Political Marketing and Business

What political campaign marketing can teach businesses about growing their audiences

Who should listen: Small business owners who are curious about how to create a winning marketing strategy that is hyper-focused on understanding your audience’s motivation and building a brand the right (i.e., profitable) way.

Key idea: Don’t spend money on marketing and advertising until you know what will work.

When Phillip Stutts lost three of his seven consulting clients and 60 percent of his income within a few weeks, he knew he would have to come up with a new way to leverage his political marketing expertise.

He used a strategy he’d been taught by author, coach, and speaker Keith Cunningham called Thinking Time to discover an idea that would allow him to codify and apply the steps used to elect politicians to business in a way that would allow them to grow.

The result was a five-step formula that his company Go Big Media uses today to massively improve the bottom line for every client he’s worked with. Having proven the success of his methods, Phillip went on to write The Undefeated Marketing System: How to Grow Your Business and Build Your Audience Using the Secret Formula That Elects Presidents.

And this week on Stay Paid, he shares his story and the formula that has enabled him to not only produce record-breaking results for his clients but also build a company that has no debt or outside investors, and is projected to hit $100M in revenue and more than $1B in sales this year.

The secret formula that elects US Presidents

Phillip realized early on that there were a number of tactics that the best political marketing campaigns routinely used, but that no one had taken the time to collect, analyze, and organize into a coherent playbook that could be used to guide campaign ad content and messaging. So that’s what Phillip did, and to his knowledge, he’s the only political marketer that is crushing it in the business world.

As you listen to his interview, you’ll hear Phillip explain the five steps of the now not-so-secret formula:

1. Determine what you believe in.
2. Put together your strategy.
3. Build your brand.
4. Test your messages.
5. Launch your marketing campaign.

At each step, Phillip emphasizes two things. First, you need to understand your target audience on a deep level. Go Big Media has the advantage of having a mega database of consumer and voter data, but Phillip explains that small business owners have many avenues they can use to collect the data they need. Second, you shouldn’t be spending money on ideas, tactics, strategies, or messages if you don’t already know that they work. (It’s for this reason that he says you shouldn’t build a brand until step three.)

There is a war for our attention

When it comes to breaking through the clutter of marketing that invades every facet of our online and offline lives, it’s easy to understand why Phillip says that it’s not just other real estate agents, financial analysts, mortgage brokers, or others professionals who are your competitors . . .

Everyone is your competitor.

When everyone is your competitor, it’s critical that you find your specific niche audience, and communicate directly with them using messages that resonate with their needs, wants, and motives and to connect your product or service to them.  Even if that niche includes only 500 people, every one of them will relate to what you’re saying.

Please enjoy this episode, and we’d appreciate it if you would give us a 5-star rating and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. (Not sure how to leave a review? Click here.)

Connect | Resources

• Website: phillipstutts.com/insights
• Book: The Undefeated Marketing System: How to Grow Your Business and Build Your Audience Using the Secret Formula That Elects Presidents.