The Barack Obama Guide to Winning a Campaign
Written by Cedric Solidon on November 5th, 2008 at 5:42 PM
By this time, you probably know that Barack Obama already won the US presidential election. And it wasn’t just by a small margin, but a decisive mile.
Now whether you are running a political campaign or a marketing one, there are things that you can learn from how Barack Obama’s campaign team helped him win the election. I’m listing a number of my observations here.
1. Know your audience/market and sell to them. Seth Godin is an advocate of this, that is, marketing aggressively to those people you know will buy your product. It’s actually an old marketing advice but it’s something that a lot of marketers tend to forget.
I observe this at local malls where real estate agents hand out brochures to random people, even young ones who most likely cannot afford to buy houses yet. It’s a waste of money and energy because these agents cannot be certain of the amount of response they will get.
Therefore, the key here is to know who your audience is – the people who you know will actually buy your product – and sell to them. It’s more effective in terms of costs and results.
Barack Obama knew that the majority of his audience comes from the younger crowd as well as those from ethnic minorities. So he sold himself to them and it worked.
2. Don’t forget those who are still undecided. Not because you didn’t get the response that you want the first time doesn’t mean that people are not interested in your product. One reason for the lack of response is that people are not fully aware of it yet.
Marketing takes time and you cannot convert everyone the first time you make a marketing campaign. So what you do is create awareness until people get it into their consciousness and become convinced to buy whatever it is you’re selling them.
Barack Obama knew that there’s still a good chance that John McCain will beat him in Florida. So what he did was visit that and other states that still needed more convincing more frequently until he won most of them over.
3. Know the best way to communicate with your audience. You know that good communication is key to effectively selling products. But more than that, you should also know the best way to deliver it. Barack Obama’s campaign team knew that a huge chunk of their voters come from the Internet generation, so they made good use of it and talked to them there.
4. Make new technologies work for you. Coming back to the Internet generation as Obama’s market, his campaign team knew how to use the medium of the Internet to their advantage.
But more than that, they understood that the Internet generation’s way of thinking is different from that of the previous generations. So instead of appealing to big businesses for campaign funds, they made use of the Internet and its American netizens to chip in whatever amount they can give to help in the campaign. Which leads us to another point.
5. The little things count. Yeah sure, $5 is not a lot of money when you look at it. But multiply it several times and it can reach hundreds, thousands and even millions of dollars. And that’s another thing that Obama’s team understood and executed perfectly. From the little contributions from his supporters, he was able to collect a significant amount of funds compared to McCain.
You can apply that when dealing with your customers. Marketing is all about them and fulfilling their needs. That is why they appreciate every little good thing that you do for them. Whether it is the ease of returning products they do not like or building websites that let them easily find what they’re looking for, customer-oriented service wins. And it will show in your profits.
All in all, it’s about knowing your audience and learning to effectively sell to them. But that’s something that’s easier said than done. That’s because selling also takes a lot of patience, persistence and careful planning in order to become successful.
How about you, what do you think were the marketing techniques used by Barack Obama’s team to win the election? How can you use them to your own marketing campaigns?
Image courtesy of lusi at sxc.hu
Read related posts to the one you just read:
2 Responses to “The Barack Obama Guide to Winning a Campaign”
By kc on Nov 7, 2008
very nice observations ced. i will read this blog post again when i run for public office.
By Cedric Solidon on Nov 7, 2008
LOL thanks.