To create a modern brand a marketer must have a “conversation” among “friends ” ;.Okay, now just how does a marketer create those “friendships” to have those “conversations” to generate those strong, effective, brands? An incident study in how to get this done may be the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.
At the start of this article I want to state this misnomer. President Obama is really a lightning rod. Some individuals love him and some 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 because it is really a tutorial how modern products must certanly be branded. I am hoping that the reader will give attention to the marketing and not the politics.
Barack Obama is really a classic case in what sort of brand could 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 have a brandname, if voters don’t know who you are, you are not going to be elected. If a marketer cannot distinguish their product available in the market place, that product will not be bought. For this reason modern marketers should study the Obama campaign. Prior to the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama had no money and was unknown. In comparison, Hillary Clinton was a well-known senator from a big state. During 2006-2007, it absolutely 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 their own household. When Barack broached a possible candidacy to Michelle, her response was, “Here is the craziest thing you ever believed to me. Nobody will probably beat Hilary this year…Get over it, kid” ;.Barack and his team did have understanding of social media marketing and how to use it in a campaign. This knowledge was his biggest asset.
The campaign of 2008 is analogous to the present day market place. In times past, it absolutely was very hard, and too costly to produce a new product and brand it. For this reason social media marketing is this important element in modern marketing. A social media campaign allows a new product to be created and branded available in the market place quickly, at almost no cost. The modern market place is better explained by author Shiv Singh. There is a change available in the market place. smm panel No more are consumers thinking about engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers don’t trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a recently available survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated that they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of their friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is how you can create brands. This really is the reason why the usage of social media marketing is really critical to branding. Through social media marketing, friends meet, conversations happen, and brands are created.
Which means that if a product will probably be selected, the brand must become a “friend” to its consumer. This is exactly what the Obama Campaign did and the way that he did this will be studied by marketers because it is really a case study in how to generate modern brands using social media. By combining social media marketing that produces micro-targeting, force multipliers are made which can be needed to generate world-class brands.
The data of the present day market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly create a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. At this time, I wish to clean up one that I made in a previous article. Recently, I wrote articles entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing as the Center of Their Marketing” ;.In this article, I identified David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager as an authentic member of the Facebook management team. This is an error. The Obama staff member that I was thinking about was Chris Hughes, who served as 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 make use of social media. They were the first ever to co-ordinate social media marketing with an entire campaign. They were the first ever to organize the usage of social media. For social media marketing to work, it must be organized. John McCain and Howard Dean used the medium before Obama, but Obama and his staff could integrate and organize social media marketing into every part of the campaign in a smooth way. Because of this Barak could create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, however the enthusiasm his sight created was smart enthusiasm. He used social media marketing sights in ways that targeted supporters and voters. This targeting allowed him to understand the important metrics that he needed to know in order to win his campaign. He 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 create and develop “friendships” ;.This really is essential for marketers to realize. Once you meet someone there’s a veil between you and that person. As you can know one another better, the veil comes down. As your relationship develops, trust develops, and deeper conversations begin. These conversations bring about deeper relationships on an individual level. On a marketing level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew that it had to engage people, but that engagement had to be based on trust. The Obama engaged people in what it called “the ladder” ;.You engage one step at any given time, build the relationship deeper, and each step is really a higher amount of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are based on the level of comfort of the patient in relation to the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The very first touch point would be Personal. Here is the point of which a marketer and customer first enter into contact and “friend” one another on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it absolutely was at this stage when folks are learning one another. A person signs ups for messages and emails. The next touch point is Social. It’s this touch point that folks start making posts or comments to a friend’s profile about your product. As of this touch point, a friend explains with their friend why something is a good 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. At this time, a customer may feel comfortable enough with a brandname to join 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. You can find analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer wanting to converse about the merchandise with a “friend” (a customer) and vice versa. It’s in the advocate stage that the supporter could 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, a person might speak with a friend and recommend something, developing a brand.
The next stage may 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 own networks of supporters that gave supporters access to the Obama database, that they may pull cell phone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this article, a marketer has to create an example in what the Obama campaign did to what each marketer may do with their own brand to increase engagement with their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts with their customers if they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer could be flexible in their own situation to extend their brand.
The key reason why social media marketing platforms are very popular is that friends are in possession of the way to share video, blogs, pictures, and posts with their friends. This is a god-send for marketers as they try to generate and expand their brand. Ford Motor Company just did this in a successful 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. Listed here is where scale comes into play. The key reason why Ford’s and Obama’s campaign was so effective was since they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to generate the brand. For this reason the planning stage is really important in developing a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has a plan before first shot is fired” ;.A marketing campaign is chaotic. Things happen. A marketer must 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” ;.