Everyone involved in politics, either the one vying for a post or the ones doing the voting will agree that the success of any figure in any political election depends largely on the campaigns before the elections.

Regardless of the level where the election is, is it the school election, the community ward level, the local government level, state, or even the national level, a very popular means of the campaign has been the use of posters.

Many persons have used this extensively and have gone ahead to win their elections, making lots of people believe that this is a very fitting and effective campaign medium. Here though are some facts about the use of posters for political campaigns and the use of bulk SMS to see which is more effective looking at the big picture.

REACH AND ENGAGEMENT 

• POSTERS: One of the first things you must consider is “How many people read posters nowadays?” .Very few we must say. A lot of persons I’ve had contact with only stop to take a glance at a poster either to voice their admiration or lack of it for the design or the picture of the person on it. Unfortunately for you, if your opposition has a much more beautiful poster than you do, then you’re finished. The first impression they get from the poster; an ugly design and not-so-beautiful picture can turn them off and can invariably affect their overall perception of you and what you can accomplish.

• BULK SMS: The good news is that bulk SMS does not have such uncertainties. You can be very certain that someone who receives your message reads it. Even if they discard it immediately after seeing only the sender ID, at least they’ve seen the content and it remains there in their mind.

SECURITY/PROTECTION FROM DESTRUCTION OR DEFAMATION

• POSTERS: It is also not uncommon to see opposition parties easily foiling all attempts by a party to push out campaigns via posters. They either destroy it or in some cases put their posters on it. Some who even feel they have a better-looking poster might put their own just beside the opposition’s own, appealing to humans’ natural likeness for good-looking things. Thus when a person sees both, he/she naturally filters the one not so nice as nonsense and feels drawn to the other.

• BULK SMS: With bulk SMS though that factor is avoided. A cell phone is the personal property of the owner, and he decides what message he reads, which he discards, which he deletes from his phone, and which one he responds to. Therefore, you can be certain you are getting your campaign messages over to the right individuals that will respond to it and believe in you, people that might miss it when your poster gets destroyed, which will surely happen, either sooner or later.

EASE OF USE 

• POSTERS: It is becoming overly difficult today to even get a very noticeable place to paste your campaign poster(s). Many houses today are raving with the “Post No Bill” instruction in front of their gates and the fence. Who will blame them for that? No one likes to see his house soiled by different posters gracing different faces and having different promises that may never come to fruition. To handle this, people end up putting their posters on the available places; trees, poles, and uncompleted buildings, where they are mostly not visible to a passerby and therefore the aim is defeated. And if you end up putting it in an undesirable place, you will find it torn in shreds the next day.

• BULK SMS: In this regard, bulk SMS has little of such implications. Once you have the phone number of the recipients for your message, you can pounce on human curiosity in knowing what new information is all about. You can bet that for the first campaign message you will get a very large number of people to read it, if not all. And people usually have lots of space in their cell phones for messages, so you need not worry about causing a nuisance in their phone.

COST 

• POSTERS: And of course another important thing to consider is cost. Nobody wants to delve into a venture that isn’t rewarding, more so spending lots of money on something that has a better alternative, an alternative that has been proven cheaper. The cost of printing a colored and attention-grabbing poster to spread across all strategic locations, where many will get stripped off, many get redesigned with insulting words, and many are not even noticed is too much to incur.

• BULK SMS: With as low as 1.75 naira, you can get a rich SMS across to a person who is sure to believe in you and what you stand for instantly, confident the person will read it. Why spend so much on a campaign medium you know will reap the little reward when there is a cheaper one which is more effective? The extra money can be used for other valuable things after you’ve finally won yourself the post.

This is not to say the use of posters in election campaigns is out of place altogether, but bulk SMS could be used as a very invaluable complement to any other campaign medium you choose to use, be it billboards, social media, TV, Radio, rallies, newspaper, emails and even the use of posters. , Bulk SMS has the potential of being at the arrowhead while all other ones support it.

Another very strong opponent bulk SMS has in the mediums of political campaigns is Billboards. Find here the result of the match between bulk SMS and billboards for political campaigns and see which is winning.

Here at SmartSMSSolutions, we have an optimized and quality bulk SMS gateway suited for use in pushing out your bulk SMS campaigns. You can register a free bulk SMS account if you do not have one to get started. Each registration comes with free SMS units as a welcome package.

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