From Barack Obama to the marketers, with love!

Barrack Obama has inarguably created history by bringing about his hands-down win in the US president ship elections through his much proverbial fund raising and risk strategy. Leaving behind the likes of Nike and Apple to be voted as the "Advertising Age Marketer" of the year, Obama has perhaps completely transformed the nature of the American electoral campaigning for the future.

So what was the big deal about Barrack's Campaigning? Here are the revealings-

1. A brilliant combination of Digital, Direct and TV ad strategy.

2. The game of MILLIONS- Over $640m of funds, $188m TV ad Blitz, 3.1m contributors,5m volunteers,100m page views of Youtube videos, 2.2m "fans" on Facebook page, over 1m on his official campaign website.

3. 1 in every 10 Obama voters literally transformed into his "Brand Advocates".

Unprecedented, isn't it?

Obama's win, or rather his journey towards it, is not less than a case-study per se. Here are some defining rules straight out of Obama's digital marketing playbook that are reputed to take marketing to an altogether new level.

• Define Goal, Build Strategy

For Obama's campaigning team the goal was clear to get-the-votes-out and the strategy was to be integrated digital marketing with the help of supporters who will lend money but also effectively campaign to help register voters.

The Hub-and-spoke model was followed where the hub,My.BarackObama.com, popularly called MyBo, saw traffic pouring in from various spokes including referral email marketing, You Tube videos,online search and display ads,official pages on dozens of social networking sites along with tactical campaign sites including Fightthesmears.com.

MyBo also had an online Spanish phone banking tool due to which registered volunteers could make calls in Spanish. Barack was targeting Hispanic vote bank with this measure.

Email marketing was the backbone of the campaign. The team built an extensive database where cards carrying name,email id,address and phone number were handed out and collected in all the rallies.

• Bond with the Best

The first step what Obama did after deciding onto contest for the election was to assemble a passionate team of marketing minds which included the Co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes.

The best minds brought about the best strategy, which more importantly clicked with the voters' passion. My.BarackObama.com, popularly called MyBo, was formed where supporters could create profiles, blogs, join local groups, set up personal fund raising pages based on their personal target.

The language of the online campaigning was informal, friendly and personalised. Creative campaigns like Viral marketing drew tremendous response; the Obama girl video series is touted to have had 60m views on YouTube. "Yes we can" video caught 11m eyeballs.

• Change the Rules where need be

Dumping the hitherto prevalent and conventional methods of campaigning, Obama chose to embrace the Web 2.0 by investing in digital tools, designed messages that instilled a feeling of empowerment of every voter(Yes we can, not Yes I Can).

Where Hillary Clinton thought she had acquired enough margin from her rivals after garnering support of her party's fund raisers, Obama tapped on the power of the small size donors by unleashing his digital campaigns.

• Decentralise to Empower others

The entire Obama campaign was a de-centralised campaign by nature. It followed Obama's credo that "change comes bottom-top rather top-down". Voters list(traditionally guarded by the campaign headquarters) was made accessible to volunteers. With this they could download local phone numbers and addresses in order to make calls or distribute promotional materials.

With this acquired freedom volunteers became more creative as a result of which AnObamaMinute.com was put together in New York,challenging others to harbour donors to donate $1m in 1 minute.

• Meet and foresee Customer Expectation

Obama's digital team released a new widget for the iPhone. There were ads placed in online games(for the first time ever).Obama has acquired over 33000 followers on Twitter apart from the other staggering social networking figures stated at the beginning of the write up.

• Translate "online networking" into "Action"

Remember Howard Dean's fateful loss where he couldn't translate his online networking and popularity into votes; Obama's campaign made sure he won't suffer the same.

The volunteers were encouraged to use a clear online user path-

Register on the site

Volunteer your time

Contribute

Tele-call,organise local events

Basically, get out the votes.

It proved to be quite successful. There were 20000 groups comprising of tango dancers, air traffic controllers and what not,which could be used to win support for legislation post-election.

• Checkmate the game

The reason for Obama's success lies in the fact that his campaign never strayed away from its fundamental purpose-"get the votes out". Obama supporters signing up for with the candidate,received text messages and emails(containing phone number to find their polling station) during the elections,reminding them to cast their vote.

The iPhone widget was capable of sorting the contact lists according to the state each person on it lived in.

Obama's marketing lessons coax all us marketers to behold the digital medium by overhauling our marketing tool kit. The cybergenic era awaits us.

Will the Financial Crisis affect Internet Marketing ?

It's been quite some time now that I wrote out. Nobody has been untouched by the ongoing global recession and precisely this is why I am compelled to pen about it in my blog.

Of late we've seen a crashing stock market, sky rocketing fuel prices, unemployment epidemic, horrendous real estate market. But they say the financial crisis has just started and the globe is beginning to realize the potential consequences of what has been happening to the stock market, which means there are more far-reaching, disturbing fall-outs in-store.

So amidst all the global instability, the question we are analyzing here is that will the credit crisis affect the online marketing ?Or will we see demise of the PPC advertising?

