Multi-Channel Marketing: Lessons from Politics

After Obama’s inauguration speech, I marveled at how all this came about. There is no doubt that he is a charismatic speaker whose intellect is admirable. He was also able to rally young voters in way our country hasn’t seen since JFK (maybe). But I think what really helped his campaign was his sophisticated online marketing campaigns. Given how successful his team was at promoting his cause, I think there are lessons marketers can learn from their approach.

On eStrategy, an Internet marketing blog, David Erickson highlights how the “Obama campaign ran an extremely strategic, multi-channel marketing campaign that was far more sophisticated than most commercial marketing campaigns, let along political campaigns.”

I agreed with the article that Obama was unique in his approach to leveraging the Internet precisely because he infused innovation into all online aspects of his campaign. He had a website that updated his constituents on a weekly, if not daily basis. It asked for donations and helped pull organizers together in one central place. He had Facebook campaigns, complete with campaign buttons that users could gift to each other. According to the article, his team even invested in video game advertising, but he had the right idea. The young men he was targeting “are the hardest to reach because they spend so much time playing video games.”

I think these innovations are techniques from which all marketers can learn. For one, it is important to be ubiquitous, and although that’s a well-known strategy, the Obama team took this concept a step farther with this campaign. For example, they understood that you need to tailor your message and use the tools that your constituents are using or they will ignore you. This is one of the reasons the use of Facebook was particularly useful in rallying the youth vote, for example.

Sources:
1) http://e-strategyblog.com/2009/01/how-did-new-technologies-play-a-role-in-obamas-campaign-interview-notes/
2) http://e-strategyblog.com/2008/11/barack-obamas-multichannel-marketing/