The Lunch Pail

Here's a statement from Captain Obvious: "Effective online marketing, for the first time, played a significant role in the outcome of a Presidential election." Thanks, Captain.

Everyone knows the tactics by now. Everything from using mobile to announce his running mate (even though CNN out-scooped them) and support his massive GOTV campaign, to iPhone apps, to online infrastructure for fundraising, to paid and organic search, to an online social network (built from the ground up), to geographically targeted media buys and Facebook (almost 2.5 million friends at last count) and MySpace (almost 850,000 friends) pages.

What do all of these tactics add up to? Votes? Well, it’s hard to draw a direct connection between these tactics and the “conversion” – the vote. So, what effect did they have? Enthusiasm.

The great “enthusiasm gap” the media talked so much about in October was real, and can’t be discounted when analyzing Obama’s victory. Here are two quick, pre-election stats from the most reputable surveyors around:

Gallup: “Only 51% of Republicans say they are more enthusiastic about voting than in previous years, compared to 71% of Democrats, marking a shift from October 2004, when enthusiasm was about the same for both partisan groups.”

Rasmussen: “Just 48% of Republicans have a Very Favorable opinion of their party’s nominee. Seventy-two percent (72%) of Democrats are that enthusiastic about Obama. (From Oct. 13)”

This is not to say that the McCain campaign didn’t leverage online marketing. McCain raised plenty of money online, really pioneering the tactic in the 2000 Republican primary. The campaign had solid paid and organic search strategies. The VP pick of Sarah Palin was actually leaked online when someone updated Palin’s Wikipedia page before the press conference happened. The strategy simply wasn’t as widespread or important at headquarters.

I’m certainly not saying that Obama won because of the campaign’s online strategy, and McCain’s lost because their strategy wasn’t as in depth. But, denying online marketing played a role in the outcome is naïve.

The Obama campaign was effective at leveraging the might of online tactics and communicating with their supporters in new and intimate ways, like mass texting. The campaign is significant in teaching all online marketers the value of creating opportunities for consumers to interact with their brand as much as possible. The more brand interaction, the more brand loyalty. It will translate into conversions, even if it’s harder to quantify.

The takeaway from all of this? Give your consumers the opportunity to interact with your brand and build their enthusiasm. Technology is the most effective way to accomplish that goal.