The good news is that the PPC economy is going stable. The search is being practiced healthily which is giving an expanding marketplace for advertisers. Infact the US online advertising is slated to grow 22.7% for the year 2008. It is also speculated that the economic descent might even create some unique PPC advertising opportunities. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, the UK Internet advertising spend recorded an increase of 21% in the six months to reach June 2008. Here, search marketing was the biggest contributer followed by display and other forms.


There's Henry Blodget's, the man behind the Silicon Alley Insider, views coming in that the new interactive media formats exhibit less recessionary effects when compared to the traditional media forms. And that the advertising spending on these new media does not decline during or after any recession, it simply grows less quickly than usual days( this trend was observed in context of television and cable advertising during the recessions of the 1950s and 1990s respectively).
Per Google's chief economist, Hal Varian, the last thing that an advertiser would do in times of downturn is cut spending on search-backed marketing as accountability in these times, matters.

Let's face the facts and examine how good or bad things really are. Here's a lowdown on Google's last quarterly earnings release. Google has reported revenues of $5.37 billion for the last quarter for its AdWords search marketing program (an increase of 39% when compared to the same quarter a year earlier). This clearly suggests that advertisers are still willing to disburse money on Google.

It wouldn't hence be unsafe to state that the search marketing industry is recognizably stable owing to its very nature. Infact the measurability factor is so high in the Internet-based marketing that not only it beats the traditional forms but in times of crisis it also emphasizes on proving the RoI, thus making it the safest mode of advertising for businesses looking to go stable during any economic downturn.

Thank You Online Shopping Portals

The rising trend of Online Shopping has made life so much more easy. These Online shopping portals are not only great sites to shop but also keep you updated.

Shopping! Phew! Has always been a trauma for me. I hate the thought of moving around from store to store, where people rush pass me and twist me around, just like a speed train does to standerbys. I keep avoiding my turn to shop until it becomes absolutely necessary for me to get there.

A few years back, when the concept of Online shopping was discussed for the first time, I was quite happy but disappointed too, as it was only restricted to books and music albums primarily. I kept hoping that some day there will be more of Online shopping and a wider range available too.

Today, Online shopping has grown to become the most convenient way to shop. Thank you Online shopping portals. These are [places where you get almost everything. From books to music albums, from apparels to jewellery, from flowers to gifts just name it and you have it right at your door step.

Now let me tell you how Online shopping portals have influenced me. Believe what I am going to say now, coz I am not exaggerating even a bit. Right now, I am in my apartment sitting on my teakwood study table and typing on my laptop. And you know what, I got them ALL Online. More over, the Timex watch that I am sporting, the Lee-cooper jeans that I have on and also a bracelet which I consider my lucky charm are all shopped Online.

So now you know, how the scope of Online shopping portals is widely expanding. And more over you do not even need a shopping partner or get smashed in the crowd. Heres me saying a big THANK YOU to Online Shopping Portal once again. (I keep saying it every time I shop for something Online )

Let’s Get Famous and Be Seen Everywhere

Gee, I am really glad that I am kinda getting regular with my blog posts. Well, blame it on my excitement of exploring the Internet in India and its potentials or call it my eagerness to share all that with you. J In my last post, I had talked about why we need online presence and what is it that we can do. Although I had said very little about it, still I will sum it up for you – I said Indian businesses are going online, because most of the businesses are waking up to the potentials of having an online presence. Various sectors like the Real Estate, Jobs, Travel and Matrimony are already making their presence felt in a big way.
Here, I would talk about why we need to put the screws on Internet in India. Internet in India still has a very minuscule penetration. But as per the growth percentage in the number of internet users, every year, we can expect it to be the most dominant factor in each of our lives, very soon. From 32.2 million users in Sept 2006 to 46 million in Sept, 2007… and counting…
More and more people are going online, and they have different reasons.
The e-technology group of IMRB International has found out that smaller and non metro towns are more responsible for the increase in usage of Internet. People are hooked on to the net primarily for e-mails and for searching information on the net. As per a report in TOI in the month of October 2007, 78.5 lakh people use the net for email and nearly 37 lakh, for information search, the entertainment segment enjoys a whopping 15.4 lakh users followed by e-commerce ( online travel, share trading, banking and buying products etc.)
With growth of Internet and its usage in India, we can soon expect the number of users, who search information on internet, to cross expected figures, as gradually more and more Indians are getting the concept of online search. This will surely give search marketing a tremendous boost. Search marketing, which has been here in India for around 2 years, has already perked up its growth. At present, Google dominates this side with a major share of 70 – 80% in searches and bagging more than 95% revenues.
With such growth and evolution and come to think of it – it will only get better than this – far far better and beyond – one really can not afford to stay behind and invisible. That being said, with the way competition is getting stiffer and tougher, it would be foolhardy to be there in the virtual world, but lost in the herd, in oblivion....!!
To mark your presence, you really have to break through the clutter and create your own dominance among competitors. For that you need a strong branding strategy and meticulous media planning that will give you presence in all the relevant places. Also it is necessary to have the required technical backup to realize the plans that you build for online promotions. With everything right in place, you will find your website all over the place sooner, creating an online brand awareness, something that you will always love to have.

