Yes, of course they were. They also made better use of Twitter, and took advantage of the broken clickbait-based news market by generating cheap controversies and using strong language to get free publicity. There's no meme that spreads faster than anger, people love sharing things that make them angry, and it was heavily exploited by this campaign. No matter what you think about his policies, Trump is a master politician that knows how to play his opponents and the media like a fiddle. It's low brow, and it's brutal, but it works.