Pioneering a Strategic Enhancement in Outreach

Spencer Dirrig, Political Director of Conservation Ohio was looking for a new way to reach constituents and bring innovation to their digital advertising program. Bel Strategy provided that opportunity. “Conservation Ohio supporters wanted to test new tactics such as those provided by Bel to measure their impact in the 2021 campaign cycle, identify those that were most effective for Ohio, and that could scale massively for the more intensive 2022 cycle,” he said.

Nuts and Bolts: A New Strategy Proves Itself

In 2021, Bel supported Conservation Ohio in highly focused targeting for four digital ad campaigns:

  • Primary

    • Cleveland Mayoral candidate Justin Bibb

    • Cincinnati Mayoral & City Council Election

  • General Election

    • Accountability (Bibb’s opponent)

    • Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) in support of Bibb

For each campaign, the Bel team helped expand addressable audiences and optimize spend, delivering tailored metric reports detailing the economic impact and strategic insights about how the audiences were interacting with each ad served throughout the campaign. The results in the Cleveland GOTV and Cincinnati campaigns were particularly striking.

GOTV - Justin Bibb for Mayor in Cleveland

In its GOTV campaign, Conservation Ohio wanted to target young, medium-to-low-propensity Democratic voters in specific Cleveland wards on the west side, a traditionally lower-turnout area.

In addition to the demonstrated ad performance improvement, Bel and Conservation Ohio helped translate words to action, as post-election data proved that turnout was higher across targeted wards.

“In Cleveland, we messaged really well to the right people in a way that really helped motivate them to vote. While turnout was down overall city-wide, we saw a high turnout in the wards where we and the Bibb campaign were most focused – and I am proud that we played a role there,” Spencer remarked.

Beyond Cleveland: Voter Engagement in Cincinnati

In addition to supporting the Bibb campaign in Cleveland, Conservation Ohio also partnered with the Bel team on the 2021 election cycle in Cincinnati.

“With the Bel team helping us to cast a wider net, we looked beyond just likely voters with a demonstrated history of environmental activism. The data-driven approach enabled us to uncover other types of voters and get them engaged in going to our site, downloading our slate card and hopefully voting for the candidates we know are best aligned with our goals. There were 60,000 people who voted, and almost 10,000 people engaged in the website in the run-up to the election. Instead of assuming we knew who thinks the environment is important, we could reach area citizens with messages that showed why the environment should be important to them, and that really broadened engagement overall in a meaningful way.” - Spencer Dirrig, Political Director of Conservation Ohio

Significant Productivity and Effectiveness Boost

Bel's “living room conversations at scale” approach also delivers significant cost efficiency and reduces time required to manage ad runs. As Spencer notes, “With our freed-up time knowing that our digital outreach was optimized continuously, we were able to focus on doing more effective fundraising and canvassing and exploring other media sources. We could also put more cycles into effective differentiation with our messages and graphics for each target audience sector. So partnering with the Bel team ultimately gave us not only increased efficiency but also turbocharged efficacy.”

Key Findings:

  • Meet people where they are

  • Interest-based targeting enhances traditional methods

  • Rapid, inexpensive and effective experimentation

  • Nuanced messaging around a single issue

  • Maximize spend and minimize time

  • Translate insights to other forms of media

Ramping into the 2022 cycle, Spencer is interested in partnering with the Bel team to help identify sub-interest groups within each of Conservation Ohio’s traditional demographic target universes. “With more lead time next time around, we could do more measured testing with message sets and different creatives. This can help us craft the messages that resonate most with any particular type of area voter – for example, clean air v. clean water v. public parks v. climate change,” Spencer said.

The Bel team and Spencer also want to highlight the impact of the 2021 living-room-conversations-at-scale approach to show potential donors that Ohio is a good place for strategic investment in future cycles. “When issue-based organizations and campaigns leverage leading digital ad optimization, we can ensure the most effective engagement and optimal spend direction, making Ohio a meaningful place to allocate resources that you know will deliver results.”