Angels Den Blog

It’s official. Barack Obama is to be the 44th president of the United States of America, after an “against all the odds” campaign in which even he admitted “I was never the likeliest candidate for this office” in his acceptance speech in Chicago on Tuesday night. So how did this young, relatively inexperienced senator achieve his victory to win arguably the highest office in global politics?

Some believe that it was because of the African American vote. Others assumed that the road to the White House was easy for him because of the humungous gaffs and terrible decisions of the current administration that have left America hated and impoverished after unpopular wars (and not just in the countries that they attacked) and the worst economic crisis in recent history.

There is, however, some weight to the belief that his victory over his far more experienced opponent was decided not through policies and speeches, but through his innovative use of the internet to market, to communicate with and to engage his voting audience.

If there was ever an example of the power of the internet as a promotional tool, this is it.

Even before Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for president, his website was up and running. Very early on he recognized that the power of the internet could be harnessed to mobilize support and raise funds for his campaign, but I’m not sure whether even Mr Obama himself realized quite how successful it would be.

Of the record-breaking $600 million the Obama campaign raised, much was gathered through small online donations on the myBarackObama.com website, from over 3 million users. Supporters launched over 35,000 groups on social networking sites such as FaceBook to connect with one another and mobilize support for the 150,000 events that were arranged over the internet throughout the course of the campaign. Email addresses and mobile phone numbers were taken at rallies and through the website, then used prolifically to inform people when the campaign bandwagon was headed their way and to drum up support. Official use of free marketing on YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours (approximately $47 million worth of free advertising), and viral marketing campaigns and unofficial promotions such as the now infamous “Obama Girl” mock ad entered the public psyche and became talked about on TV and in the news to further spread the appeal of the presidential candidate.

The internet was also used to communicate with those who were not on the immediate campaign trail so that they would feel a part of the process, and by targeting young voters who have never voted before he has tapped into a whole new demographic and brought the democratic process to American youth culture. The tone of his website has been another winner. Its appeal to “the common man” (and woman) to vote for Obama and its open and frank tenor have struck a cord with the American voter, showing that whoever writes his copy has well and truly hit the nail on the head.

The internet has provided an uninterruptible medium for him to speak to the American people, and to date more than 6.7 million people have watched his speech on race and politics on YouTube.

“He’s reinvented the way campaigns are run,” says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the non-profit think tank NDN, and a veteran of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

Mr Obama’s relationship with the internet as a communication tool has not stopped with his electoral win. He has now set up a new website Change.gov to speak to the American people, court their views and keep them updated with progress in the transition period between his election and inauguration. This new open politics seems to be catching on: maybe we’ll see something like this in the UK sometime soon – we can but hope!

Whether you are promoting the next presidential candidate, a charity, a product or a business, effective marketing means using every tool at your disposal in an intelligent and innovative way. You can spend hundreds, thousands or even millions of pounds on advertising, designing a logo or creating a corporate identity, but if your campaign falls on deaf ears, that’s a lot of wasted money. Barack Obama used free and interactive mediums to take his campaign from a position of minimal funds to a place where he was able to spend more than his competitor on traditional promotions such as TV advertising.

The internet is full of opportunities for small and new businesses to level the playing field with larger, more established companies by producing marketing campaigns that are talked about for a very long time. Social networking sites (such as FaceBook); business network sites (such as LinkedIn), article promotion and distribution; PR distribution sites (such as PRWeb); photo and video posting sites (such as YouTube) and search engine optimization are relatively low-cost, high-impact promotional tools that every business should investigate as a part of its marketing strategy.

Letting everyone know about your business and success is only a heartbeat away. At Angels Den our Angel investors come from varied backgrounds, but one thing they all have in common is a success in business that could only have been achieved through innovation and taking a calculated risk. For helping to bridge the finance gap that many new businesses face in their early life or to catapult them to new heights, Angels Den itself has been considered revolutionary. If your business could do with an injection of funds or the massive benefits of being associated with one of our Angel Investors, contact us today through our own online marketing tool www.angelsden.co.uk.

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