By actually observing the presidential elections in the USA for 18 months and felt “the best in the world marketing strategy”, marketing guru David Meerman Scott came to the following conclusion: “the President was the best marketer.” Here’s what I learned from his presentation in Inbound16, a day after Donald trump became the 45th President of the United States.
The main thing — not to complicate things. Trump relied on just two strategies: the first is the real – time communication through Twitter and the second scale Assembly. Both are aimed at the development of free PR, and because of his provocative speeches trump has created a $5 million financial turnover in the media. Strategy-the twins were closely interrelated in the part of online work and real activity, reinforcing each other (e.g., the local event has established a solid resume in online).
Inbound marketing. Clinton (and Sanders, and Bush) played on the old marketing rules – much was spent on advertising, acting like a large company, raising the slogans and targeting, as they believed, a “buyers”. Campaign trump, in turn, acted as a modern start-UPS, relying on inbound marketing: instead of obsolete methods of outbound marketing, which consists in the purchase of advertising, mailing services and trust in the electoral leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that attracts people to the company and its products, invites to where they want to be. Trump relied on the proven methodology digital age.
Focus. Trump has created (or significantly extended) a powerful brand using a memorable message (and hashtag #MAGA), while supporters of Clinton don’t even remember it was the main slogan (“Together we are stronger”).
To add fuel to the fire. On Twitter trump the lightning reacted to the news, calling the reaction of the audience, initiating discussions, engaging the private media and a large number of supporters. Meetings trump energizing a large audience (“the scale of the crowd doesn’t matter,” – said Kellyann Conway), and demonstration pictures of the assembled audience on television (for free) definitely played a role.
To keep the brand. Trump использ0вал any opportunity to promote their slogans, even when unforeseen incidents. When Gawker published the mobile phone number of trump (encouraging readers to call and ask about its important ideas), everyone who called, including David Meerman Scott heard the following recording: “This is Donald trump and I’m running for President of the United States of America. With your help and support we will once again make America truly great. Follow me on Twitter @RealDonaldTrump and visit my campaign www.donaldtrump.com. Hope to meet you during my campaign.”
David Meerman Scott called trump a marketing genius. And this may indeed be true, but I think that is more than just understanding digital marketing, or the intuitive choice of inbound marketing instead of outbound. Trump owned old and modern skills: know your customer, what interests them and what will prompt them to action.
The issue is in rebellion against political correctness, against the arrogant and hidebound political elites and sometimes outrageous statements trump tried to convince these people, even if they did not agree with part or all of his statements, this time you can actually count on change. When carried out an exit poll to find out the most important quality of a candidate, only 35% of respondents answered “worried about me”, 26% chose “discretion” and 8% who chose “solid experience”, was the voters trump. But 83% who chose “change”, were also his supporters (in contrast to 14% of those who voted for Clinton).
So I would venture to give the following tip for marketing: keep at it and find out what really motivates your customers.
