There were days when political parties in India used to transform pages of newspapers, run radio and television ads in an attempt to seek votes by displaying their political promises. However, as India started to make a move towards digitalization, many big and small parties alike began exploring new and digital means for advertising themselves. One such was the use of digital marketing in their political campaigns. Over the last few years, political parties in India have poured in money on their digital marketing work. Ajit Kumar, an entrepreneur and founder of King Digital Private Limited has successfully guided many political parties in their digital marketing campaigns. Since not many people know about the benefits of digital marketing in politics, he has decided to share his wisdom about the same.
Ajit was involved in the digital marketing work for big names such as the Bhartiya Janata Party, Aam Aadmi Party, and the Government of Bihar. He has been a key player in digitally changing the political scenario. That’s why what he says holds value. According to Ajit Kumar, digital marketing helps political parties in micro-targeting. They can now reach diverse audiences and elusive voters. Politicians can now make personalized policies that are meant to target crucial voters such as millennials. There is no need to personally reach to them face to face, instead, you can now pass on relevant messages through social media platforms.
Digital marketing likewise, according to Ajit, helps the political parties in engaging the most apolitical section of the society – the youth. Since, they are highly opinionated and active on social media platforms, using digital marketing greatly benefits the politicians. They can focus on the youth and get them to vote. Besides, we are living in a world where we are surrounded by tons of data. Through the use of digital marketing, political analysts can predict our behavior. It is very useful in forecasting the demographics. These forecasts can be used by politicians to reel in the voters.
When talking about polls, Ajit Kumar says that political parties can use the polls on social media for predicting the results of the election as they are almost accurate. Polls are one of the best features of digital marketing as they are unbiased, and indicate the truth as it is. Also, when the quality of journalism is getting severely critiqued, digital marketing helps the political parties to create their own ‘brand’. What they can do is create a website demonstrating all their agendas and planned works, and create official social media accounts for their respective parties to keep in touch with the public. This helps them to reach the audience before someone can damage their political campaigns.
One more aspect that Ajit mentions is digital advertising. Through this cheap yet highly effective means of advertising political parties have reached the target audience more quickly. Though the ads generally are sponsored, people tend to overlook the fact as they scroll and get reeled in by what they see. All these reasons are responsible for the adoption of digital marketing by the political parties in their political campaigns. It not only saves time but also adds value to their campaigns.