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Political Campaign Strategies: How To Run for Office & Win Elections

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Buying Political Campaign Materials: Local is Better

If you’ve never been a candidate for public office before, you’ll likely be surprised at just how many political campaign materials that you’ll need to buy over the course of the election season.  Even in small local races, the amount of campaign funds you’ll end up spending on pens, paper, printing, office supplies, signs and dozens of other materials can be staggering if you’re intent on making an effective effort.

Exactly what campaign materials you’ll need depends on the your overall strategy and needs, but here’s one important thing to remember: you can almost always get any campaign materials you need from local businesses. And staying local when purchasing campaign materials is a good idea for several reasons.

There are plenty of stores that purport to specialize in campaign materials, but they rarely offer products that can’t be found at local stores.  And although these campaign-geared shops might market themselves as the only professional option if you’re a candidate, the fact is that they usually mark up the same materials significantly more than retailers who are closer to home.

More importantly than the prices, however, is your effort to stimulate the local economy by purchasing campaign items from businesses that are within your district.  As a political candidate, the economic health of local businesses should be an important priority for you, and shopping at retailers outside of your district doesn’t exactly reflect well upon your candidacy.

Even campaign materials that used to only be available from specialty shops and printers can today be bought from local vendors with new, more affordable technology at their disposal.  Yard signs, banners, rubber stamps, brochures and fliers used to be difficult to come by locally, but it’s likely that you’ll be able to find professional local providers in a contemporary campaign.

So remember: keep every facet of your campaign local. While you might have to search a bit more to check off every item on your political list, you’ll be giving yourself the opportunity to both stimulate the local economy and chat with business owners about your candidacy.

Related Political Campaign & Local Election Strategies:

  1. Buying Political Campaign Candidate Business Cards
  2. Political Campaign Supplies: Buying Local Election Products
  3. Political Campaign Disclaimers for Local Election Candidates
  4. How Many Yard Signs Should I Order for my Political Campaign?
  5. Political Campaign Logos for Local Election Candidates?

3 Comments

Kalin  on December 29th, 2009

I used a different approach. For this example, I’ll use corrugated plastic yard signs (coruplast).

I found a union shop in Texas that could complete my order for $1.00 per sign. The local shop said they couldn’t even buy the materials for that price and they would have to charge more than 3 times as much. I did something that I feel helped everybody.

Before placing my order with the Texas company, I expressed concern that the coruplast wasn’t made in the USA and I wanted to know what company they bought it from, so I could confirm that they were both in the US and union.

I passed that information on to the local shop so that now they can lower their price and compete with the larger companies.

CampaignPros.com  on December 30th, 2009

In an ideal world, buying local is the way to go. But, anyone that searches the internet for custom products, specifically campaign materials, knows that buying local is rarely the best option, financially. Campaigns have to worry about budgets. Unless one of these large campaign suppliers is located in your town, candidates don’t have much of a choice. I am certain candidates would rather ship locally, but when given the choice between a sign that will cost $2.00 each, compared to $5.00 each, it is not really a choice anymore. Plus, as an owner of one of these national campaign suppliers, I get hundreds of calls from small shops who are looking to resell my products. So, just because they are local doesn’t mean they are actually producing anything. But, I do agree, local stimulation is a much needed factor.

Ben  on January 10th, 2010

Two thoughts.
1) If a Democrat, buying union is often critical
2) I agree with buying local when possible. Per last comment, if you’re an activist or the candidate was endorsed by the party, there is oftentimes a great relationship between the local print shop and someone in local politics. This often translates to a decent deal when needed.

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