The rise of digital disrupted the campaign industry and now, after years of being on the bleeding edge, digital consultants are facing their own reckoning.
The rise of do-it-yourself digital and email options threatens to reshape how a growing sector of the industry does business.
DemocraticAds.com and Revere Exchange (on the Democratic side) help campaigns cut out the digital firm middlemen by allowing clients to target and place their own ads, while saving them the juicy consulting commission.
Accelerate is offering the same type of DIY email fundraising for campaigns. It makes business sense because many campaign email programs are carbon copies of each other, but turn enormous profits for shops that churn out lookalike content.
Effective social media is hard to automate and generate in bulk, but perhaps like mass email, it just needs to be “good enough.” 99 Dollar Social has already made the case for creating that level of social content for small businesses, and undoubtedly, there will be firms that also try it in the political space.
Does it forecast an impending storm for digital consulting firms?
Fundraising email, in particular, is going to be less and less effective as there is a race to the bottom with bad email practices, rampant list sharing and spam filters getting ever smarter. Since fundraising email programs are the base for raising money online in a modern campaign, when that spigot turns off it will be hard to justify large investments in digital apart from direct voter persuasion and contact.
But there will always be a need on larger campaigns for a traffic cop to handle all the moving parts of an effective digital program, and there will always be expectations for campaigns and candidates to follow the crowd and “buy IBM” regardless of whether they are the most cost-effective choice.
Moreover, all these self-service tools have a few critical parts missing: the winning strategy piece, and a built-in audience of supporters to work with. Without an overarching digital strategy and plan, even the most advanced tools can have limited value. For example, a good-enough online fundraising mail program doesn’t work if you don’t have an active email list to fundraise from—and a plan to keep sustaining and building that audience through Election Day. All the social media posts in the world won’t reach your supporters unless you have a plan for how to build and maintain that audience.
To wit, an inexpensive car is of limited value if you don’t have a map to reach your destination, and gas in your tank (and a plan to keep refilling that tank as you roll along). The digital DIY tools aren’t there yet to really threaten the bottom line of consulting firms, but if your margins depend on delivering mass-market quality at custom prices, your business model may not last long-term.
Laura Packard (@lpackard) is a partner at PowerThru Consulting, a Democratic digital strategy and web development firm.