BJP Social Media Strategy – In India political campaigns are no longer limited to the traditional marketing medium. It has clearly entered the digital medium, and the impact of digital political campaigns is significant. It cannot be ignored anymore.
So, in this article, I have outlined the digital marketing strategy of the BJP. We have no relation with any political party in India.
This article is written and published based on the demand of my blog readers and followers. Most of the people in the Learn Digital Marketing group on Facebook wanted to read more about BJP’s digital marketing strategy than any other political party.
Today, almost every political party has a strong online presence, especially on the most popular social media handles. All parties are working tirelessly in an effort to appeal to their voters and gain support for the upcoming elections.
In this regard, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has been making headlines for its impressive digital progress, especially since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
BJP Social Media Strategy
BJP has increased the attention of political parties towards digital mediums as having traditional outreach methods such as billboards and other print advertisements for a solid reason.
The Internet has really revolutionized the way people like to receive information and communicate with each other in the community.
People in India have spent a lot of time online due to the wide reach of smartphones along with the cheap availability of Internet data services.
According to World Bank data, 29.5% of India’s population has access to the Internet. 10 years ago, internet penetration was just less than 3%.
Further research reveals that the majority of Indian Internet users commonly spend time on various social media handles – the most popular being people are Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. They also rely heavily on them to consume news and other information.
Hence, in such an online ecosystem, there is a significant opportunity for political parties to reach out to their prospects regularly and communicate with them in an agile and cost-effective manner.
Political Campaigns On Digital Medium
Out of all the parties in India, Shri Narendra Modi and his party understand the importance of the BJP Social Media Strategy – the BJP was among the first to reap the benefits of the digital sector with their digital marketing and online campaigns during the 2014 general elections.
However, it was started by Mr. Barack Obama who marked the first online footprint of politics in social media during the 2008 US presidential elections.
Here, Obama primarily focused on Twitter and Facebook to share his views, introduce his platform, and interact with all the potential voters.
There were reports that his team mined Americans’ social media footprints, created psychometric profiles of individual voters, and used them to appeal to voters with dedicated-made content.
Many people give his winning streak to his impressive social media presence. “If he was not on the Internet, Barack Obama wouldn’t be president,” Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington said at the Web 2.0 Summit after the 2008 election.
It’s easy to talk about all this – digital marketing for politics is extremely powerful and essential to success in elections in today’s era! On that note, let us take a look at the digital marketing strategy of the BJP – the party with the most visible digital success in India.
BJP Social Media Strategy Process
Before we study and speculate about the guiding digital marketing strategy for Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it is important to first understand the difference between strategies and tactics and their relationship with the target.
Any strategy is essentially a game plan to help accomplish certain goals. Strategy is the means of executing that strategy. For example, in a war, the goal would be to win over the opponent, the strategy would be to divide and conquer and the strategy could be to engage in guerrilla warfare.
As far as understanding and discussing the digital marketing strategy of the BJP is concerned, the first systematic step in this process is to gain a thorough understanding of its objectives (which are preferably measurable). That’s what the following article talks about.
BJP Social Media Strategy Goals
Let’s try to think from party shoes. What are their goals when it comes to creating and executing a digital marketing strategy?
1. Build a Solid Brand Value for the Party
Elections in India are a very emotional subject, and this is where building a strong brand plays a vital role. Building a brand in this case essentially means developing an emotional and memorable relationship for the public with the party, its key figures, guiding ideologies, and agenda.
2. Create Enough Enthusiasm Before the Actual Polling-
Merely building an emotional connection with the party is not enough. There also needs to be a constant buzz of excitement and engagement, which needs to be maintained to keep the enthusiasm and momentum alive.
After all, an election is a huge event with a huge outcome that demands the continued interest and active participation of the public in it.
3. Motivate People to Show Feedback
As well as generating interest, it’s also important to ignite feedback from the people who will later convert into a voter. It helps to constantly test their emotions as well as take advantage of it as a form of social proof to inspire others.
