30 May 2008
As a freelance marketer, I believe marketing lies at the centre of all
business. Without a market, you don’t have a product. I therefore investigate
any business I can learn from, whatever or wherever that is.
So in March, over I go to Arkansas USA to talk to one of
Barack Obama’s election volunteers. He tells me how wonderful Obama is. Never
mind all that – every Tom Dick and Harry can get that from newspapers and TV.
What marketing tricks is he pulling?
After some experimental interrogation sessions with this volunteer
guy, he starts to tell me all about Obama’s web and viral marketing techniques.
How far ahead of his rivals the Obama team is in SEO (Search Engine
Optimisation), email marketing and website design. All of which are central to
today’s publishing operation.
I decide to
investigate further
Obama’s website has a really effective USP and a prominent
‘donate’ button. You can’t miss them. But Hillary Clinton’s messages are mixed
and all over the home page. Her USP (‘I’m a woman. Make history’) is negated by
Obama’s (‘I am black. Make a change’) Hillary’s donate button is found under a
list of five other options.
Take a look here: MarketingObama.com
Inside Obama's Internet
marketing team
I discover the inside story on the expert Internet marketing
team Obama has assembled. (This is beginning to sound like Electric Word..)
The Clinton’s didn’t even bother to visit Silicon Valley when
they were in California – whoops!
Now - how clever is
this?!
We can all learn from how the Internet team was brought
together. Obama doesn’t waste time going around interviewing dozens of Internet
wizards (all of whom have probably arrived from the distant planet of
Gobbledygook.)
No - Obama is far wiser than that; wiser even than the
average publisher. Instead he recruits a partner in a San Francisco
venture-capital firm, Mark Gorenberg. These VC guys invest in Internet
entrepreneurs. So instead of loosing his sanity listening to fast gobbledygook
from a long list of computer guys, each who will insist he can build the right fund-raising
system at the right price, Obama gets this guy Gorenberg to do it.
(How to run a company, lesson one: if you know Jack about
Internet marketing or indeed, not much about marketing at all – delegate the
job to someone who does).
As a venture capitalist, Gorenberg spends all his days
listening to and investing in computer people talking fast gobbledygook. So he has
the experience to quickly spot what he wants. But Gorenberg, like Obama, is also
a wise man - wise enough not to take on the task himself. He teams up with a
friend whose job it is to recruit executives for tech firms. So she does all
the listening and all the hiring.
(How to run a company, lesson two: that’s how ‘networking’ at
the top works).
These tech-types think in terms of networks. That is why
Obama has a hugely successful viral marketing email campaign and why he has
pulled in much more money than anyone else – around 23% more than Hillary
Clinton. That’s enough to give Obama market leadership.
Many of the donations are in recurring monthly payments by
credit card – but that is another story, another lesson.
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