To produce a modern brand a marketer must have a “conversation” among “friends ” ;.Okay, now so how does a marketer create those “friendships” to have those “conversations” to create those strong, effective, brands? An instance study in how to achieve this is the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.
At the beginning of this informative article I wish to state this misnomer. President Obama is a lightning rod. Many people love him and some people hate him, but even his biggest detractors have to admit that his social media marketing strategy was a classic. Marketers should study this campaign because it is a tutorial how modern products must certanly be branded. I hope that the reader will focus on the marketing and not the politics.
Barack Obama is a classic case in how a brand could be created in a New Media Age. To win the American presidency a candidate must have a great deal of money and a great deal of name recognition—a brand. In case a candidate does not need a brand, if voters don’t know who you’re, you’re not planning to be elected. In case a marketer cannot distinguish their product in the market place, that product will not be bought. This is why modern marketers should study the Obama campaign. Before the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama had no money and was unknown. By comparison, Hillary Clinton was a well-known senator from a big state. During 2006-2007, it had been 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 lots of money—she had a solid brand. Barack had no brand; even in their 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 how exactly 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 had been very hard, and very costly to produce a new product and brand it. This is why social media marketing is this important element in modern marketing. A cultural media campaign allows a new product to be created and branded in the market place quickly, at hardly any cost. The current market place is better explained by author Shiv Singh. There has been a change in the market place. No further are consumers thinking about engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers don’t trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a recent survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated that they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of these friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is how you can create brands. This is the key reason why the utilization of social media marketing is indeed critical to branding. Through social media marketing, friends meet, conversations happen, and brands are created.
This means that if a product is going to be selected, the brand must become a “friend” to its consumer. This is exactly what the Obama Campaign did and just how he did this will be studied by marketers because it is a case study in how to create modern brands using social media. By combining social media marketing that produces micro-targeting, force multipliers are made that are needed to create world-class brands.
The information of the current market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly develop a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. At this time, I want to clear up a mistake that I made in a prior article. Recently, I wrote a write-up entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing because 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 is an error. The Obama staff member that I was considering was Chris Hughes, who served because the Obama Campaign Director of Online Organizing. Mr. Hughes had a great influence on the campaign social media marketing strategy.
The Obama campaign wasn’t the very first campaign to make use of social media. They were the first to ever co-ordinate social media marketing with an entire campaign. They were the first to ever organize the utilization of social media. For social media marketing to work, it needs to be organized. John McCain and Howard Dean used the medium before Obama, but Obama and his staff was able to integrate and organize social media marketing into every area of the campaign in a smooth way. As a result of this Barak was able to create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, but 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 he needed to learn to be able to win his campaign. He was able to target and focus on his true supporters.
The strength of Obama’s social media marketing branding approach is that it was constructed to produce and develop “friendships” ;.This is very important to marketers to realize. When you meet someone there is a veil between you and that person. As you’re able to 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 a human level. On a marketing level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew that it had to interact 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 the same time, build the connection deeper, and each step is a higher amount of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are on the basis of the comfort level of the person in terms of the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The very first touch point will be Personal. This is actually the point of which a marketer and customer first enter into contact and “friend” each other on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it had been as of this stage when folks are getting to know one another. A person signs ups for messages and emails. The following 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 pal explains for their friend why a product is a great thing. In the Obama campaign, these profiles integrated making use of their web site. instagram panel 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 brand to join a “group” or produce a “group” ;.
In the Obama campaign, the following stage should be to become an Advocate. To drive interest, pictures might be posted, blogs written, or a video might be created and posted to You Tube, for instance. There are analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer attempting to converse about the product 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 keep in touch with a pal and recommend a product, making a brand.
The following stage is 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, from which they might pull cell phone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this informative article, a marketer has to produce an analogy with what the Obama campaign did to what each marketer can do with their very own brand to improve engagement making use of their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts for their customers if they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer could 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 way to share video, blogs, pictures, and posts making use of 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 an effective campaign to introduce their new car, the Fiesta. Ford called this the Fiesta Project. In exactly the 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 since they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to create the brand. This is why the planning stage is indeed important in making a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has an idea before the first shot is fired” ;.A marketing campaign is chaotic. Things happen. A marketer needs to be flexible. The main reason Ford’s and Obama ‘s social media marketing campaign was so successful was because there was planning and enough scale was intended to engage “friends” ;.