At the beginning of this informative article I do want to state this misnomer. President Obama is just a lightning rod. Some individuals love him and many people hate him, but even his biggest detractors need certainly to admit that his social media marketing strategy was a classic. Marketers should study this campaign since it is just a tutorial on what modern products must be branded. I hope that the reader will give attention to the marketing and not the politics.
Barack Obama is just a classic case in what sort of brand can be created in a New Media Age. To win the American presidency a candidate must have a lot of money and a lot of name recognition—a brand. If a candidate does not need a brandname, if voters do not know who you are, you are not likely to be elected. If a marketer cannot distinguish their product available in the market place, that product will not be bought. This is why modern marketers should study the Obama campaign. Ahead of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama had no money and was unknown.
In comparison, Hillary Clinton was a well-known senator from a large state. During 2006-2007, it was a foregone conclusion that Hilary would win the Democratic nomination She and her husband had created a vast political network to draw from, and she a lot of money—she had a strong brand. Barack had no brand; even yet in his own household. When Barack broached a potential candidacy to Michelle, her response was, “This is actually the craziest thing you ever thought to me. Nobody is going to beat Hilary this year…Get over it, kid” ;.Barack and his team did have understanding of social media marketing and just how to put it to use in a campaign. This knowledge was his biggest asset.
The campaign of 2008 is analogous to the current market place. In times past, it was very difficult, and very costly to produce a new service and brand it. This is why social media marketing is this kind of important element in modern marketing. A social media campaign allows a new service to be created and branded available in the market place quickly, at hardly any cost. The present day market place is best explained by author Shiv Singh. There is a huge change available in the market place. No longer are consumers interested in engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers do not trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a recently available survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated which they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of their friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is how you can create brands. That is the reason why the utilization of social media marketing is so critical to branding. Through social media marketing, friends meet, conversations happen, and brands are created.
Which means that in case a product is going to be selected, the brand must develop into a “friend” to its consumer. This is what the smm provider Obama Campaign did and the way in which he did this should be studied by marketers since it is just a case study in how to create modern brands using social media. By combining social media marketing that produces micro-targeting, force multipliers are created which are needed to create world-class brands.
The knowledge of the current market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly develop a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. Now, I want to clear up one that I manufactured in a previous article. Recently, I wrote a write-up entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing since the Center of Their Marketing” ;.In this informative article, I identified David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager as an original member of the Facebook management team. This was an error. The Obama staff member that I was thinking of was Chris Hughes, who served since the Obama Campaign Director of Online Organizing. Mr. Hughes had a great influence on the campaign social media marketing strategy.
The Obama campaign was not the first campaign to use social media. These were the first ever to co-ordinate social media marketing with an entire campaign. These were the first ever to organize the utilization of social media. For social media marketing to work, it has to be organized. John McCain and Howard Dean used the medium before Obama, but Obama and his staff surely could integrate and organize social media marketing into every area of the campaign in a seamless way. Because of this Barak surely could create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm his sight created was smart enthusiasm. He used social media marketing sights in a way that targeted supporters and voters. This targeting allowed him to know the important metrics he needed to learn in order to win his campaign. He surely could target and give attention to his true supporters.
The effectiveness of Obama’s social media marketing branding approach is that it was constructed to produce and develop “friendships” ;.That is very important to marketers to realize. When you meet someone there is a veil between you and that person. As you get to know each other better, the veil comes down. As your relationship develops, trust develops, and deeper conversations begin. These conversations bring about deeper relationships on a human level. On a marketing level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew that it had to engage people, but that engagement must be centered on trust. The Obama engaged people in what it called “the ladder” ;.You engage one step at a time, build the connection deeper, and each step is just a higher level of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are on the basis of the comfort level of the person with regards to the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The initial touch point will be Personal. This is actually the point where a marketer and customer first come into contact and “friend” one another on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it was at this stage when individuals are learning one another. A person signs ups for messages and emails. Another touch point is Social. It’s this touch point that people start making posts or comments to a friend’s profile about your product. At this touch point, a buddy explains for their friend why an item is a great thing. In the Obama campaign, these profiles integrated with their web site. At the Website, a supporter may create an account. In the marketing area, an organization would integrate with a Facebook or Twitter. Now, an individual may feel comfortable enough with a brandname to participate a “group” or produce a “group” ;.
In the Obama campaign, the next stage would be to become an Advocate. To operate a vehicle interest, pictures might be posted, blogs written, or even a video might be created and posted to You Tube, for instance. There are analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer wanting to converse about the item with a “friend” (a customer) and vice versa. It’s in the advocate stage that a supporter may have now feel committed enough to Obama to host an event, ask friends to donate money, or to register to vote. In the Advocate stage, in a marketing situation, an individual might speak with a buddy and recommend an item, developing a brand.
Another stage could be the Empowering stage. This stage is for serious supporters of Obama. Here a supporter gets heavily involved. The campaign tracked volunteers and could target its most reliable supporters.
These committed people could create social and fundraising groups on MyBO Web site. The Obama campaign could now organize their very own networks of supporters that gave supporters access to the Obama database, that they could pull phone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this informative article, a marketer has to produce an example with what the Obama campaign did from what each marketer can do with their very own brand to increase engagement with their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts for their customers should they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer can be flexible in their very own situation to give their brand.
The reason why social media marketing platforms are very popular is that friends are in possession of the means to share video, blogs, pictures, and posts with their friends. This can be a god-send for marketers as they fight to create and expand their brand. Ford Motor Company just did this in a highly effective campaign to introduce their new car, the Fiesta. Ford called this the Fiesta Project. In the exact same way that Ford extended brand awareness for the Fiesta, the Obama campaign provided source material for user-generated content. Here is where scale has play. The reason why Ford’s and Obama’s campaign was so effective was simply because they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to create the brand. This is why the planning stage is so important in developing a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has an agenda before the first shot is fired” ;.An advertising campaign is chaotic. Things happen. A marketer has to be flexible. The reason Ford’s and Obama ‘s social media marketing campaign was so successful was because there is planning and enough scale was designed to engage “friends” ;.
In case of the Obama campaign, its internet site, MyBO contained videos, speeches, photos and how-to guides that gave people the raw materials they needed to create their very own compelling content in support of Obama. In return, supporters created more than 400,000 pro-Obama videos and posted them to YouTube. In addition they wrote more than 400,000 blog posts on the MyBO Web site. A modern marketer has to engage their customers to create compelling content for the organization that produces brand awareness. This is why social media marketing is important in creating modern brands. A company is going to have a hard time in doing this, left for their own devices and most importantly, finances. In case of Ford, Ford did not spend any money on their Fiesta launch. Fiesta had a great presence on social media marketing sights, but the presence was produced by private individuals. When the Fiesta was launched, 38% of the target market was alert to the car.