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Location: Blogs Harry's Marcom Geek Blog |
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Posted by: MarcomAdmin |
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What Do Politicians Know That Most Companies Don’t? |
Every four years the country goes through a frantic period where candidates vie for the presidency. The political marketing and spin machines go into high speed. Previously little known brands (candidates) are thrust to the forefront, but only one will get the prize. We hope the best is elected, but we know a lot has to do with the marketing of the candidate. That is nothing new. It has happened for centuries.
What is new this time, is the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are using social network marketing as a part of their overall marketing strategies. Four years ago, Facebook (established Feb. 2004) was only open to college students and MySpace was only a year old. Certainly, the politicians have adapted to social networks faster than most companies have.
The tight time period and the size of the prize (leadership of the free world) make political marketers seek every possible avenue to connect with voters (their consumers). They cannot just rely on the status quo. Companies should pay heed to this strategy. Marketing is changing very quickly and all avenues of communications should be explored.
Obama has been using Facebook and MySpace to a high degree. He has 670,000 members of his group on Facebook and 508,000 friends on MySpace. McCain seems to have done better on Facebook than MySpace with 303,000 members in his group on Facebook and only 86,000 on MySpace. These are significant numbers when you consider that the last time there was an election with a non-sitting president (Gore/Bush), the vote difference was only 5 electoral votes (there is a controversy over the popular vote that Gore won). The Kennedy/Nixon election was also very tight. In the national popular vote, Kennedy beat Nixon by just one tenth of one percentage point.
The race for President meets our three musts for social network marketing:
Relevance – The importance of the election makes the race relevant to most people. A company must find the relevant points in their offering.
Interest - There is a high interest in the election. Companies must find ways to make what they do interesting.
Dialogue – Politicians see dialog (some listen better than others). Companies must be willing to have a dialog with their consumers.
Above all, a company must develop a solid strategy for social network marketing.
Visit our White Paper section to see our selection of papers on social network marketing. |
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