The danger of not knowing your audiences well enough - US Election lessons

So I must admit I think I’m fairly lame as I became consumed by the recent US election. I watched lots of US news over recent months as the tension of the election gripped me. I even stayed up through the night to watch it live and took the following day off to catch up on sleep (all pre-planned).

 So where does this tie into business?

In my opinion, a business should be about meeting the needs and wants of your target audiences and also your ability to communicate your proposition in a more effective way than the competition, so they buy from you and not your competitors. 

To do this you need to understand your audience better than the competition. It is here that despite polling showing that Biden would win easily the race was much closer.

The media in the US as in 2016 used polling data to predict the outcome with many saying that Biden would win by over 10 percentage points. The reality is that the race was much closer with Trump losing by just 4.5 percentage points and 74m+ people voting for a candidate that would go on to lose. This is a record in terms of the votes received for a losing candidate.

Some will say if it wasn't for Covid Trump would have won, as some perceived that Trump was doing a good job.

So why was the media so convinced that Biden would easily win this election when the reality was that it took longer than expected for the votes to be counted, due to many states having close races and unprecedented numbers of people voting.

Poor data is the answer. It is poor data that I have seen used by many businesses to make key business decisions. In this case, it was the way the data was collected. As in 2016 a deeper understanding of the Trump voter was needed to develop an effective question set and built-in bias for an audience who are deeply mistrusting in nature of the media and associated groups such as researchers and pollsters. Yes, learnings from 2016 were applied, but still not well enough.

Potentially here qualitative research into trump supporters would have provided some answers on how best to poll them to get accurate data. We know from our own approach to research that what people tell us initially is not always the truth and that there is a need to delve deeper with people to understand the real motives and facts behind what they think and feel.

This illustrates the importance of gathering data in the right way. But still why was the race so close?

For me, it relates to not understanding the variety of audiences well enough to understand what it would take to win their vote. This is relevant to business as we see many new clients base their operations and marketing efforts on a foundation of bad data, guesswork and assumptions of their audiences.  

For me, I feel that assumptions were made that due to some of Trump's policy decisions that the black, Latino & Asian communities would come out overwhelmingly for Biden.

This is a limited way of viewing entire subcultures and not appreciating the complexity of sub-segments. The reality is that audience segments and people are complex and are often not swayed purely by one issue or one overriding factor.  

Regardless of your views of Trump, he understood just like Fox News that there are audience segments that don't feel they have a voice or are listened to. Trump and Fox have played on this and have given the perception that they listen, understand, care, and empathise. 

In reality, the wall wasn't completed, the economy and immigration were better under Obama. The Chinese trade war will favor the Chinese and North Korea and Iran continue with their missile programs. But as some say perception is reality and Trump and his campaign which continued when he entered the White House tapped into understanding what their audiences wanted to hear to create a powerful narrative.

There was also the wrong assumption that Trump's actions and character would turn more people away from him. Here again, the reality is that many people accepted what some may say are his downsides in return for him providing other traits that they valued more such as strong leadership and a primary focus on the economy. After all, this is a country with an expensive health care system and poor wealth fair system to fall back on during tough times, so the economy is key for many Americans with the data saying it is seen as being even more important than dealing with Covid, despite its impact on the country. 

The complexity of issues go on. Such as: pro life vs pro choice, views on guns, big government vs little government control, jobs & the economy, healthcare and pre-existing conditions coverage, family values, religion the list goes on.

The republicans also played a smarter game of tapping into communicating specific messages to sub-segments in specific locations. Messages they knew would appeal to them/ This against a democratic party that had much deeper pockets and a key message of how bad the government was doing at managing Covid.

Despite this, the election was closer than expected.

In my view, the democratic party really missed a trick to not just understand its audiences and sub-segments to a deeper level but to also understand how they could change perceptions that would have seen more people vote for them, especially with the budgets available to them, that could have seen them run more bespoke micro-campaigns.

The way you talk to your audiences and the complexity of the research and buying process needs equal attention to ensure you talk to your audiences about the things that matter to them and the problems you can solve for them. For different segments what is important will be different.

So in summary, make sure your data is right by having a solid methodology, use qualitative research with quantitative data to give you a deeper view of your audiences, appreciate that you will have several segments and sub-segments (this doesn't mean you need to talk to them all), take the time to understand your competitor's tactics so you can outmaneuver them.

At Insightful we unpick complex growth problems for our clients by helping them understand their audiences. If you would like to understand further the complexity of methodologies, systems and processes that can help you having your prospects voting in the right direction do get in touch.