4. Deliver region-wise personalized content digitally
Last, but not least – digital is an excellent, agile, and cost-effective medium to reach the masses and interact with them through personalized and tailored content. The use of digital is driven by the goal of targeting as many people as possible at high frequency and speaking to each of them with the right mix of words to convince them – in a language they appreciate.
Now, with an understanding of the basic goals that guide the digital marketing framework, let’s explore the strategy that is working for the BJP.
BJP Social Media Strategy Acquisition
To arrive at the BJP Social Media Strategy, my team and I closely followed their online footprints and observed their work across various digital channels.
An excerpt from their revealed action plan from our study is described below:
1. Start early, build up and accelerate-
BJP is focusing on reaching out to voters regularly, engaging with them and gradually making them brand campaigners. Their approach to providing communication is very well planned; Right with the start of a good time to pick up the pace as the election nears.
When it comes to digital media, even for a political party, it is very important to be consistent in communication sequence with the potential voters and timing and treat it as a specific sales funnel. In this case, conversion is measured as a vote in favor of the party. Each potential voter needs to move through the stages of the sales funnel.
Attention – To party’s work, awareness of its political agenda, guiding ideologies, and prominent leaders.
Interest: – in their activities,
Desire: – Willingness to make the right decisions and
Action: – in the matter of voting for your candidates.
In fact, it has been their timely and early action that is giving them a huge advantage. If we go back to the last elections, Mr. Modi had a clear advantage of being the first mover in the digital space.
When prominent political figures began to take the digital medium seriously by mid-2015, Mr. Modi already had 16 million followers on Twitter and Facebook. As of now, Mr. Modi has 43 million followers on Facebook and 46.8 million on Twitter.
The kind of content that is being posted on Twitter and Facebook is slightly different, perhaps targeted to all those different audiences who use these platforms frequently.
2. Target Everyone, But in a Segmented Way-
Even when marketing a political party on a digital medium, the importance of relying on the fundamentals remains unchanged. Any good digital marketing plan meticulously takes into account the psyche of the target group and carefully addresses the needs and aspirations of that group.
Understanding and targeting different individuals with a tailored approach is something that the BJP’s digital team is doing as subtly and religiously as Obama’s.
As a party fighting for seats in general elections, their target audience mainly consists of all those who are citizens of India with voter ID cards. Breaking this down, it covers the entire demographic of 18+ including both men and women across all income groups.
If we further divide it, it includes first-time voters, repeat voters, thinkers and influencers, observers, marginalized communities.
The strategy of the BJP is to pay special attention and fulfill the motivation of each of these different groups and classes by giving a different and customized message suitable for each of them.
3. Nurture Attachment and Loyalty Towards Party-
Along with consistently reaching out to all the target persons with the right customization, the communication plan of the BJP has relied heavily on channelizing the sentiments of the public to build a much stronger relationship with its party.
Their digital marketing team understands very well the role of emotion in guiding voting behavior, and their digital campaigns demonstrate this fact very well.
It is important to understand here that any decision is ultimately made with emotion and smart marketers tap into it with expertise.
While rationality may be the first step in making a decision for many, the final call for almost everyone is always based on their belief that they think they will feel when they make a choice.
In that regard, the fear of making the wrong decision, the aspiration to see a better India, a brighter future for oneself, ego boost, and the experience of happiness from making the right political choice are some of the key sentiments that have been the digital marketing strategy of the BJP. Playing to impress your audience.
4. Focus on Party Achievements-
Apart from attempting to plant in loyalties with a powerful emotional game, the BJP is also neatly and succinctly highlighting the real facts about the party’s achievements in its previous tenure to appeal to a cause.
His communication has also been carefully crafted to reflect his progressive ideologies. It brings to light the tangible and measurable progress made in the last 5 years. At the same time, the communication plan systematically reminds the public what the previous government failed to achieve, and presents it as a comparative advantage.
