The online world is becoming more and more present in our sights and politics weren’t going to be an exception. Sending an instant message has replaced, in many occasions, the personal conversation and applied on a mass level has achieved results that have never been seen before.
The first election where there are undeniable traces on the results that digital marketing can obtain aren’t so distant. Just look at the presidential election of the U.S. in 2008 where Barack Obama became winner using-in a novel way-social networks, email campaigns, online content management, and surveys in conjunction with the traditional methods to maximize effectiveness.
In Mexico, in more recent times there have been examples of how independent candidates, like the governor of Nuevo Leon, Jaime Rodriguez or the local deputy in Jalisco, Pedro Kumamoto, are able to achieve greater political strength each time thanks to the digital marketing, due to them being able to reach an audience where previously only the big political parties had the capacity to do so.
As with the traditional political marketing, the objective of digital marketing is to increase the number of supporters that will translate into the generating of votes during the elections. This can be done through the two characteristics of a good online campaign:
- A personal presence by the politician in social networks where they can interact in a planned way with the supporters as well with possible supporters when sharing valuable content. When using technology, it is possible that the content is divided according to the consumers profile, making it so that they receive specific topics that may be of interest. For example, showing proposals about public education and first employments to young people from 18 to 25 years or that you will better the retirement plan to people between 50 and 65 years. This way you will be able to grab attention in a way that would be impossible with traditional marketing methods.
- Use technology as follow-up to understand what opinion is being generated in relation to the party, candidate, slogan, or proposals which would help to shape the content that the candidate’s official sources of information would make public. For quality follow-up, it is necessary to identify the main topics in the moment, assess the general feeling on the topic, and the sources that are publishing it, monitor the general influence that the topic is having in respect to the whole idea behind the candidate and how it affects or benefits the other political actors.
If a digital marketing strategy is done right, not only will the political figure become more human and will lose the coldness and distance that is normally felt with governors, but it will also create real channels of communication where society is able to express its concerns which will help the political class do their job better.
Víctor Ramos is a digital analyst at Mijo! Brands, a creative agency in CDMX and Puerto Vallarta. Visit us at www.mijobands.com or contact us.