Case study · Political digital campaign
Digital Campaign for Christine Houk
How a multi-platform paid media strategy built name recognition and voter engagement for a mayoral candidate in Grove City, Ohio, on a moderate $8,000 budget.
- Client
- Christine Houk, Mayoral candidate, Grove City, Ohio
- Role
- Marketing Analyst & Campaign Manager
- Timeline
- Oct 1 to Nov 7, 2023 (~5 weeks, through Election Day)
- Budget
- $8,000 total across paid digital
- Platforms
- Facebook · Instagram · Google Search · YouTube
At a glance
The Candidate
Christine Houk ran for Mayor of Grove City, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus with roughly 42,000 residents. As a local candidate against an established field, she needed to introduce herself to voters, communicate her platform and do it fast enough to matter before Election Day. The Growth Maverick designed and managed the paid digital arm across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google Search.
The Challenge
A hard deadline, five weeks out.
There was no option to keep learning past Election Day, every test and optimization had to compound quickly, forcing a bias toward tactics with immediate reach.
A moderate budget against broad reach goals.
$8,000 is meaningful for a local race, but it had to stretch across the full voting population. Every dollar needed to be traceable to reach, engagement or intent, not vanity metrics.
Low baseline name recognition.
The campaign started with low general awareness. The priority wasn't persuasion, it was introduction.
The Approach
The thesis: at this budget and timeline, the best return would come from combining broad-reach video with targeted issue-based social ads and search-intent capture, three platforms doing three different jobs.
YouTube for cheap, high-volume awareness
Six video ad groups were built around distinct message pillars, community growth, communication with residents, responsible growth, candidate introduction, public safety and civic engagement, so message fatigue was distributed across creative variants.
Facebook & Instagram for issue-based engagement
Three sequenced campaigns moved audiences from name-recognition, into issue awareness, and finally into a Get-Out-The-Vote push in the final week, using demographic targeting, lookalikes of engaged supporters and interest-based segments.
Google Search for capturing voter intent
A tightly scoped 'Capture Voter Intent' Search campaign targeted high-intent queries from voters actively researching the race, on a Maximize Clicks strategy.
The Results
Facebook & Instagram
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Reach | 184,091 unique users |
| Impressions | 684,618 |
| Frequency | 3.72 |
| Link clicks | 642 |
| CTR | 0.20% |
| CPC | $1.38 |
| Total spend | $1,892.54 |
YouTube
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Impressions | 156,211 |
| Views | 93,064 |
| Avg. CPV | $0.016 |
| Total spend | $1,498.74 |
Google Search
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Impressions | 1,220 |
| Clicks | 509 |
| CTR | 41.72% |
| CPC | $3.28 |
| Total spend | $1,667.27 |
Combined, the campaign delivered roughly 842,000+ paid impressions, 184,000+ unique voters reached on Meta, and 93,000+ YouTube views for under $0.02 per view, while Google Search captured 509 high-intent clicks at a 41.72% click-through rate.
Key Takeaways
- Match the platform to the job, YouTube for cheap reach, Meta for narrative, Search for intent capture.
- Compressed timelines demand daily discipline, weekly cadences weren't fast enough.
- Distribute creative fatigue across message pillars.
- Intent capture is where budgets pay back hardest, a 41.72% Search CTR proved it.
Conclusion
By assigning each platform to the job it does best and managing spend with daily discipline, the campaign turned ~$5,058 in paid digital media into 842,000+ impressions and meaningful engagement across the electorate. In short-cycle campaigns, structure and platform choice matter more than budget size.