5. Be everywhere to be seen and remembered-
With digital approaches, it is possible to be present everywhere at a much lower marginal cost, and in this regard, BJP does not leave any important channel untapped. Being forever visible and omnipresent helps build trust and secures a strong place in memory.
To take advantage of this, the BJP has an overall digital media presence. Whether it is about owning websites or creating pages in various social media channels, they are just about everywhere their target audience possibly hangs out.
Their main focus is on leveraging family from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, as 95 percent of social apps in India are used according to: – As per Omidyar Network report (December 2017). He is also very strong on Twitter. In my opinion, being present on WhatsApp is one of their game-changing moves, and I will share details on that in the next section.
6. Ensure Maximum Reach & Engagement-
With the chaos prevailing in the online ecosystem, organic reach is not enough to reach everyone. Engaging inappropriately paid ads with the right kind of profiling is essential to communicate with a variety of target groups with customized messaging.
In this regard, the party is investing heavily in paid promotions on various platforms with sizable budgets. While the exact number of total BJP online advertising spend will be difficult to share at this point, as the ongoing spending is on the rise as the elections approach, estimates for the month of February 2019 can give you an idea.
As published in the Economic Times, BJP leaders involved in election-related campaigning indicated that social media would account for 20-25% of the party’s total advertising spend by the time the campaign ends.
7. Integrate Online Marketing with Offline Endeavors-
Finally, the BJP recognizes the importance of an integrated marketing campaign. They trust digital marketing not as an end to end, but as a means to an end. Their online efforts match well with their offline efforts and work collaboratively to convert the masses into staunch BJP loyalists.
Now, with an understanding of the party’s goals and accompanying strategies, let’s study the actual strategy employed by their digital marketing team.
BJP’s Digital Marketing Strategy-
In the following section, I have looked at the various tactics employed by their digital marketing team to execute their manifest digital marketing strategy in various aspects.
I have also shared examples of real cases to illustrate my views on their performance.
1. Multiple Social Media Pages
The BJP’s digital marketing team is meticulously working towards fine-tuning its audience. They have identified all the different types of voter groups and have created several well-thought-out pages to appeal to different voter segments.
While some pages are generic to the party and created a long time ago, others are freshly created for specific focus groups, and to execute innovative campaigns.
Under the BJP umbrella, each page exudes extreme clarity of thought, and the nomenclature reflects a kind of collaborative quality towards a common goal.
Some of his interesting and influential pages on Facebook include:
My Government India (Official)
This page was created after the party came to power in March 2015. Since then, it has consistently focused on building and nurturing trust by inculcating feelings of dependability and transparency in the work done by its party.
As such, it targets all citizens of India: across all age groups and geographies. The content of this page mainly highlights the achievements of the BJP government in transforming India in a positive way in various aspects – from building more houses, to providing smokeless fuel for cooking to building a clean nation.
My first vote for Modi (Unverified)-
[Note: This page is not verified by Facebook, so we are not sure if this is an official page or a page created by fans of BJP. From the introduction page, it connects to MyFirstVoteForModi.com. The whois database of this domain is private, so there is no way to confirm whether it belongs to the BJP itself.]
The page was created in January 2019 for first-time voters by drawing strings on their aspirations, and shaping their loyalty as BJP supporters on the basis of pure rationality – the way this budding age group likes to be convinced.
Significantly, this segment is very important for the party. If you extrapolate the data from the last census, there must be about 10 crore first-time voters, which means they cannot and should not be ignored.
The content on this page primarily highlights the achievements that are most likely to resonate with the young, first-time voter population.
It talks about positive developments which have been brought by BJP in terms of more promising career opportunities, growth of entrepreneurship with Make in India, availability of cheap data as some examples of it.
At the same time, it makes fact-backed sarcasm by highlighting some of the key points of the failures of the opposition parties, which the BJP clearly overcame.
