What started as a fun activity at Logicserve Digital, in analysing the audience behaviour as a part of #USElections2016, led to one of the most important insights for understanding consumers. We observed that intent marketing (search engine marketing) plays a better role in understanding the audience preference and help us (the marketers) better anticipate what they are looking for.
We all heard the big news, and with a neck-to-neck competition, we saw Donald Trump take a sweeping victory. Currently, the internet and major news sites are covering what exactly went wrong in the polls. During the campaigns, one could see that most of the media houses and think tanks predicted that Hillary would be the face of the United States and win the election.
This isn’t the first time that the polls got a different outcome from what the masses wanted; the same issue was raised during the famous ‘Brexit’ prediction . This time again, they have managed to do that. Donald Trump has ended up performing way better than what most polling companies had portrayed the results to be. For e.g. NBC gave out a poll suggesting that the former First Lady is enjoying a five-point lead as America went into polling. Even CNN/ORCpolls also cited the same. CNN mentioned that Hillary Clinton had a 12-point lead .
Time and again even Donald Trump ended up dismissing the polls as “phony;” he stated this on the Tuesday morning election briefing. Betdata.io/ politics put out another prediction which actually pointed out the stiff competition, based on the data it had analysed, which showed the following –
Astonishing #ElectionNight scenes as virtual 50/50 split on betting markets. Brexit repeat? https://t.co/GVJbz6byu4 pic.twitter.com/ZO2rLutIQR
— betdata.io politics (@betdatapolitics) November 9, 2016
Bet data believes that betting markets are better at predicting political outcomes as compared to polls.
One of the notable exceptions among poll trackings were that of the USC/LA times tracking which showed Trump in the lead. If we followed the campaign closely we could see the divide, Trafalgar group gave Trump the lead –
Wondering why Hillary and President Obama are both campaigning in Michigan today? Our poll may reveal the reason.https://t.co/LztiFsaoke pic.twitter.com/DJo7F1zgyK
— Trafalgar Group (@trfgrp) November 7, 2016
And, those such as Quinnipiac showed Ms. Clinton on the forefront.
Quinnipiac University #SwingState Polls in #VA #CO #PA #NC #FL #IA #GA #OH #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/wraKRFO4o7
— Quinnipiac Poll (@QuinnipiacPoll) November 7, 2016
This leads us to wonder, what exactly did the poll sites miss? Even though early voting suggested that may be the pollsters were right, the last lap of campaign changed the whole face. So, are the marketing research tools an effective way to understand/predict audience behaviour?
One of the biggest points that the pollsters missed out were on the “Secret Trump Vote”, which turned out to be one of the most impacting factors. The Republican insiders claimed that these votes were not being captured; hence the data wouldn’t reveal about the shy trump voters.
They do argue that some of those who participated in the survey weren’t open to admit that they were voting for Trump. Also, considering the media image that was built around Trump being synonymous with racism and other factors, it seems the conservative voters appeared to have remained silent. Even John Curtice, President, British Polling Council admits in an interaction with The Telegraph, that the pattern of not openly acknowledging the party a voter supports exists around the Globe.
“Missing the Secret Trump Vote” – Do Market research tools really speak out the consumer’s needs?“
In a situation where the consumer/voter is free to pick their choices as a part of survey or any other marketing tool, how does one understand consumer needs?
Here is where ‘Intent Marketing’ comes into play. In simple terms, intent marketing is a type of marketing that looks at meeting the end user’s intent. This type is enormously influential in search marketing, be it paid or organic. It works with much more precision, as the content is targeted at the keywords, which reveal the intent of the consumer. Our Co-Founder & CEO, Prasad Shejale had predicted the Trump win in October’16, using intent marketing.
Shares Prasad, “People may respond to the market research questionnaires differently because they want to sound politically right. When it comes to being alone and searching for their choices that is the time they exhibit their real wants and needs.”
As the digital marketing space is growing and content is becoming the king, intent marketing is the only way to understand and fulfil the needs of the consumers. Intent marketing was predicted to be one of the biggest trends in digital marketing. With understanding consumer intent and the search types, you can provide them with the right need. This is exactly what makes intent marketing better than using the traditional marketing research tools. And, you might want to agree that the classic examples of these are the Brexit and #USElection2016 prediction that went wrong. So, may be it is time that we adapt intent marketing for all our digital marketing efforts to understand the consumer needs.
Have an opinion or want to know more about intent marketing? Please feel to get in touch with us here.
