Marketing is essential in any aspect of our daily life. Politicians, as decision makers, market their manifestos with the aim of gaining popularity. It is therefore important to have marketing in politics. This paper focuses on how politicians can market themselves to the public when they are seeking a political office.
Marketing is vital because the public cannot vote for a candidate who is not known to them and thus this paper explains the various strategies that politicians employ in order to have an upper hand on elections day. This because a politician cannot just register with a political party and sit back and expect to win the elections.
Political marketing start early enough like two years before the elections year because if one waits until the official campaigns begin he/she will not be able to convince voters to vote for him/her. By then every candidate is at his/her peak of campaigning and the public is most likely to vote for the candidate who has been with them long before the campaigning period.
A politician should participate in public initiatives frequently by responding to the present problems of his voters to be, because that way they will feel he/she has their interests at hand and they will have confidence with him/her according to how he handles the present situations at grass root levels.
A chief campaigner should be identified because he/she will be accorded the duty of sensitizing the area residents on the manifesto of the political candidate. Most people can be influenced by somebody who interacts with them on a daily basis to vote for a particular candidate.
The candidate can also air his wish to vie for a political seat through radio and television programs. During such interviews the candidate should give voters to ask him questions because it will foster a good relationship between him/her and his voters.
Political candidates can also utilize social gatherings such as weddings and parties to air their manifestos. This is because most people don’t have time for political meetings hence such gatherings will provide an appropriate platform to air their manifestos.
But before the candidate is given a chance to address such a gathering he must have been active towards the success of that gathering because people cannot allow a person to come from no where and start addressing them. A manifesto is a written document that explains the problems that will be dealt by a political candidate thus voters usually listens to a candidate’s manifesto to gauge his suitability to represent them in parliament.
It is therefore important for a candidate to prepare a manifesto that addresses the problems of common people because after all they are looking for someone who can address their needs while representing them in parliament. The candidate should indicate the procedures that will be followed in solving the present problems. For instance if the region in question has so many youths who are unemployed the candidate has to state how such youths will be assisted to access gainful employment.
In African states political candidates are very aggressive because they use all the available means to market themselves. It’s common for political candidates to address any kind of a gathering even if it’s a funeral gathering. The lifestyle of the voters can be very influential in selecting the mode of marketing.
For instance, in societies where women come together during their monthly meeting candidates attend such meetings in order to mingle with these women. It is believed that if you want information to spread like forest fire just leak it to the ladies. Women are the first to know when something new is coming up. Women are the ones who know the cheapest shopping stores and the best doctors and etcetera.
Nowadays the world has been turned into a village by the emergence of the World Wide Web and thus social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter are the in thing. These sites attract many people because they are used for socializing and since the number of visitors to these sites has increased they are being used as a marketing tool. Barrack Obama is one of those presidential candidates who utilized these sites and since his success other political leaders and candidates are using these social networks to market themselves.
In conclusion, the effectiveness of the model applied in marketing a politician will depend on some factors such as the literacy level and poverty level. This is because he/he can not use social networking sites when most of his targets are not computer literate. Again the same mode of marketing may fail if his targets can not access internet and computers due to poverty. It is therefore important to have a good marketing strategy when someone is involved in politics; marketing is a vital undertaking for politicians