In a recent blog post, Zack Krajacic drew an astute parallel between politics and business marketing. To be successful, individuals (or organizations) may think they can appeal to the masses to sell their vision or product, but the only way to truly convert people to your cause is to speak to them individually.

In his American Thinker article Republicans Should Use Targeted Marketing Strategies, he notes that in the presidential election, Democrats made effective use of market segmentation, targeted messaging and emotion-based selling to woo voters. It didn’t really matter what each party’s policies were, it was how they crafted their messaging for their target audiences.

Not only did Democrats create unique messages for each segment, they also chose to ignore certain populations, knowing that there would be little return on that investment of time, energy and money. It was fine and good if a non-targeted individual supported the cause, but there was no need to make any investment in them. Perhaps the component with the greatest impact was that of imagery: the Democrats painted vivid, real pictures that resonated with their target electorate. They used strong emotions, even fear, to get their message across.

This approach is not only instructive in structuring websites, but also in developing the underlying framework for marketing a business: define target markets and ignore everything else, then craft compelling stories and utilize emotive images to accompany the narrative…

 

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