It’s no secret that the upcoming 2016 presidential election has been a hot topic in the news this year. Between the numerous Republicans throwing their hats in the ring to the discussions around whether VP Joe Biden would run and who, exactly, would be participating in the debates, there are a lot of names, faces, and personalities. Some stand out more than others – and some campaigns are tapping into emerging media and digital marketing to help their candidate pull ahead.
Bernie Sanders website is full of information about his stance on hot button issues. Each issue has its own dedicated page with well written rhetoric and data (including graphics) to back it up.
In addition, Carly Fiorina’s marketing team decided to engage in post-click marketing strategies. “During the last two GOP debates, the team at CARLY for America used an interactive post-click campaign to create an engaging experience for users to voice their opinions. Once visitors arrived to the home page, they could enter the interactive experience and answer questions on Fiorina’s policies, their intent to vote, and more. Once they finished the questions, they unlocked a free bumper sticker. This campaign collected valuable voter data while educating voters on Fiorina’s stances.”
There are even indicators that some campaigns may be rigging SEO through backlinks. “It may seem a little crazy to think that the marketing committees of U.S. presidential candidates would try to manipulate Web traffic, but an SEO audit of the Republican presidential candidate frontrunners conducted by Walker Sands Digital found that Donald Trump’s Web site has 1.35 million backlinks. The count is 934,000 more than the candidate with the second-highest, Hillary Clinton, with 416,000 backlinks.