Love him or hate him, the one thing you have to acknowledge about Donald J Trump is that he ran a campaign that he knew would produce results, as an inbound marketing agency we wanted to analyse his campaign and how he used the Inbound Marketing Principles to win the 2016 presidential election.
- Understanding his buyer personas
Inbound marketing relies on the idea that you should understand your ideal customer before you begin to attract them. This way you can gain an understanding of the issues and pains that your potential customers struggle with and how your solution or product can help with those issues.
Trump perfected this. He identified the audience in America who was afraid and tired of the current situation in America. He found those who were affected by continued globalisation and impacted by recent foreign policy decisions. He found those who were scared and afraid of minorities and the impact they had on the American economy.
Now as we know, a lot of his rhetoric isn’t true, but this doesn’t mean it wasn’t effective. It spoke to the issues and pains that a lot of people in America were feeling and he came across to that group as a provider who could solve their problems.
- Tailoring content to the right buying stage
Inbound marketing relies on helping guide a potential customer through the buying cycle by providing the right information at the right time of the sales cycle.
Trump also perfected this. He tailored his speeches, his rhetoric and his politics to each situation. He knew what buttons to push, when to shout, when to re-direct issues away and when to attack his opponent.
Certain elements of his campaign were atrocious. But they weren’t the focus. They were pushed to the side or not given enough acknowledgement around their severity. Why? Because he tailored his content to ensure it was not the focus point.
- Providing clear CTAs and testing
Inbound marketing principles focus on allowing customers to convert or progress to the next stage of the buying journey through consistent use of call-to-actions. Coupled with the ideology of constantly testing these CTAs and learning from the results, the idea is to find the best way to present an offer that helps convert a lead into a customer.
Trump tested. Trump learned. Trump converted. A lot of people criticise him for not providing clear and consistent policy and rhetoric. Could it have been that he was merely testing what call-to-actions resonated with his audience and once he found an approach that provided the best results and implement that with ferocity?
- Conclusion
Whilst there are many more principles around inbound marketing, Trump has displayed a lot of the core concepts around how to market a business out in the new customer-centric world. Could this be a reflection of both the change in the marketing world from a product-centric to customer-centric model and the political world?
With the power of the internet and information at voter’s fingertips, maybe politicians need to better understand how to market themselves in the information age, or else we may all suffer the consequences.
If inbound marketing can help Donald Trump with the election, imagine the wonders it can do for your business, use our Inbound Marketing ROI Calculator to find out!
Tonberry Digital is an Australian based inbound marketing agency that specialises in helping businesses optimise their online assets and use Inbound Marketing Principles for lead generation and conversion.
