The 2015 Conservatives digital campaign with its targeted use of online advertising, emails, social media, online films and interactive websites helped the party win a majority for the first time in over 20 years.
There are some important lessons that businesses of any size, old or new, can learn from the campaign about the role of digital:
Take digital seriously
In 2010, no British political party took digital seriously. The digital operations of all parties were under-staffed, under-funded, and focused on producing content aimed at political insiders not swing voters.
In 2015, digital was at the heart of the Conservative campaign, and everything they did was tracked, measured and scrutinised against the organisations goals.
Many businesses seem confused about where digital should sit. Digital really does now need to be at the heart of where the customer messages and propositions are developed. It has the chance to transform how you engage with your customers but only if you truly engage with them on their terms.
Be where your customers are and ignore the places theyre not
If your customers arent on Instagram or Snapchat or Pinterest, there is no reason for you to be either.
At the election, the Conservatives prioritised Facebook over all other platforms (including Twitter the perennial obsession of Westminster insiders), because they knew that was where they could reach the undecided voters they had to win over.
Many businesses obsess with Twitter. Yes, it’s important, but remember where your customers are and think about how they engage with the social media channels all of which have a very different purpose from a customer perspective.
Read more on social media engagement:
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- Grace Victory: Business learnings from a social media superstar
- SMEs should use social media to boost sales and here’s how
Measure the right thing
Make sure digital is judged by KPIs that actually matter to the organisation; dont let it play by its own rules.
At the election, success for the Conservatives digital campaign was judged by the same measures as every other part of the organisation money raised, volunteers recruited, swing voters reached with key messages.
Retweets and Facebook likes do not win elections you have to focus on the numbers that matter to your business.
So link your measures of digital success to the broader business strategy goals. If sales are headed downwards but Facebook likes are heading up, you still have a problem and your digital strategy could need refocusing.
Continue reading on the next page to find out how the Conservative party grew its email databasefrom 300,000 to 1.4m people.
Offer something that customers want
If you want peoples attention, you need to offer something in return. For the Conservatives, the challenge was to make politics personal and relevant to peoples lives. One of the key ways they did that was building interactive websites that told people how the Conservatives policies were helping them and their family.
This helped the Conservatives more than quadruple the size of their email database to from 300,000 to 1.4m people in under two years.
This should be an easy one for business. There are so many great ideas in organisations for providing their customers with meaningful insight. Digital just makes this easier and quicker.
Make sure you offer something customers want and you will be rewarded with insight from them that will help you engage with them about the issues they care about.
Make your supporters part of your team
Every business, every brand has its hard-core supporters or super-fans. During the election campaign, the Conservatives focused and harnessed the incredible enthusiasm of their supporters through their Share the Facts website and mobile app.
Harness your brand supporters help them to become brand advocates. Engage your employees – another lesson around integrated marketing and communication. Many organisations can count their employees as customers too.
Every business is in campaign mode now
It doesnt matter whether your business is politics, pallets or polo shirts, every organisation needs to start operating in campaign mode.
Businesses tend to think of campaigns as time-based projects. Digital changes all this because the channel is open for your customers, competitors, employees and the media 24×7. So, like an ongoing political campaign in the digital world you need to be in campaign mode all the time.
Tom Edmonds was the director of digital and creative for the 2015 Conservative Party election campaign. He is also theco-founder of digital consultancy Edmonds Elder and can be contacted at [email protected].
Terry Corby is a partner at The Foundation, a firm of growth architects, who help clients build famous customer centric organisations and solve their most difficult growth challenges. He can be contacted at [email protected].
