Ads to Whitelabeling: 7 Top Strategies to Drive Your Political Consultancy Business

Political consultancy has now become a multi-million dollar business. The highest-earning liberal and conservative political consultants earned over $110 million dollars each in the 2018 election cycle. 

The following top-grossing political consultancy firms (both liberal and conservative), too, earned multi-millions.

If these numbers sound exciting, the competition is just as fierce. In 2002, political consultants reported competing with an average of 3.9 other firms for a client. In four years, the number rose to 5.5. Although we don’t have data on the same metrics for a more recent time, the competition is likely to have grown rather than shrunk in the last 15 years.

So, in this environment of intense competition, how do you expand your political consultancy business? How do you position yourself as a thought leader and stand out from the crowd?

Here are seven proven ways.

How to get more clients for your political consultancy business

Growing your political consultancy business boils down to three factors:

1. Trust
2. Your presence at the right places
3. What you offer.

Here we list seven strategies to get more political consultants based on them. 

Identify your niche

According to a 2014 study, 90% of businesses that created client personas successfully understood their audience. 82% improved their value proposition, and 56% acquired higher quality leads. 

Businesses tend to create several personas to ensure the inclusivity of all their target clients. As a political consultancy business, your niche must include the answers to some fundamental questions.

• Is your ideal client local or federal candidates?
• Are they democrats, republicans, or independents?
• Are they first-time contestants or experienced candidates?
• What are their political advertising and marketing budgets?
• Are they seeking your primary services? 

You are likely to draft multiple personas, each varying from the rest in some aspects (e.g., a first-time candidate with a $100,000,000 budget Vs. a history candidate with a $50,000,000 budget). The next step is to mark your ideal conditions and terms for this niche. Include points like:

• How likely are your add-on secondary services (e.g., voter polling, outreach) to benefit your target client?
• What is your payment model, and will it suit these candidates? (Note your flat fee + campaign expenditures + basic victory bonus + payment contingent to victory).
• Is your product suite equipped to accommodate all (or most) of the campaigns’ needs?
• Are your marketing efforts reaching the right audiences?

The answers to all these questions will carve a niche for your target candidates and campaigns. Then, you can channel your energy in acquiring them rather than having a widespread marketing approach with no definite aim.

Dig through your files for lapsed clients

Retention of clients is statistically less costly than acquisition. Additionally, increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase your earnings by at least 25%!

At a certain point, after having settled your political consultancy business at a trusted, valued position, you must ask yourself this: do you want your growth to be horizontal or vertical? 

• Horizontal growth: The “scale-out” model involves expanding your business by acquiring new clients, adding to your product suite, and increasing the number of resources.
• Vertical growth: This “scale up” model aims to increase revenue per customer, improve retention rates and enhance current products and resources.

For a business that experiences seasonal rise, like a political consultancy, it is essential to maintain a balance between acquiring new clients and retaining lapsed ones. Follow these steps to win back clients that have stopped doing business with you but still fit into your ideal personas:

• Go through your records of clients and identify those who have stopped doing business with you recently. 
• Get answers on why they churned out and see if you can win some over again (try surveys over text, email, or calls.)
• If the issue has been resolved, pitch yourself (focusing on what’s new and how it will help them) to them again.
• Ask for quality referrals from clients that have become redundant (not contesting/different geographies) but were happy doing business with you.

Keep evolving your products and services

The best product is one that evolves over time. It is not perfect from birth. For every business cycle to be successful, you must provide something unique. This helps retention, acquisition, and re-acquisition. 

We at CallHub have noticed a gap in the product suite of political consultants– that of communication solutions that help outreach, canvassing and nurturing. To resolve this, we introduce our Whitelabel solution.

