Like any type of marketing, political marketing has as its main objective the creation and promotion of the image of a person or an institution.
What is political marketing?
A suite of means of communication, consisting of the use of modern marketing techniques to popularize the program, ideas, personality, and electoral offer of a candidate or political party. Political marketing also includes designing strategies to raise awareness among the electorate. In addition, it deals with knowing the options, degree of satisfaction, expectations, and voting intentions of the voters. They all take place to achieve the strongest possible rally.
The main directions of political marketing are:
- studying the electoral market;
- the research of the political attitude of the voters;
- the image of political parties and people;
- studying voting intentions;
- development of communication strategies;
- selecting the target segments of voters;
- choosing the theme and tone of the election campaign;
- the promotion channels to use;
- organizing the campaign.
Types of political marketing
When we talk about political marketing, we must make a clear distinction between electoral and institutional marketing. At the electoral stage, the relationship between politicians and voters is built and strengthened. Here they turn to more aggressive and time-limited promotional campaigns). Institutional marketing builds and strengthens the long-term relationship between the official and the citizen.
Electoral marketing
The purpose of electoral marketing is to inform the voters about the candidates.
Electoral campaigns are the culminating moment of any political marketing activity. Electoral promotion tools and methods include public relations, advertising, campaigns, and direct mail.
The promotion and advertising activity within electoral marketing includes pictures, programmatic documents, the distribution of posters and flyers, the handing out of gifts, and media advertising.
The message is the basic pillar of this promotion and must be a quintessence of the program. it must also be attractive, easy to remember, and coherent.
There are four types of resources used in electoral marketing: electoral, financial, human, and time.
Institutional marketing
It constitutes an incessant communication of the dignitaries with the public about achievements, policies, ideas, and events. The better organized it is, the simpler it is to carry out electoral campaigns.
The media portrait - at the epicenter of political marketing
In a healthy political system, a political actor builds his notoriety through the media. Only when he reaches a certain level of notoriety, does direct communication with the public become crucial: the politician participates in rallies, meetings, tours, and direct contacts with opinion leaders.
To understand the media portrait of the candidate at a certain moment, voters are polled. The attributes that are appreciated as true, for a certain politician, by more than 90% of the surveyed subjects constitute the hard core of the image of that politician. Those that are appreciated as true by more than 50% of the subjects constitute the periphery of his image. The attributes of the hardcore, together with those of the periphery, constitute the structure of the real representation, at a given moment, of the image of the political man.
Who makes up the campaign team for successful political marketing?
The campaign team for quality political marketing includes copywriters, direct mail experts, directors, and media relations specialists.
Copywriter
Here, the detailed knowledge of the candidate for whom one is working is important. A copywriter must know the candidate's value set very well. Without this, it would not be possible to create an authentic speech, which would give the impression that it belongs to that politician, that it represents him, and that it reflects his political views. He must also use language accessible to the candidate; basically, they must write in the candidate's words.
The media planning department deals with the purchase of media space and airtime necessary for the placement of election messages in the media in the form of press layouts, and video and audio spots.
Many of the news published in the press have as a source of information the messages issued by a public relations agency. These are provided in the form of press releases and materials from press folders and aim to inform public opinion on certain events. The difference between publicity and advertising is given by the financial aspect of information retrieval.
Events such as ceremonies, award ceremonies, press conferences, protests, meetings, etc.; will always be topics of interest and will have media coverage.
Advertising is information for the appearance of which in the media the beneficiary pays an amount that varies from case to case. It is a controllable method of placing messages in the media.
Experts in direct mail
The preparation of letters addressed to voters and other informative materials intended to reach citizens' mailboxes is one of the most frequently offered services to a political candidate.