India’s Mann Ki Baat (Unconfirmed)
Recently created in January 2019, this page is about making the people of India feel empowered. It is probably considered as an online version of the radio show ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
It is designed to act as a social media forum that urges the people of India to share their views and make them feel heard. It really strikes an instant engagement, which stems from a feeling of being a valued and an important voter for a party.
Modi 11 (Unverified)-
Taking advantage of the cricket fanaticism of the Indian population at large, this page created in March 2019 cricket season is quite interesting on-trend jacking.
The content of this page mainly encourages people to form a team of 11, as in a cricket team, and display their support for the virtues of the Modi government. It also highlights two important victories for ‘true’ Indians in 2019 – India winning the World Cup in cricket and Mr. Modi winning the Lok Sabha elections as Prime Minister. This is a remarkable move to catch people by the pulse and convince them in a way that is most likely to be convincing to them.
Nation with NaMo (Unverified)
Created in June 2013, this page is quite old and influential when it comes to gaining support by supporting popular supporters and party achievements.
It invokes a sense of trust backed by an existing large support system, which can compel and encourage new individuals to join their club.
It shows influential people who are supporting or supporting Narendra Modi and BJP government. At the same time, it points fingers at the opposition, highlighting the party’s strong points.
2. Creating Multilingual Content
While English and Hindi are the two major spoken languages in India, there are many regions where local languages are more popular.
The BJP’s digital marketing team has taken special care to address those areas in the local language as well so that no chance is left of the best to resonate with them.
Posts are posted in English and Hindi as well as in local languages for regional pages. Even across their many generic India-wide pages, the same content is shared in multiple languages and promoted across custom geographies to ensure maximum engagement.
3. Focused Pages for Certain Areas
To cater to the people of certain areas with a special focus, the BJP has created regional pages to interact with the voters of that region with a customized content plan.
In those pages, the main content mainly covers the major issues of interest, specific to that area only. In addition, the content is shared in the most popular languages of that state.
4. Working on All Content Formats
As for content creation formats, they have been very ambitious, aggressive, and invested in all sorts of things – from static designs to videos, live videos, memes, comic strips, and infographics. They are consistently using colors and tones to ensure proper branding and the delivery of a clear, high-impact message.
For example, Mr. Modi Ji also has a verified YouTube channel where he has got 2 million subscribers. All the videos together have got 228 million views so far.
Along with sharing facts and achievements on the side, there is also an important storytelling approach in their communication to capture the attention of different focus groups and at the same time keep it alive.
As a special mention, the BJP’s digital team is working extensively on video and live video – a move that is backed by pure logic and facts, in a local environment of easy data access for all.
According to a survey, 67 percent of individuals claim that video content (particularly 43 percent for live video), as a format, is the most transparent. It is important for a political party contesting elections for central governance to invoke a sense of transparency and the digital marketing team knows that is okay.
Apart from this, the PM himself comes from time to time to interact with the public on live video. Political campaigns on a Pan India basis are also displayed online in real-time on Facebook and Instagram. Plus, digital teams widely distribute and expand their video content to generate massive amounts of engagement and shares.
5. Use WhatsApp Wisely
WhatsApp’s strategic use for content dissemination deserves a noteworthy mention, as this single move is emerging as the answer to executing most strategic plans.
[Note: There is no way to verify how many WhatsApp groups have been created by BJP and how many are created by fans. Until WhatsApp brings verification for groups, we have no way of knowing.]
Firstly, the majority of internet users in India use the platform for messaging, which makes it very universal. Second, the communications they receive and share on the platform receive significantly higher attention and interest levels when they are sent and received between a known sender network.
Going by the facts, the success achieved by the use of WhatsApp in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly election campaign validated the effectiveness of the messaging platform in influencing political outcomes. Its application is now being extended for the upcoming 2019 general elections.
Earlier, the party had formed somewhere between 23,000 and 25,000 groups for this purpose. Simply, repeating that model as a national template is now expected to yield significant results. With each WhatsApp group having an acceptable limit of 256 members, multiple groups can be created. (Sources are mentioned at the end of this article).