Your Target Audience is Online – Where Are You?

What is common between jobs, gadgets, matrimony and real estate? OK, don't have to guess so hard, I'll give this one to you. All of them, plus many more such services have hopped in to the virtual world and are doing smashing good business online. Till some years back, they were still availed through traditional methods. I still remember how I used to highlight jobs on the classifieds sections of leading dailies. And wrote in to the organizations with my résumé attached. And today, Naukri, Monster Jobs and their ilk are doing it all for us, even preparing the cover letter for us, helping us make the résumé more interesting and delicious! – and all that ONLINE!!
Naukri.com, 99acres.com and Jeevansaathi.com, together accounted for Rs.97 million worth search spends in the year 2006. Not just jobs or matrimony, almost everything today is going online. People are fishing the virtual world for almost everything that is required – whether it's a one time buy or a daily requirement. Some of the verticals that are leading the revolution of investing in the search marketing are – Retail and e-commerce with Rs.189 million followed closely by Jobs and Travel at Rs.175 million approx. Technology, Automotive and the others follow suit.
People, the masses and the ranks, ARE buying from the online shops. Take for example, gadgets – my friend bought her digicam recently. Before buying she scoured all the web pages for the best brand and model – she read everything she could find, about Sony, Panasonic, Canon etc. Not just information, she also made the purchase online at one of the online showrooms of Sony – she said she just saw their ad while searching info and clicked to know more.
Online Showrooms!! And we always thought showrooms are shops of brick n mortar... :)
OK. So let us come to the crux of the whole thing. Indian Businesses ARE Going Online. Period. Take any sector – real estate (one of the booming industry in India, especially in North India, Delhi & NCR et al) is going online, which is one of the main cause and effect of the rise and rise of Real Estate here. People are buying plots, houses and apartments and are also looking out for renting options in websites like 99acres.com, Magic Bricks.com, Real Estate.com and Realtor.com. And if you can make yourself visible like one such highly viewed web pages, there are high chances that your potential customers might end up buying from you.
Again, look at it from a different direction. You want to advertise some honeymoon packages. Alliances are sought and finalised through portals like Bharat Matrimony, Shaadi.com, Jeevansaathi.com, Simply Marry and many such matrimony web sites. If you are a travel agent, or you have wonderful honeymoon packages to offer, then you can make yourself visible to potential customers, right at the beginning and as the saying goes... early bird catches the worm...! :)
Every one is looking for the right organization online. And you can not afford to miss the opportunity and let your potential customers go to your competitors. Your presence online – at the right time and at the right place – increases your visibility and prominence. This in other words would mean more eyeballs on your website, on your products (or services) and the more you get closer to the much coveted position of – consumers' top of mind.

A Whole New World – The World of Indian Online Marketing

Thank Heavens! Finally I get to start my blog – my own space to pour out all my excitement, expectations and experiences in this roller coaster ride of online marketing, especially in India. I have been planning to start up with this blog since i shifted my focus on the Indian online space; but it is only now that I have finally put my foot down and begun with what I was waiting for so long.

Ok. Let's get down to the brass tacks. The last week was really hectic. Client meetings and more client meetings – it's really tiring if you have a week full of such meetings, sometimes even back to back. But what is really satisfying, is the response that we are getting from most of them. It's really overwhelming to see that Indian businesses are looking forward to their online presence. Even those who are well known brands, are also showing keen interest in making themselves easily available online.

Actually it's not at all a surprise for us. The Indian trade and commerce is now welcoming online marketing and internet with arms wide open. More and more business houses, from large blue chip organizations to the SMBs, every body today, understands the importance of having their dominance in the virtual world as well. With an industry growing at a rate of 8% (where as others at 2-3%), India is soon to grow as a global hub for what the rest of the world wants and as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt predicts, India will be the country to watch.

Before I take you along with me in my journey in the Indian online industry, here are some interesting facts and predictions that I have dug up, and I would like to share with you:

• According to the I Cube report of 2007, (jointly published by Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International), India is reported to have a whopping 46 million Internet users (with 32 million active users) in September of 2007. In September 2006, it was 32.2 million.
• Youth are the main users of Internet in India.
• Internet users is India are projected to rise much beyond 54 Million in the year 2008, with more than 45 million active users.
• The Internet boom is not just driven by the metros, but the small towns and non metros also have a big role to play. And the usage of Internet is on the rise for various reasons including email, information seeking and job search.
• E-commerce transactions, which are currently growing at the rate of 30% to 40% in India, are expected to reach $100 billion by the end of 2008.

Now that i've had a fair share of success in UK. We have served clients of different verticals and have established our presence there with the repertoire of our services. As an Internet prof, I understand that UK market is different from that we can expect in India. The consumer base, the lifestyle and therefore the consumer behaviour would be quite different.

Right now, I have shifted my focus on studying the Indian response to online marketing and the various target groups of Indian population; I am coming across some known and some unknown revelations which is truly enriching and enjoyable. It is based upon these findings, we plan to cover the Indian online world and in the end, of course, it is the experience that counts, I believe.

There is a whole new world waiting right there for us to explore and exploit... :) and the journey has just begun.