Feb 20th 2015

Obama 2012 - Marketing That You Can Believe In

Whether or not you agree with President Obama's policies one thing has impressed me - his internet marketing team.  They leveraged social media tools to drum up grass roots support in 2008 - support that swept the nation and ushered Obama into the white house.

Now his team is back at it and I just saw my very first Obama banner ad.  Being the inquisitive marketer I am, I clicked through to see where they were driving this traffic and was VERY impressed with this:

What comes to mind when you see this?

  • Simple?

  • Focused?

  • Positive?

As a marketer, I love everything about this landing page and my gut tells me that it converts very well.   Small business owners looking to craft effective landing pages should take away several key elements and apply them to their own campaigns:

  1. Powerful imagery - Obama might be the most recognized person on earth right now (sorry Snooki) and this image of him radiates confidence, positivity and most importantly his eye path is guiding you to his call to action. I can't emphasize the important of this last point - study after study indicates that faces convert higher when looking at a call-to-action.
  2. No Navigation - while his reelection logo is a hot link to his main site, there is no navigation so visitors are funneled into their email list.
  3. Simplicity - it's becoming increasingly difficult to capture attention span for any length of time.  Can you distill a message and a call to action down to any less than 3 words?  Highly unlikely.
  4. Questions are Powerful Engagement Tools - rather than try to sell you - Obama's marketing team chose instead to engage you with a powerful yet simple question.  "ARE YOU IN?".  People feel compelled to answer questions - it's our nature - and this particular question gives you only one option - "YES - here's my name and email address".
  5. Popularity is Very Persuasive - us humans all have  a tendency to be part of the "in crowd"...we want to be liked by others.  Robert Cialdini, author of one of my favorite reads "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion"  includes popularity as one of his 6 key principles of influence.  The question mentally strips us down to two choices: Do we want to be "IN" or "OUT".
  6. Effective Use of a Button - the button color stands out well and the text reinforces the primary persuasive element "I want to be IN".

Here is another landing page - this is the splash page for his reelection site:

 

Not as effective but this page contains many of the key elements found in the first landing page.

Effective Marketing at Work

What are your thoughts on Obama's marketing so far?  Have you seen any other ads, landing pages or marketing tactics that you were impressed with?