THE GENERAL ELECTION AND ONLINE MARKETING – A PPC WASTELAND

As we mentioned in yesterday's blog post, all the talk about election campaigning is centred on Facebook, but what of Google? Google is still king of marketing $$$$$s taking nearly 3 times as much ad revenue as the number 2 (Facebook). That's $79 billion in 2016. With Paid Search still their major channel, this means Paid Search alone is significantly larger than all of Facebook's ad revenue. You all know this of course, and the reason people spend on Google - Paid Search works and is nearly always the first go to channel.

Strange then that I can find hardly any PPC advertising for the General Election. You try, search about something that is important to you whether that's nuclear deterrent, taxes, The NHS etc - are the parties using your clear interest to take the opportunity to give you their policies? They aren't for me. In these times of "fake news" and suggested press bias you would think the parties would be doing all they can to get their message across directly to the electorate.

If you search broader terms about Trident or nuclear weapons.. nothing. If you search who to vote for in the general elections... nothing. If you search "why should I vote labour" nothing, "why vote conservative" nothing. In all cases I tested in incognito mode and using my usual browser.

Now why does this matter? Well here is a clear audience, showing a clear likelihood that they will go out and vote - they are after all searching around the election - and a perfect chance to get your message out to them in a tailored appropriate way. Take the example of "who to vote for general election". I get some quiz sites in the results (who knows whose messaging they're putting out), how to register to vote in Hertfordshire and Essex (I don't live in Hertfordshire or Essex), an ITV piece, and a Guardian piece about May (unlikely to give the message The Conservatives are after and another likely example of the echo chamber we talked about yesterday) etc etc. Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for a Party to get their key message out there in-front of me right there at the top of Google?

Also, potentially more importantly, it can stop the damage to a party from other opinion pieces. I'm sure there are better examples out there, but here is what happens if I search "why people vote labour" - the top result is a forum all about why voting labour is pointless. If someone is truly interested, rather than writing a blog post, and they are confronted with a forum discussing how people voting Labour really baffles someone, not ideal.

Finally after much more searching around I do get some ads from The Liberal Democrats - though only when including their brand term.

So, why is it that PPC seems to have been sidelined in this particular political battle? Is it the cost? CPCs aren't cheap these day - though looking at Keyword Planner competition is low across the board with suggested bids from £0.06. Is it volume? Not enough people are actively searching around the election? I would say that this isn't the case - looking at search volumes for the last election, there were over 8 million UK searches broadly related to the general election in May alone (the Election took place on the 7th May) with around 1 million searches in March.

Is it relevancy - the people that are searching terms around the General Election are predominantly finding out how to register and where to vote (I would argue it would be sensible to target people who want to know how to register - new voters to get your message out to).

Is it conversions (discussed yesterday)? It may be far cheaper to put your message out through Facebook to an obvious audience, than trying to get these potentially key voters.

Is it that I live in a safe seat and it's not worth targeting me? Or is this all just anecdotal and they are out there on scale? Again AdWords suggests not with competition "low" across the board.

I don't know, I think it is likely that the numbers are considered too small, and the conversions too expensive - which may well change if the true value of the conversion was considered (again see yesterdays post), but if you do know or have a better theory, please fill me in.