Social Media Lesson 9 Analyse Everything

Part 9 of 27 Social Media Lessons From Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign

The Obama Campaign systematically tested everything.

Every email, text message, website visit and online ad was analysed and tested to improve conversion rates and boost website traffic. Obama spent more than $16 million on online ads returning a 15 times return on investment.
Action : Continually test, refine and experiment to find out what works best for your campaign. Then test some more.

Derived from Rahaf Harfoush, Yes We Did

[update 23 June 2022]

Growth Marketing or Growth Hacking

The emphasis on analysis by the Obama Campaign has since been taken to new levels. The specialist marketing area of Growth Marketing or Growth Hacking is a prime example. Mostly, this consists of regular A/B split testing where two pages are delivered to audiences. The best-performing page is retained and the other removed. This is repeated over and over to continue to refine and enhance the performances. As a pure statistical experiment, often the results of A/B split testing is not what you might expect. And that is the key to its success.

Smart Growth

Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg is another example of this at the organisational level. (We rapped this at Book Rapper as Smart Growth). The emphasis here is to design the business model of the organisation in such a way that it will grow.

It is also mentioned in The Lean Startup – the bible for entrepreneurs by Eric Ries. One of the key reasons that startups either succeed or fail is whether they can design a growth engine – a way for the organisation to grow at a fast enough rate to become a sustainable enterprise. (We rapped the Lean Startup over at Book Rapper as Pioneer). If a startup fails to grow quickly enough it can often fail to cover it’s costs and risks going out of business before it can fully flourish.