If there are 15,000 groups in each of the 29 target states, the total target population would comprise about 110 million citizens. If we revisit the victory figures from the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it was close to 170 million votes, which contributed to the BJP’s victory.
6. Attractive Competitions for Youth
Competitions are intelligently positioned in the strategic execution framework of BJP’s online campaigns, to create social proof and engage audiences effectively.
There have been many interactive quizzes and contests that are quite cleverly planned, from contest questions to target groups, and of course giveaways!
The contests under the ‘My First Vote for Modi’ Facebook page are quite engaging and are just right to excite young voters. The youth have been requested to give an estimate of some achievements of the party in pictorial format.
Alternatively, they are urged to show their support and win lucrative gifts in return. Contest prizes include merchandise designed to be particularly interesting to the target group such as citations, mobile covers, badges and T-shirts in attractive colors and catchy slogans that further reinforce the name of the party. If the youth will use these items in public if they win, it will further strengthen the cause of the party.
7. User Generated Content
In order to generate high interest and engagement levels, and at the same time make individuals feel important, BJP’s content strategy is paying significant attention to user-generated content types.
They understand that people are more likely to listen, believe, or engage with a cause when they are convinced by someone in their circle rather than a political figure, and at the same time they build up their own army of brand campaigners.
Inviting ideas from individuals under the ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ campaign or encouraging them to join hands under the ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign, linking social media with striking user-generated content, and creating and maintaining interest are powerful examples.
8. Paid Ad Campaigns
I have kept the most important part for last. Do political parties like BJP invest money in online paid advertising to boost their marketing? Yes, they do.
According to Facebook’s Ad Library report, between February 30 and March 30 this year, there were over 50,000 political advertisements that cost a total of over Rs 10 crore, of which a major chunk came from the BJP and its supporters.
The ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ page is the highest spender with around Rs 1 crore per week spending and over 1,200 advertisements in the library. Apart from Facebook, they can also spend money on Google Ads and YouTube ads.
Although ad spending looks high, not everyone has seen ads. In a survey conducted in my Learn Digital Marketing Group, most of the people said that they do not remember seeing an advertisement for BJP in any social media marketing channel. Some people have seen ads more than 10 times a week.
BJP Social Media Strategy Conclusion
The campaign for the 2019 general elections has an entirely new online flavor. All parties are struggling to grab the attention of citizens, persuade them and convert them into voters and party advocates.
While each party is investing in its own way, the BJP is doing a remarkably remarkable job. The highlight of the BJP’s digital marketing strategy is their careful attention to the subtle aspects.
From understanding and segmenting your target audience well, to delivering custom emotional messaging, to ensuring maximum reach – they are simply leaving no stone unturned. His tactical execution is clearly top-notch.
Their digital team has really invested in their efforts to make sure their message is consistent, bold, clear, and convincing. They are leveraging almost all content formats and platforms to conquer the digital influencer space, hitting the right chords from different sectors.
Which digital marketing strategy or execution strategy of BJP did you like the most as a digital marketer? Let us know in the comments below.
sources and references
TheQuint.com – In 2019, the battle of Congress vs BJP will play out on social media
IndiaToday.in – BJP’s Digital Chariot to Provide Free Internet to Delhi
BusinessToday – Lok Sabha Elections 2019: PM Modi launches BJP’s ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign
Economic Times – How mobile phone is becoming BJP’s most important weapon in elections
Hindustan Times – BJP prepares its WhatsApp plan for PM Modi’s 2019 election campaign
News18 – BJP’s social media team strategizes to counter opposition’s onslaught ahead of elections
Daylio – What Congress needs to learn from BJP in the social media game
Disclaimer
This publication DigitalDeepak.com and the author – Deepak Kankaraju has tried their best to publish factually correct information on this blog post. This publication is DigitalDeepak.com and the author – Deepak Kankaraju is not affiliated with any political party.
