During the spring 2024 semester, a team of digital marketing students within the Cronkite Agency, a student-powered strategic communications and digital marketing firm serving real-world clients, worked with the client Arizona PBS. In light of an important election year, the students created a video ad designed to drive traffic to Arizona PBS’s AZ Votes page. The students shot and edited three short videos with “Arizona Horizon” host and managing editor Ted Simons.
The agency set the goal of increasing views on the AZVotes landing page by 10% with YouTube, Google, and Meta advertising by July 22, 2024.
The digital marketing team came up with the idea to record videos with Ted Simons after a team meeting with Arizona PBS, where the client told them to be as creative with content as they wanted to be. The team realized the gravity of the 2024 election and concluded the best way to reach the target audience was with an authoritative and trustworthy figure.
Because they were focused on driving traffic to the AZ Votes page throughout the summer semester, the team was familiar with the platform and assets surrounding the initiative. Their previous Google Search and Meta A/B testing campaigns provided insight that helped guide the execution of the video advertisement campaign. From there, the team created four guiding questions that they thought would not trigger any “political markers” on Meta, but that also encompassed the general idea of the AZ Votes campaign- a resource to inform voters from a neutral platform.
Scheduling was the hardest part, as Ted Simons filmed other shows and debates. To make this process as efficient as possible for the PBS team and Ted, the team brought its own recording equipment, using an AZ Votes graphic as the background behind Ted.
The team struggled with creating a politics-related campaign. The YouTube advertisement was initially rejected due to “election advertising in the U.S.” after seven days. Because the target audience revolved around politics, elections, government, and voting, the algorithm was hyper-aware of the content. The team decided to relaunch and publish a single video that was the most neutral in tone, and they removed specific audience targeting except for “news.” They also removed all words in the ad copy related to elections: “elections,” “candidates,” “voter,” and “government.” They ended up emphasizing the local news more than election resources, which ultimately resulted in the video getting approved. While this setback was discouraging, the success of the final advertisement made the obstacles worth it.
This project was a labor of love from the Cronkite Agency, but the team was incredibly proud of the outcome and the success it brought, which will hopefully continue for the AZVotes initiative.
The initial goal was to increase views on the AZ Votes landing page by 10% with YouTube, Google, and Meta advertising by July 22, 2024.
AZ Votes had 7,325 pageviews overall between May 29, 2024, and July 22, 2024. This is an increase of 4,522 views from the previous period, a 161.3% jump. Additionally, the digital marketing team achieved 18% referral traffic from FaceBook and Spotify, and 17.1% ad traffic from Google and Meta.
When it came to Spotify, the team found that the ad did not drive as many clicks as YouTube. However, they found that they were able to reach a broader audience, including younger people. Additionally, they were able to achieve a more even distribution between genders. Overall, 82% of listeners listened to the entire advertisement.
These results exceeded expectations. Not only did the team increase landing page views 16 times over what they set to achieve, they also troubleshooted an unexpected issue. Although this obstacle initially threw the team, they were able to problem-solve and change their course of action, resulting in a successful campaign. Further, they felt empowered after creating an educational campaign regarding such an important event. The fact that the team shot, directed, and edited the final product made the project that much more gratifying.
