To make a modern brand a marketer should have a “conversation” among “friends ” ;.Okay, now so just how does a marketer create those “friendships” to have those “conversations” to generate those strong, effective, brands? An incident study in how to do this could be the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.
At the start of this article I do want to state this misnomer. President Obama is just a lightning rod. Many people love him and some individuals 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 as it is just a tutorial how modern products should be branded. I really 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 could be created in a New Media Age. To win the American presidency a candidate should 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 do not know who you’re, you’re not likely to be elected. In case a marketer cannot distinguish their product on the market place, that product won’t be bought. For this reason 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 plenty of money—she had a strong brand. Barack had no brand; even yet in his own household. When Barack broached a possible candidacy to Michelle, her response was, “This is the craziest thing you ever said 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 exactly 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 was very difficult, and very costly to produce a new product and brand it. For this reason social media marketing is this kind of important element in modern marketing. A social media campaign allows a new product to be created and branded on the market place quickly, at hardly any cost. The modern market place is most beneficial explained by author Shiv Singh. There has been a change on the market place. No longer are consumers thinking about engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers do not trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a current survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated which they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of these friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is the way to create brands. That is the key 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 if your product will probably be selected, the brand must turn into a “friend” to its consumer. This is exactly what the Obama Campaign did and the way in which he did this would be studied by marketers as it is just 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 that are needed to generate world-class brands.
The data of the present day market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly develop a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. At this time, I wish to get rid of an error that I manufactured in a prior article. Recently, I wrote articles entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing while the Center of Their Marketing” ;.In this article, I identified David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager as an original person in the Facebook management team. This was an error. The Obama staff member that I was thinking about was Chris Hughes, who served while the Obama Campaign Director of Online Organizing. Mr. Hughes had a good influence on the campaign social media marketing strategy.
The Obama campaign wasn’t the first campaign to make use of social media. They certainly were the first to co-ordinate social media marketing with an entire campaign. They certainly were the first 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 was able to integrate and organize social media marketing into every section of the campaign in an easy way. Due to this Barak was able to create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, nevertheless 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 comprehend the important metrics he needed to understand in order to win his campaign. He was able to target and give attention to his true supporters.
The strength of Obama’s social media marketing branding approach is that it was constructed to create and develop “friendships” ;.That is essential for marketers to realize. cheap smm panel Once you meet someone there is a veil between you and that person. As you get 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 an advertising level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew that it had to activate people, but that engagement must be based on trust. The Obama engaged people in what it called “the ladder” ;.You engage one step at any given time, build the partnership deeper, and each step is just a higher degree of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are based on the level of comfort of the patient with regards to the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The first touch point could be Personal. This is the point where a marketer and customer first come into contact and “friend” each other on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it was only at that stage when folks are learning one another. A person signs ups for messages and emails. The next touch point is Social. It is this touch point that people 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 an item is a great thing. In the Obama campaign, these profiles integrated with their web site. At the Website, an advocate may create an account. In the marketing area, an organization would integrate with a Facebook or Twitter. At this time, a person may feel comfortable enough with a brand to participate a “group” or produce a “group” ;.
In the Obama campaign, the following stage would be to become an Advocate. To operate a vehicle interest, pictures might be posted, blogs written, or perhaps a video might be created and posted to You Tube, for instance. You can find analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer trying to converse about the item with a “friend” (a customer) and vice versa. It is 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 join up to vote. In the Advocate stage, in an advertising situation, a person might talk to a friend and recommend an item, creating a brand.
The next stage could be the Empowering stage. This stage is for serious supporters of Obama. Here an advocate 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 particular networks of supporters that gave supporters usage of the Obama database, where they may pull phone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this article, a marketer has to create an analogy using what the Obama campaign did to what each marketer may do with their particular brand to improve engagement with their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts with their customers should they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer could be flexible in their particular situation to give their brand.
The key reason why social media marketing platforms are so 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 generate 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 same way that Ford extended brand awareness for the Fiesta, the Obama campaign provided source material for user-generated content. Here’s where scale has play. The key reason why Ford’s and Obama’s campaign was so effective was because they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to generate the brand. For this reason the planning stage is so important in creating a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has an idea before 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 was planning and enough scale was created to engage “friends” ;.