From Campaign Bus Engines to Online Search Engines: Campaigning and Fundraising Go Digital

With Americans social distancing, campaigns now must rally their base, find voters – and donors – digitally. The first click constituents and the curious will make is search, and more than likely Google search — which alone runs more than 40,000 searches every second.  

The new interaction with voters means digital expertise is now a mandatory and critical skill for senior campaign managers and staffers. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are important, but most voters first learn about candidates via search. Millions upon millions of first candidate impressions are made in Google. What do donors and voters find when they look for your candidate or campaign?

Whether a 10-term incumbent or a first-time candidate, campaigns must ensure that online-search pages display their candidate as high up the search ladder as possible and that their profiles are strong,  compelling and have staying power. 

While Lightbox was designed for professional communicators at corporations and associations, as well as their digital and public relations agencies, political campaigns now realize the imperative to understand, interpret and manage their search results. 

A congressional political campaign in Florida was one of the first to onboard Lightbox, a breakthrough technology that analyzes search results and provides actionable insights allowing staffers to take charge of their candidate’s online profile.

Using Lightbox,  David Holden for Florida in Florida’s 19th Congressional District is not only able to easily identify search result strengths and opportunities, it can easily follow trends with both the democratic opponent as well as current republican candidates, one of which they will face in November. Between monitoring its own results, as well as those of opponents, the Holden team believes the key to winning their race is the savvy use of technology. With Lightbox, the campaign can build the strongest possible profile to retain its base, attract donors and voters.

“Lightbox instantly tells us what websites, content and news releases work and don’t work, and it even ‘scores’ our page one results,” said Allison Sardinas, campaign manager for David Holden for Florida.  “Lightbox gives us an immediate snapshot of our progress or challenges, and we can track results over time. This technology came along at a critical time for us.”

Lightbox reports recently run for dozens of Senate campaigns across the country, show that many candidates — including long-term incumbents — have their work cut out for them and must take better control of their search results if they are going to raise the dollars necessary to stay in the game.

News and competitive campaign activity never stops, but Lightbox reports, which can be generated in a few clicks, can track the impact on a campaign’s page one results. Lightbox even allows campaigns to track results that might appear differently across different zip codes, giving them critical intelligence across their constituencies.

From local races to national campaigns, Lightbox can be a game changer in the new digital world we now find ourselves fully immersed in due to Covid-19.

To request a free report, click here or fill out the form above.