Vote for Better Search in ’08

Three ways to interact with your search “constituents”

For the good of our nation, I have decided not to run for president in ’08. But I’m still ready to offer advice to anyone who is.

And so for all of you presidential hopefuls who are also readers of the YSM blog, I’ve decided to answer the question: What does every Oval Office aspirant need to know about paid search marketing?

(If you’re not running for president, not to worry—everything I have to say here can be adapted pretty quickly to better search marketing for businesses, too.)

The answer is simple. You need to deal with your search constituents in three different ways:
1.   As people who want to help you.
2.   As people who want to learn about you.
3.   As people, plain and simple.

1. People who want to help you.
In politics, your “low-hanging fruit” is the group of people who want to donate, volunteer, and/or vote for you.

It’s likely that these people will search for you by name (or by a nickname or a misspelling of your name). It’s also likely that their search language will explain how they’d like to help. If I were running for president, some of my search supporters might type in “donate abe mezrich,” others might search for “volunteer for abe mezrich,” and still others might search for “mezrich voting stations.”

Each of these searchers wants to relate to me in a slightly different way. I’ll need to consider relating to them accordingly with a different search creative and landing page.

2. People who want to learn about you.
Plenty of voters turn to search to learn more about the candidates. Some research a candidate’s views on specific issues, with queries like “abe mezrich tax policy” or “abe mezrich health care.” Others search for information about all the candidates at once, searching on terms like “candidates war in Iraq” or “election 08 tax policy.” Since voters are deciding if they want to vote for you based on the issues, you should consider offering issue-specific search creatives and landing pages.

3. People.
You’re not in the market for search clicks. You’re not even in the market for votes. You’re in the market for relationships with millions of unique people, each of whom is vital to your election, and your search campaign should relate to those individuals in the way that best suits them.

Often, that will mean looking beyond the keyword and asking who’s really searching for you, and why. Just one example: A search for “candidate tax policy” means one thing coming from a Kentucky millionaire in her mid-thirties, and something very different from a Florida retiree. You’ll want to relate to both of those searchers in a different way.

When you’re working out search strategy, here are a few key voter/searcher demographic questions to ask:

• Do voters in different geographic locations express different concerns about the same issue?
• Are different geographic regions better for driving voters, donors, and/or volunteers?

Use your smarts, your analytics capabilities, and tools like Yahoo! Search Marketing’s geo-targeting to interact with your searchers in the way that best suits each sub-constituency.

My Campaign Promise
I can’t guarantee that my campaign search strategies will win you an election. But if you deal with your online constituents as people who want to help you, people who want to learn more about you, and just as people, then I can promise that your search marketing will go much further in getting you the donations you want, the votes you need, and a helpful leg up on the competing candidates.

And that’s a lot to get from a marketing campaign, which is why it’s a platform that I’m happy to stump for.

— Abe Mezrich, Communications Manager, Didit

Image courtesy of webbmb via Flickr.