The solution comes with all call center, voice broadcasting software, and texting products. Political consultants can rebrand the software with their own logo and company name and resell it to their customers. As an affiliate, you get the following benefits from CallHub:

• Text solutions: SMS opt-in, SMS & MMS broadcasts and peer-to-peer texting solutions. 
• Call center software: Our manual dialers help campaigns get the necessary consent for calling. Auto-dialers fast-track the process of dialing, whereas CRM integrations ensure a seamless two-way flow of data. 
• Custom pricing: We charge a $199/month platform fee + a preset price per text/call. You can customize pricing for your clients based on volume, scale, or any other metric. The margin is your profit!
• All our premium features: CallHub’s pricing is a 4-level model. But as a Whitelabel associate, you get access to all premium features (existing and future updates) within the price as mentioned above.
• Assured Safety: We at CallHub maintain the highest level of security and safety of your data and campaign. This includes network firewalls, TLS Encryption, and account authentication. You can read more about the security features here.

As an addition to a political consultant’s product suite, the CallHub Whitelabel solution gives your clients a much-needed solution to stay in touch with supporters. Use this unique selling point to expand your business. Know all about our whitelabel solution here.

Become a member of the AAPC

The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) is the world’s largest trade group involving political consultant professionals. It is multi-partisan and has over 1600 members spread across the world. 

Being a member of the AAPC gives your political consultancy business immense exposure in your industry. It opens doors for seminars, conferences, award ceremonies, and other events that help you network aggressively and establish trust with potential clients. 

AAPC hosts discussions, talks, webinars exclusively for members. They also offer bi-monthly programs, archived webinars, and discounted event registrations. 

To grow your political consultancy business, you must be active in your industry and its network. Being a part of the AAPC gives you that opportunity. 

AAPC has different pricing models for organizations and individual consultants. They are divided as follows:

Join here. 

Participate in events where your clientele is present

Participating in events hosted by the AAPC or other similar organizations in your industry brings your business in contact with potential clients. It provides exposure and a chance to connect with prospects on a personal level. Follow these tips to ensure your event attendance results in business expansion:

• Be a regular attendee at events. Aim for at least once per quarter in off-seasons and more when campaigning is on the horizon.
• Aim to host, participate as a speaker, or play such a pivotal role in an event. This establishes authority.
• Advertise your logo, name, and services at strategic points.
• Display your SMS opt-in keyword and number at events. Encourage prospects to text you.
• Collect the names and phone numbers of those who visit your stall or meet your representatives. Call them within 48 hours of the event concluding.
• Make your presence appealing. Whether you organize games, offer freebies, or have an eye-catching presentation, your presence at an event must aim to attract folks organically rather than your staffers having to pull them in individually.

Use paid advertisements and drive content to get leads

The search for “best political consultant firms” must show you as a result on the first page. It is tricky to rank high on Google, but some best practices in content creation can help. 

• Invest in paid ads on Google and social media to target your content to the right audience.
• Create and populate a blog that helps your target audience.
• Drive up your own social media game (although this is a slow progression, it helps to have a long-term plan in place).
• Partner with respected and high-readership blogs to get featured in their articles.
• Contribute guest blogs to relevant websites to appear in front of their audience.

Pick up the phone and call prospects

A personal nudge can help secure business between you and 

• Someone who shared their number
• Someone who has stopped responding, or 
• Leads that came from paid contact lists. 

As a political consultant, you know how busy campaign managers and decision-makers are. Texts and emails neither convey urgency in such matters nor drive conversations the way a phone call can. 

Pick up the phone and call all the leads who haven’t already converted. If they say they’re busy at that moment, reschedule the call at a fixed time or schedule an in-person meeting.

Initiative, promptness, and dedication to action will motivate prospects to do business with you.

Conclusion

Growing a political consultancy business can be tricky. In the off-season, there’s not much demand. During campaign season, the competition is cut-throat. What can help a firm succeed is a product and service suite that accommodates the rising needs of clients.

Since CallHub is so widely used and loved by political campaigns, we decided to go a step ahead and offer it as a whitelabel solution to political consultants as well. This way, you can make the most of our communication services to aid a campaign while also not compromising your brand identity. To know more about the solution, follow this link.  

Feature image source: Amy Hirschi/Unsplash.