Four Questions You Can Ask About This Fall:

There are four new tools that the New Politics Institute believes can make a great difference this year in getting the progressive message out. Are the candidates you support making use of them? This checklist will help you challenge the candidates, campaigns and organizations that you care about to make sure they have looked at deploying these proven tools at this critical time. If you give money, volunteer, or belong to a group, ask the following questions to ensure they are taking advantage of the tools below.

1. Are You Buying Cable? In some cases, broadcast advertising can be very wasteful, with as much as 70-80 percent of an ad buy overshooting a district or region that you need to hit. If you are buying broadcast advertising, are you confident that is the best choice on how to reach your target audience? Has your team looked at the cable option, which can be less expensive, more geographically and demographically targeted, and is now much easier to buy?
2. Are You Engaging the Blogs? Blogs have become extraordinarily influential in the progressive movement, with millions of people each day reading national and local blogs. Does your campaign have a strategy about how to reach out to the blogs? Are you cultivating national blogs, or connecting to regional and local ones? Does your campaign have a blog, which gives people a more intimate and timely portrait of your efforts?
3. Are You Using Search? This year Google will make as much money selling ads as the entire ABC television network, which shows that the private sector sees the value of online search ads. This fall millions of voters will be searching to find out more about the candidates and issues. Many people don’t realize that search ads allow very precise geographic targeting, and you only pay when someone clicks on an ad. Have you bought search ads for your campaign? Which keywords – the words which prompt the appearance of your ad – have you have bought? How about the name of your opponent?
4. Are You Speaking in Spanish? Do you have Hispanics in your target region? If you do, do you have a strategy that makes free and paid media in Spanish, holds events in Spanish, puts out campaign literature in Spanish? They often will appreciate your efforts to reach them on their own preferred terms. While in many parts of the country Hispanics are a small percentage of residents, connecting with even small groups of Spanish speakers can make a difference in a close race or issue advocacy campaign.

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