There’s a lot that businesses can learn from political campaigns in the heat of national elections about how to identify, reach and motivate target audiences. Political campaigns, and in particular Presidential elections, are a hot-bed of on-the-ground strategies, where anything and everything is tested to see what works all with a single goal in mind: to get as many people who will vote for your candidate to the polls on election day as possible. The national political parties spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these efforts, and are at the cutting-edge of these types of behavioral and digital sciences.

If you have any doubt, just look at the Obama 2008 campaign where the announcement of the selection of Joe Biden as the Vice Presidential candidate was not released to the national news media on a Friday evening to maximize news coverage as had been the norm going back decade. Instead, it was broadcast via Twitter to the campaigns millions of followers at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. On that date in August 2008, the traditional news media and its filter of reporters and editors serving watch over the campaign news that it would deliver to citizens officially became irrelevant to the campaigns. The Obama team went directly to supporters with its message unfiltered.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns have a lot in common with the efforts of businesses to reach potential leads and turn them into active customers. With a wide set of tools in their toolbox, ranging from traditional print and broadcast ads to direct mail to digital strategies, executives struggle to know which activities will be most successful. Here’s where they can learn the most from campaigns.

Starting in 1998, a team of political scientists led by Alan Gerber and Donald Green began experimenting with various get-out-the-vote techniques to see which were the most effective. They compared, for example, the effectiveness of calls from a paid call center, a piece of direct mail, and a home visit (this began before the age of digital marketing strategies, of course). The biggest surprise was that having people knocking on doors boosted voter turnout by nine percent—a huge increase in political terms. Least effective were impersonal techniques, such as generic mailings and phone calls from paid, script-reading workers.

What did work? Personalized, inquisitive and engaging communications targeted to the consumer were most effective. Even simple tasks such as thanking a voter for their previous support had a significant impact.

The lessons are clear and shouldn’t be surprising. Developing campaigns that speak directly to a key audience, that is personalized and talks about their particular needs, is the most effective way to reach and motivate customers.

To PR or Not to PR?

I’ve had a number of client prospects over the last several months ask me to deliver a PR campaign “just like the one we do for Adobe.” Yet, I’ve counseled them that this may not be the best use of their limited budget. Like many agencies across the industry, Bluetext has deep roots in traditional public relations—the time-honored tradition of taking story ideas for our clients to reporters and hoping that they write positive articles that highlight what our clients are doing. But in today’s media market, just how useful is traditional public relations?

Here are some of the challenges:

• There are fewer news outlets to go to.
• There are fewer reporters at each outlet.
• The number of PR firms hasn’t declined, so the competition is tougher.
• People don’t read publications nearly as much as they used to.
• The trend is going away from news outlets.
• There are many more options for reaching the audience directly.

On the other hand, getting an article published has a lot of intrinsic value—it’s validation for your client, it is great for search engine optimization, and is particularly good for social media and other marketing efforts.

On the third hand—if I can have a third hand—traditional public relations is resource intensive, and those resources may often be better spent on more targeted outreach activities.

So, to butcher the Bard a little, to PR or Not to PR? Here is what I tell clients:

• PR is still important. When real news can be made, by all means do so.
• If you are a well-known brand, PR is much easier—every reporter will take your call.
• If you are not a known brand, it is much more difficult, and the results may be disappointing unless you have legitimate news or a real story to tell. Reporters won’t write about your company just because you are there—they need to have a good reason.
• If resources are limited, save the traditional PR for something big, maybe once a quarter. Use the rest of your resources for a non-traditional campaign that will establish your brand.

That can be a clever online landing page design supplemented by banner ads to drive traffic. Or it can be a survey designed to make news, create interest, and generate leads. Develop a social media campaign that reaches audiences directly. Use video to your advantage…or all of the above.

The bottom line is that PR should be only one strategic arrow in your marketing quiver—not your only weapon.

I was recently asked to give some counsel to the International Association of Business Communicators on how companies and organizations should be preparing for crises—especially Scorpio horoscope 2005 advises forgetting about the problems for a while, to think the situation over and study it properly, without taking final decisions and pronouncing sharp judgments. in light of the Susan G. Komen issue as well as the scandal at Penn State.

Bluetext is proud to announce that it has been selected by NetApp, the $5B data storage innovator based in Silicon Valley, to support its U.S. Public Sector public relations efforts. NetApp is at the forefront of Big Data, virtualization, and data center consolidation, and we are honored to have been selected to help them drive thought leadership and brand visibility across the Federal, State & Local, and education markets.

In a recent PRWeek article, Jodi Baumann, senior director of corporate communications at NetApp, explained that “it chose Bluetext for its Beltway expertise, senior-level experience and support, and digital and social media savvy. “They really get the entire Beltway area,” she explained. “They also had some really interesting ideas about social media and digital PR, which is something we’ve really tried to get our [public sector] business doing more of.”

Read the article here.