The document outlines a strategic digital marketing plan for Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign. It includes an analysis of Cruz's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It also profiles the audience demographics and analyzes Cruz's competitors' social media strategies. The proposed strategy focuses on optimizing Cruz's website, mobile app, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube presence. Key recommendations include increasing content across platforms, real-time social listening, and targeting swing states and minority demographics. Timelines are aligned with upcoming debates and peak traffic periods. The budget proposes doubling spending on digital efforts to $22 million compared to Obama's 2012 budget.

1. BUAD 884:Group Project
US Presidential Campaign 2016
&
Role of Social Media
Aug 12th
, 2015
Vipin Rathore, Kapil Sibal, Xi Chen, Dong Guo

2. Agenda
• Overview
• Goals / Objectives
• Situational Analysis
• Competitors
• Audience Profile / Demographics
• Digital Platforms
• Strategy Development
• Tactics
• Recommendations
• Timelines
• Budget
2

3. Overview
 Social network plays a very
important role in people’s daily
lives.
 More than 1.6 billion people are
using social network
 As the biggest social network
platform, Facebook has more 1.4
billion active monthly users

4. Usage Time
According to research, on average in 2014, users have spend 1.72 hours on
social network every day, which represents about 28% of user’s daily online time.
Especially for Micro-blogging, including Twitter, user spend 0.81 hours on
average.

5. US Presidential Election 2008
Candidate (Party) Amount raised Amount spent Votes
Average
spent per
vote
Barack Obama (D) $778,642,962 $760,370,195 69,498,215 $10.94
John McCain (R) $383,913,834 $358,008,447 59,948,240 $5.97
Ralph Nader (I) $4,496,180 $4,187,628 738,720 $5.67
Bob Barr (L) $1,383,681 $1,345,202 523,713 $2.57
Chuck Baldwin (C) $261,673 $234,309 199,437 $1.17
Cynthia McKinney (G) $240,130 $238,968 161,680 $1.48
During the 2008 Presidential Election cycle, Obama raised $ 778million,
which was a record-breaking number.

6.  Obama attracted supporters and
followers on Facebook and Twitter,
but John McCain, Obama’s main
competitor did not pay enough
attention on social network.
 Obama’s team released an official
app that could allow supporters to
find local campaign office, share
experience, and make donation.
US Presidential Election 2008

7. Goals
 We support Ted Cruz
 Goals
1. Increase awareness among voters
2. Raise fund to support the campaign
3. Target the masses and spread growth by word of mouth
4. Connect emotionally with the masses

8. SWOT Analysis

9. Strength
Gained support during and after the
GOP Debate
Effective communication skills
Presence on all social platforms
Weakness
Awareness
Not born in US
Opportunities
Get engaged with the public
Redesign the digital strategy
Threats
Well established competition
Lacks the support from the
influential resources
SWOT Analysis

10. Competitor Analysis

11.  Rand Paul is a key competitor to Ted Cruz. Paul is a forward looking, very
open minded individual who can truly be compared to Obama.
 His digital strategy includes constant Twitter updates, content related to
recent news surrounding Paul and latest videos.
 Website and Application designs are worth mentioning as they keep the
users engaged.
Rand Paul

12.  World renowned business man with the ability to fund his own campaign.
 He is active on all known Social Platforms today but he is most active on Twitter.
 He has over 3MM followers and people had been following him since his show
“The Apprentice” was a hit and people liked his business style.
Donald Trump

13.  Wife of an ex-President itself is a good starting point for her.
 Money and support are needed to run the campaign and most of her
contributions are coming in higher denominations from the elitist.
 She has presence on all social outlets.
Hillary Clinton

14. Clinton’s Strategy

15. Clinton benefits from Earned Media

16.  84,000 people on Facebook generated 120,000 interactions related to
O’Malley on the day of his announcement.
 The campaign used Snapchat to tease O’Malley’s May 30 campaign
announcement in Baltimore and has continued to use it to share behind-the-
scenes moments on the campaign trail with Snapchat users.
Martin O’Malley

17. Audience Profile

18. Voter Profile - Demographics
18
Men v/s
Women
Minorities
by States

19. Voter Profile – Demographics - Continued
% Minority
Votes
Majority Race
v/s Minority

20. Voter Profile – Demographics - Continued
20
Population
by Race &
Ethnicity
Votes
Casted by
Race &
Ethnicity

21. Voter Profile – Demographics - Continued
21
Eligible
Voters by
Race & Age
Voter
Turnout by
Education

22. Voter Profile – Demographics - Continued
22
Voter Turnout by
Household
Income

23. Digital Platforms

24. Internet & Digital Platforms Usage
24

25. Mobile Usage

26. Political Ad Spending
26
Political Ad
Spending
Monthly
Active
Users on
each social
network

27. Candidates activities on Social Network
27

28. Strategy

29. Goals
• Increase candidate awareness among
the voters
• Raise maximum money to fund the
election campaign
• Target the masses and spread growth
by word of mouth

