How Trump Used The Media To Win The Election, And What You Can Learn From Him.

This article originally published in the Financial Post

Last week, I wrote about a lesson from the accession of Donald Trump and other politicians: the power of taglines as a marketing tool. But there’s another marketing lesson Trump offered: His candidacy may have dealt a partial death blow to traditional advertising — and delivered a clear message to entrepreneurs about the value of owned and earned media.

I’m not arguing that advertising from traditional print, TV and radio to online will disappear tomorrow or even in the next few years. It will be around for a long time, but in a diminished form, a trend that’s been playing out for years. That’s because advertising can be extraordinarily expensive and, in formats such as print, can be difficult to quantify a return on investment — digital advertising being an obvious exception.

Related

• Don’t believe taglines are an effective marketing tool? Just ask Donald Trump
• If the media failed to grasp a Donald Trump win, is the weather report the only news we can still trust?

It’s also not always necessary. Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton had reportedly spent more than US$70 million on television campaign ads by mid-August. Trump, on the other hand, only started spending in August before ramping up his TV ad spend to eventually exceed Clinton’s in key battleground states in the election’s waning days. By virtually every metric, the Clinton campaign far outspent Team Trump.

So, what happened?

Trump largely relied on earned and owned media. The former is everything from the retweets to the press coverage he got as media hung on his every word, waiting to see what outrageous thing he might say next, then spinning it into click-bait headlines. Owned media refers to the platforms under Team Trump’s control — from his website to his Twitter feed and Facebook page — tools he wielded with remarkable skill during the campaign.

In short, Trump became a content machine during the election and didn’t need to rely on expensive advertising to get his message out.

Yes, targeted Google AdWord or social media advertising campaigns can be highly effective and relatively inexpensive. Even print advertising can still deliver a return on investment when used wisely. But for most small to mid-sized businesses, wide-scale ad campaigns are cost prohibitive, making them nearly impossible to launch, let alone sustain.

But by turning themselves into publishers on their websites and social media platforms, by delivering seminars, publishing reports or writing an e-book and other content of relevance to their target audience, business owners can harness some of the Trump marketing magic.

The key is to ensure owned media is relevant and timely. Does it speak to a specific issue or challenge that your target audience is facing now? And if so, will your audience care? Is it something that will make them want to read, watch or listen to whatever trusted advice or insight you are offering?

It has to be engaging and interesting. That’s especially true when all your competitors are slowly jumping on the content-marketing bandwagon and producing their own material

Is it informative? There’s a lot of crap on the Internet. Most of it isn’t worth your time, but when you do find useful content, you tend to delve into and absorb it. This is the key to success with owned media. It has to be engaging and interesting. That’s especially true when all your competitors are slowly jumping on the content-marketing bandwagon and producing their own material.

The earned media should come if you sustain an owned-media campaign over time. This is the stage at which your target audience hopefully will become brand advocates, sharing your content and engaging with it. It could also be the point where media outlets, industry organizations or other relevant stakeholders will come knocking, to get you to contribute to their blogs, to serve as a source for their articles or maybe participate in a panel discussion.

Most importantly, owned and earned media will help you build credibility and trust with your clients. And it’s extremely cost-effective when compared to advertising.

If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats taught us one thing from this U.S. presidential election, it’s that even an ad budget worth hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.

Dave Burnett is CEO of AOK Marketing, a Toronto-based firm that helps traditional offline businesses get discovered online.