Recently, I was held at gun point asked to volunteer for a local campaign in my home town. (Note: The election is non-partisan).
Yesterday, my City had a ‘Olde Towne Gaithersburg Day,’ to celebrate different businesses and causes that are local to Gaithersburg. As such, the incumbent decided to sponsor a booth to increase awareness of his campaign.
We had bright yellow teeshirts and handed out balloons to passers-by. It was a lot of fun.
But almost immediately after the event started, I noticed that there were a majority of Hispanic citizens that were attending the event. Their children would run up to get a balloon and I just looked at them and their parents and smiled. While this would have been the time when I pass out a flier and explain that the forthcoming election is non-partisan and that they would be receiving pamphlets in the mail, this opportunity was lost because I was unable to brake the language barrier that existed between the two of us.
Call me shameful, but I called my good friend and asked him to translate a few phrases for me so I would at least be able to ask them if they wanted a balloon (¿Quieres un globo?). Even though I was unable to say much more than ¡de nada! or other small phrases, it was clear that I was more an ally than a stranger when I spoke these simple phrases as opposed to just smiling.
Our pamphlets were printed in one language as well, and I think we missed out on an opportunity to become one with the community since little research was conducted on the market to whom we were reaching. I learned a lot from the experience that conducting sufficient market research is the best way to ensure campaign success.
If you’ve ‘done your homework’, or research, you’re more likely to develop campaigns that most adequately resonate with your market.
As social media strategists, it’s our job to understand to whom you are trying to reach when you’re developing a marketing plan for digital communication. We’ve been passing along the ideas that ‘Content is King,’ meaning that you have to have pertinent information to respect your audience’s limited time. We also tell each other ‘Listen to your Market‘ so you monitor the conversation before and after your message is disseminated.
But these two things are based in Knowing your Market.
And as marketers, we can not forget the opportunities that are missed by not conducting that adequate research before starting a campaign.