30. • To achieve the goals, candidate must focus on the social
platforms to reach the masses.
• US eligible voters:
o 18 to 24 years 9.8%
o 25 to 44 years 26.6%
o 45 to 64 years 26.4%
o 65 to 84 years 15%
• Presence of adults by Social Platform:
o Facebook
 58% of adult population
o Instagram
 21% of adult population
o Twitter
 19% of adult population

31. Tactics

32.  www.tedcruz.org
 User friendly website that
delivers key messages,
volunteer opportunities and an
easy to use ecommerce
integration to donate towards
the campaign.
Traditional Website
 Site ranked at 12,027, compared to Rand Paul key competitor whose site is ranked at
8,828

33.  Available for download at the
app and play store
 User friendly interface that
delivers key messages,
volunteer opportunities and
an ability to donate towards
the campaign.
Mobile Application
 80 positive reviews, by using industry standard of multiplying number of review
by 100 gets us to about 8,000 downloads

34.  https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage
 1.34 MM friends (likes) on Facebook
and 228k people are talking about Ted
Cruz
 Additional page likes in last week 108%,
which means week before there were
under 17k likes.
 This increase in traffic is due to the GOP
debate on August 6th
 Indicated this platform can help Cruz
gain popularity and funding for the
campaign
Facebook

35.  https://twitter.com/tedcruz
 Almost 462k followers and 9,800 Tweets so far, compared to key rival Rand Paul
who has 664k followers there is an opportunity for Cruz to be more active on this
platform
 Last Tweet was sent by Cruz on July 21st
2015, where was Rand Paul Tweets
over 12 times a day
 Cruz should increase his content delivery on Twitter which will generate more
followers
Twitter

36.  https://instagram.com/sentedcruz/?hl=en
 As Instagram is the second highest social platform for adults, Cruz should put
focus on this and be more active
 Only 11k followers and 129 posts, compared to Rand Paul who has 36k followers
 To monetize through this platform, Cruz should update the URL listed above to
www.tedcruz.org that has an option for supporters to donate
Instagram

37.  YouTube, the second largest search engine: Cruz has 23k subscribers on his YouTube
channel compared to Rand Paul who has 46k subscribers.
 Last video update was one week back. More messages on this platform for citizens without
a cable connection will generate awareness
YouTube

38. Recommendations,
Timelines and Budget

39.  Maximize activities on You Tube, Twitter and Instagram as these platforms are lagging
behind on current content
 Get aggressive and hire top talent who can run real time analytics on multiple social
platforms and reply to messages as quickly as possible.
 Due to the increased number of social platforms and much large number of users,
analytical tools like Hootsuite or Sprinklr must be leveraged to stay current on sentiments
among the social network communities.
 Analytical tools can help identify the potential voters based on demographics especially
the Hispanic community (minorities, income and education level segregation)
 Increase organic traffic and awareness of website and the mobile application by SEO; and
invest in paid media tactics to divert traffic to the website and the mobile applications
 Digital Strategy Team should produce content to focus on the swing states
Recommendations

40.  Social platform activity for all GOP candidates picked up right before the debate on
August 6th
. This is the key milestone
 Monthly debates are scheduled for rest of 2015 and multiple debates each month starting
in 2016
 Peak traffic is expected to be one week before, during and lasts one week after the
debate, which is how the content calendar should be planned
 Content calendar should be in affect even if Cruz is not participating in debates
 People are more actively looking and reading about the candidates during the week
days, which can also help plan when to deliver content during the week
Timelines

41.  Due to emergence in technology, social platforms and a significant increase in number of
users, more budget and man power is needed to maintain social presence effectively
 Obama spent $11.3 MM on IT and Digital Platforms in 2012. It is recommended to
increase this budget by 100% to $22MM for 2016 to account for additional head count
and investment in more effective analytical tools
 Cruz’s digital strategy is handled by 10 employees. To manage the data explosion on all
social platforms effectively, it is recommended to increase the headcount to 16
employees
 This additional cost will be offset by reduction in traditional print and TV media
advertisements
Budget

42. Dream Team for Ted Cruz
42

43. Reference
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2403
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz
https://twitter.com/tedcruz
http://ballotpedia.org/Ted_Cruz_presidential_campaign,_2016
http://www.fec.gov/disclosurep/pnational.do
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/ted-cruz-2016-campaign-staff-power-players-117163.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/how-ted-cruz-keeps-it-real-twitter-meet-his-26-year-old-digital-guru-1901481
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/upshot/what-ted-cruzs-early-fund-raising-means-and-doesnt.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/upshot/why-ted-cruz-is-such-a-long-shot.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Presidential_campaign.2C_2016
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/so-who-won-the-vine-debate-a-candidates-guide-to-126106085956.html
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/martin-omalley-hires-digital-director

44. Questions & Comments

45. Thanks