Mobile marketing your next election.

More than half the population of India now own mobile phones. Barely half the population of India cast their vote. If half of all the mobile phone owners have never voted, you are staring at a huge potential customer base just waiting to be tapped. A market at your ready reach, a market one can engage sitting at ones desk in an air-conditioned office. A customer who is connected to you 24/7. It is an opportunity any political party would be stupid to ignore.

For winning elections in the end boils down to selling yourself, as an individual, as a party, as a brand. The government of any country is its biggest service industry. And in India’s multi party democracy, the number of ants trying to bite into this massive pie is copious. As in any service the essential idea is to understand what the customer wants and to deliver it efficiently. So how does one engage the mobile customer and motivate him to vote for you in an election.

Just as in retail, you have to first get the customer to the shop before you can make him to choose your product. Initially you have to convince him that his voting matters and is required for his own wellbeing and betterment. In marketing parlance it is called “creating a need”

This is where mobile applications play a big role especially among the educated smart phone or even low range phone users. It is not practical to get somebody to go, stand in queue and vote as an impulse. It also cannot be incentivized in any way. “Vote tomorrow and get 50% off in the next elections” will just not work. It requires constant engagement and motivation so that the message can gradually sink in. This is where social media applications can really be effective.

Mobile applications, be it extensions of web based platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Google or exclusive mobile platforms like We-Chat or Watsapp can keep users constantly interested by providing a huge variety of content which he or she can choose and interact with. For marketing any service or product on social media, there are certain parameters that mainly define the effectiveness of the campaign. They are:

·         The relevance of the content.

·         The consistency of the message.

·         The gratification it provides – how interesting it is.

·         Differentiation from existing content.

·         The regularity at which it is communicated.

·         The scope for interaction and feedback.

·         The ease of sharing.

When a message, be it a general call to take part in the election process as an appeal to ones responsibilities as a citizen or a specific campaign to vote for a single individual or party will have to stay true to these values to succeed. Ensuring that the user is not overburdened on his time while at the same time being able to provide him enough quality content regularly to change his opinion is a challenge, but not insurmountable. If effective, mobile applications will provide unlimited reach due to the ease at which content can be shared between people. Positive or negative, on opinion can spread within hours to thousands and lakhs of people.

For the content to be relevant, one has to ensure that it reaches the right audience. While in regular Social Media like Facebook and Google, one can depend on demographic and interest based targeting, most apps depend on the user’s judgment to share relevant content to the relevant people. This ensures that information remains credible to a certain extent as well as that there is a human sanction for all content shared. Over mechanization and repetition of any message shall directly affect its credibility and can create the exactly opposite effect to what was intended.

In summary, the digital generation, be it the early adapters or the new entrants are a fickle lot. Digital content does not share the credibility as yet of any mainstream medium and thus influencing opinion is still a huge challenge. But the potential is obvious and any stakeholder in the electoral process should be vary of ignoring this medium.  

Written for a contest on www.indivine.com