case study
Increasing Voter Turnout for 2020 Presidential Election
How we set up and managed an AMA and ad campaign on Reddit for the 2020 election.
The Ad Council, known for its PSAs and willingness to tackle social issues to drive change, sought to increase voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election. They wanted to target underrepresented communities, eligible voters who were not registered, and those who did not vote in the previous election.
Llama Lead Gen was tasked with developing a robust social media engagement strategy on Reddit. Using the platform’s beta ad products, we were able to keep costs low while still obtaining high CTR. We used various ad styles to engage the target audience, such as banner ads, video ads, AMA, and conversation ads.
One of the most successful elements of the campaign was the AMA that invited Reddit users to engage with Lori Augino, the president of the National Association of State Election Directors. The live event presented an opportunity for the audience to ask questions about election issues, such as the security of mail-in ballots, the process of voting during a pandemic, and how to register to vote.
#digitalmarketing
#election2020
#liveevent
#eventsmarketing
#redditama
Results
0.42%
Average CTR
85%
UpVote Percentage
500k+
Takeover Impressions
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Over 400k video views
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Reached a CTR of 0.42% for AMA on Reddit
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Our AMA score was a 5/5 (rated by Reddit)
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We achieved an 85% UpVote Percentage and 149 Comments
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Over 500k impressions from our takeover
About the client
Ad Council is a non-profit organization that popularized the original PSA (public service announcement). Born during WWII, the Ad Council’s goal is to solve social issues through communication and media ads. They have created famous campaigns such as Smokey the Bear and Rosie the Riveter.
Ad Council partners with other organizations to develop and promote campaigns. In this instance, they teamed up with Vote For Your Life. The campaign’s goal was to inform the public about how to register to vote and participate in the 2020 election.
Goals
The Ad Council and Vote For Your Life needed to develop a social media campaign to reach voters. They were looking to share information about how to register and participate in the 2020 election. They aimed to target unregistered voters, out-of-date voters, voters who did not participate in the previous election, and underrepresented communities. We developed a robust marketing strategy, media plan, and effective ads to boost their engagement on Reddit.
Our responsibilities
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Developed social media ads to inform the public about participating in the 2020 election
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Created Reddit specific content to increase engagement (Reddit AMA)
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Built a media plan, including content strategy
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Our approach - Execution and implementation
We built a time-sensitive media campaign that included using various Reddit ad products, such as:
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Banners and Videos in both Spanish and English
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Bumper Issue Videos
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Takeover Assets
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Promoted Events
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Comment Page (otherwise known as Conversation Ads)
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Reddit AMA
We used the same targeting for all the products, including banner and video ad campaigns. Users were encouraged to visit the Ad Council’s election website: www.voteforyourlife.com. We broke down the campaigns into two phases.
phase 1
The first Reddit ad phase ran from Sept. 22 until Oct. 23. The focus was on reminding users to register, request a mail-in ballot, or check their voter status. We mainly used banners, which are known to drive click-throughs on Reddit.
phase 2
We began increasing our marketing efforts starting on Oct. 5, right up to Nov. 3. We used both English and Spanish languages to remind voters to cast their ballots early.
Our team created short video ads to remind users to vote early. We also added 60-second bumper video ads during this phase that further segmented the audience into topical issues of the day, such as:
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Women’s rights
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Healthcare
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Equality
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Environment
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Education
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Economics
Engagement rates of Spanish and English audiences were quite similar, demonstrating the importance of continuing to engage Spanish audiences on the platform.
Comment Page Ads
We added Reddit’s beta ad product, comment page ads (now known as conversation ads). They appear below a post, just above the comments, a prime position on the page. We reached a CTR of 0.26% for mobile phone ads, while our desktop versions reached 0.14%. Comment ads turned out to be the most cost-effective ad product, with a high CTR and low cost compared to other ad formats.
Promoted Event Ads
Our team also engaged with promoted event ads to remind our target audience that they needed to make a plan to vote. These ads were a beta ad product by Reddit, and we were graciously offered to be one of the first companies to beta test them. These performed quite well in our first go around:
1.2 million impressions
1,909 clicks
0.157% CTR
Trending takeover
Reddit also has a feature similar to Twitter’s trending feed that allows you to expand your trend for 24 hours. This allows more people to find you in popular and search. For this political campaign, we “took over” all TV & Film subreddits on Oct. 24. Our efforts resulted in 441,479 impressions, 342 clicks, and a CTR of 0.08%. It kept us front and center of users’ minds while they interacted on the platform.
ama (ask me anything)
AMAs or Ask Me Anything are one of the best ways to connect with your audience on Reddit. They are also one of the most cost-efficient engagement tools. Our AMA campaign for Ad Council saw over a million impressions and the highest CTR of all our campaigns at 0.42%. Our ratio of upvotes to downvotes received in the host community, was 85% and the AMA gained nearly 150 comments.
We coordinated with Lori Augino, the president of the National Association of State Election Directors, to answer users’ election administration questions, such as
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Voter registration
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How to vote
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Election security
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Mail-in voting process
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Electoral College
The AMA received an upvote percentage of 85%, demonstrating the value that Reddit users found in it. According to Reddit’s rating scale, that makes it a 5+ our of 5 (over 80% upvote rating and over a thousand questions). It was one of Reddit’s highest performing AMAs.
Ads used in campaign
Conclusion
The Ad Council was looking to create social media ads to engage eligible voters leading up to the 2020 election. They brought in Llama Lead Gen to develop a robust Reddit social media plan. The goal was to remind eligible voters to register, vote early, and approach their state representatives about mail-in ballots.
We created a strategy for the social media channel that included using ad products such as banners, comment ads, video ads, a Takeover, and an AMA event. The live question event was the most successful, earning a CTR of 0.42%. Our team also employed Reddit beta ad products as an effective outreach component that was also cost-efficient.
