted creative made especially for them, without ever paying Facebook or Google a penny. Instead, that money goes right to the content creator, and into the communities that matter to your campaign - it’s a win-win-win!
You can afford it
Influencer programs, run in-house, can be absurdly cost-effective. You don’t really need any infrastructure other than a spreadsheet to get started, and other than staff time, the main cost is direct payments to influencers. The price of influencer partnerships vary wildly, but there is an oft-cited industry average of $10-per-thousand-followers per post on Instagram.
For example, the cost of a post from a local influencer with 10,000 followers would be $100. While the average engagement rate on Instagram is about 1.2%, NextGen America found the engagement rate on political posts from their micro-influencer partnerships to be 8.3%. Assuming something in the middle, around 5% engagement, the cost-per-engagement of a political post would be about $0.20 per engagement — which is far cheaper than the current average cost per click from an IG ad of between $0.70 -and $1.00.
(Side note: Before you @ me about how “comparing influencer partnerships to digital ads is apples and oranges,�? “engagement ≠clicks,�? and “none of this is backed up by solid research�? let me interrupt you with an emphatic I KNOW. You’re absolutely right. The arguments for running an influencer program are based on a few pilots’ worth of surface-level metrics, and more research is desperately needed. If you’re thinking deeply enough about influencer programs to be annoyed by the lack of evidence presented here, then I encourage you to put your money where your doubts are, and help build a measurement program plz!)
How to start your influencer program:
Enough talk, let’s get to work! I hope you find this toolkit helpful in starting your own influencer program. The intent behind this resource is to make influencer campaigning accessible to any organization or cause, regardless of size or budget.
The toolkit covers:
How to make the case for an influencer program
How to search for the right influencers
Tips for recruiting influencers
A template spreadsheet for tracking your influencer partnerships
Thanks and stay safe,
Tegan O’Neill
She/her/hers
