What Marketers Can Learn From the 2016 Presidential Candidates

Regardless of the type of business you're trying to start, one of the most important elements is marketing. Putting a great product or service out into the world should always be your biggest priority, but if you don't have customers who know about it, you ultimately won't find the success you're after.

Luckily, one of the single most effective marketing educations happens to be taking place as we speak and it's completely free of charge. No, it's not a class down at your local community college -- it's the 2016 presidential election. Every day, people like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are putting on a veritable marketing master class that cannot be ignored.

Here are a few of their best lessons so far:

Communication is Key; Find Your Voice

When you look at the success of current Republican front runner Donald Trump, the level of notoriety he's been able to achieve thus far in the campaign should come as no surprise -- the man clearly knows a thing or two about selling himself.

This likely has a lot to do with not only the fact that he's an accomplished businessman in his own right, but also the fact that running for president and running a successful business are really founded on the same basic concept: it's all about marketing.

From the beginning, Donald Trump has been in complete command of two things: playing to the strengths of what makes him unique and communicating those strengths to his target audience (in this case, the Republican base). He clearly identified a hole in the marketplace that needed to be filled. He's centered all of his speeches thus far on not just the idea of "here is what I'm going to do," but "here is what you want and here is why I'm the only guy who is capable of giving it to you." This is an incredibly important distinction.

With that foundation to work from, Trump has set out to communicate his message far and wide. He's direct, concise and to the point -- but not at the expense of emotion. He's speaking the language that the people who he's targeting want to hear, not talking down to them. He's cutting through the rhetoric and communicating core ideas in the most straightforward, effective ways possible.

This is exactly the type of approach you need to make when marketing your business, particularly if it's a new one.

Say what you want about him -- that he's loud, he's brash and more. But Trump is a man who has obviously taken a marketing class or two in his day.

Playing Up What Makes You Unique

On the other side of the aisle are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who are both teaching us a thing or two right now about marketing in a crowded environment.

These are two people who are playing to the same core audience of Democrats and who have both found an enormous amount of success up to this point. But how can this be, you ask? How can the party sustain two candidates who seem very similar in a lot of ways and who are both going after the same core group of people?

The answer, once again, is in the marketing.

Look at the way that Sanders and Clinton are marketing themselves. Each one is playing almost exclusively to what makes them unique and what they do or think or say that the other candidate doesn't. Much like Trump, they've taken the standard marketing message of "here is what a Democrat does" and converted it into something much more specific.

This, too, is one of the keys to marketing your business. You have to find what makes you unique compared to your competitors, and then play to those strengths as much as possible. If you sell widgets, your marketing message can't be "here are the reasons why you want to buy a widget." It needs to be "here is why you want to buy one of MY widgets, because it does a number of great things that Company X's widgets don't do."

By finding what makes you unique in your field and communicating it just as effectively as you communicate the product or service that you're actually trying to sell, you will be able to find your audience and build loyalty and interest -- regardless of how competitive the field actually is. Clinton and Sanders are proof positive of this.

A discussion of the topic of marketing in the modern age and the tips and tricks that marketers in all industries can learn from the candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

This post was written by Melody Gee, Content Director of http://www.onlinefaxes.com/.

A company that takes care of its customers, provides reliable service and saves its customers hundreds of dollars per year.