Things are not looking too bright for Hillary. An 11 primaries losing streak is miserable. She is not able to converts prospective voters in her own camp to vote for her.  I thought it would be fun to take a look at Hillary’s campaign from the perspective of conversion optimization.  I was even more interested in looking at her campaign after I learned that her top marketing advisor had cost her as much as $33 million since the campaign start.

Every member in the democratic primary is a potential customer for Hillary. Her campaign has one job: to convert these members into people who will vote for her otherwise she loses them. But losing them isn’t so bad only that they convert to vote for Obama. Obviously, Hillary is suffering from a lower conversion rate compared to Obama. So, let me put my conversion optimization hat and see what she can do better, although it might a little too late for her:

- Trust and confidence

Trust and confidence is the heart of converting a prospect to a customer. Obviously, Hillary is not instilling enough trust in those who are voting to win them over.

How come?

We always tell clients that value proposition must be very clearly stated throughout your website. Every element on the site must either state the value proposition or support it in some way.  What is Hillary’s value proposition? I am not sure. And this comes from a political junky. If I am not clear about Hillary’s value proposition, how do you think the average Joe thinks? Granted, Hillary did try different things in the past few weeks. First there was the experience factor. Somehow that value proposition was a factor against her in a time which everyone in the country is talking about change. Then she tried change. The problem with that value proposition is that Obama has already successfully used it and definitely had a first mover’s advantage. Hillary’s challenge is to truly find a value proposition that is unique to her and is able resonate with democratic voters.

- FUDs

what are the concerns and the fears of that stop everyone from voting for Hillary? There are some who think of her as a divisive person. There is the fear of that after she takes power she will not stray far from Bush’s tactics. Voters fear a big brother state where the government will garnish wages and force everyone to get universal health care. Hillary can choose to ignore each of these factors but obviously that is not working out for her. The way to deal with FUDS is either by:

• eliminate the fears and concerns (which might be a little late to do)
• Give assurances required to comfort those who are worried

- Appeal to the different market segments

There is nothing unusual about appealing to different market segments based on locality.  However, if you are focusing on a certain segment you must be sure that the segments will give you enough market shares (or in this case votes) to win.  In New Hampshire, Hilary relied on the women’s votes to give her a victory.  Later on, whether planned or not, Hillary appealed to lower income Democrats and those who did not attend college. And now in Texas, we see her relying on the Latino vote to give her the win she needs.

When you try to appeal to the masses, you end up appealing to no one. And while you may think that women will relate to Hillary the same way African Americans relate to Obama, that is not always the case. The issue of a woman being the president is in general less important to women compared to the issue of an African American becoming a president for blacks.

So, where does Hillary’s campaign go from here? I am not sure. This coming Tuesday will be very decisive to see if she can move forward or if it time for her to step aside.

What do you think?

Tags: Conversion Optimization, FUDS, Hillary Clinton, Trust
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Miscellaneous