
Donald Trump, this name has been well known for over twenty years in homes around the United States. When people hear the name Trump they not only think of the business man but they think of his brand. They think of the many hotels, golf courses, casinos, and clothing that all are named after this one man. Last year after he decided to run for president Donald Trump became the talking point of the nation and as of today, still is. When Trump announced that he would run for president of the United States many people thought he was joking or it was a stunt for publicity. As time went on the people of the United States began to understand that he was serious about this endeavor. Along the campaign trail there were many setbacks and problems that occurred that caused many to believe that it was nearly impossible for him to win the election let alone become President. Trump used his over forty years of experience running a company and building a brand through various marketing strategies to build a following around the country. Through this following year Trump was able to win the 2016 Election against Hillary Clinton because of his use of different strategies that haven’t really been used in politics until this election.

Since Donald Trump has become a real estate mogul, following in his father’s footsteps, he has found himself in the spotlight. Early into his career as a businessman Trump became the President of his father’s company, from a relatively young age he was put into the position of managing a relatively large real estate firm that dealt in commercial real estates. Over the years, Trumpgrew the company where he then began to be covered by the media and eventually created the television show “The Apprentice”. From this popular show, Donald Trump was able to show the people of America his personality and his “get it done” attitude (Biography.com). Compared to the politicians that Trump ran against in the primary and general election nobody was more well known to the general public on a more personal level because of the show and his prolific twitter account.

From the beginning of his campaign Donald Trump had a specific target market in mind. This was the people that felt forgotten by politicians, and weren’t being represented well enough. Along with those who felt that America was not as well off as it was or could be today. As Dominenco Montanaro writes in his article, he explains that rump was able to pull in around 39% of the non-college demographic almost doubling from elections before for a republican (Montanaro). These are the people that Donald Trump spoke to in speeches along with the people that filled the rooms that he spoke in. He had a message for these people that he was going to run a country that was for them. He explained that he would push policies that would help these people and everyone in America over the long run. After the election when the poll numbers came out it can be seen that Donald Trump was able to accomplish this goal of rallying the people that felt left out by the government and politicians. There is a sharp rise in lower class or blue-collar workers that voted for him which was one of the biggest demographics of his target market. Along with lower class families many middle-class families that voted for him more than republicans in past elections (Montanaro). It is also evident from the exit polls that many states that are struggling economically had a sharp rise in voters voting for Trump (“Exit Polls”). The target market that Trump went after was specific so that he was able to speak solely to them but it was still large enough to give him the majority of electoral college votes. This marketing strategy is used in almost most every business to specify who the business is going to provide the product to, Trump was able to transfer the strategy efficiently into his political campaign which allowed him to focus on who he thought was most likely to vote for him in the election instead of focusing on people that would never have voted for him.

Additionally, Trump spoke to the people that fell into his target market by talking about national security and about the jobs that many Americans were losing. Many of these workers were losing jobs to people in countries like Mexico or India, these are who he focused on. He also spoke about gun rights and he appealed to the idea that many people didn't want to lose the right to bear arms (Rivero). Trump supporters agreed with enough of his political ideas to end up voting for him in the election. Although some of his ideas seemed crazy at the time Trump was also able to show that he could change his ideas with what his supporters wanted from him. On the opposite side Trump was able to hold strong on policies that he thought would help the people of America. Trump seemed to be the extreme underdog with some polls saying that he had less than 10% chance of winning as the election came close (Rivero). His supporters were able to stand by him and his believes going into the election allowing him to become president due to the brand he built around his ideas for what America could be.

While campaigning, Trump would use social media to keep his followers up to date with his thoughts on the political events that were occurring day to day and to broadcast his speeches as live streams. Donald Trump used twitter the most to keep his followers up to date with his ideas. With about twenty-seven million twitter followers able to hear his ideas the second he thinks them was a huge part of his campaign. To allow people to know when it was actually Donald  Trump who was tweeting at the end of his message he would add an exclamation point as a signature. Periodically Trump would also retweet Americans who were in support of his political views and ideas (Fotrell). Trump was able to use twitter to help get on top of any issues that the campaign was dealing with by try to correct whatever was said. By using twitter continuously Trump was able to push his ideas about healthcare, immigration, and the budget among other ideas to the public. For each tweet Trump’s followers would then retweet it progressing the exposure he was able to receive for each vote. With his constant barrage of tweets all off the cusp the was no shortage of controversy. From the start of Trump’s campaign news organizations pulled up old tweets of Trump’s old tweets as well as his more controversial tweets to analyze or talk about them (Fotrell). Due to the limit of only one-hundred and forty characters per tweet some of Trumps tweets were left up to interpretation which made some of them controversial. News Channels would update their viewers on these tweets throughout the day spending the entire day discussing the ideas of Trump’s. Trump most likely would add in these questionable tweets on purpose to create this spark of conversation in the news and on social media. When he did this each time he got the same reaction he wanted from the news. During the primaries Trump had over 55% percent of the time spent on him on the news compared to his republican competitors (Fotrell). During the general election, these numbers were a bit closer at but he was still talked about more than Hillary Clinton. 

The Trump campaign also spent much of their time broadcasting all of the Trump speeches and rallies during the political campaign. With new technology allowing anybody to livestream video over Facebook or YouTube the Trump campaign was able to share each speech with supporters. In real-time anyone could watch a Trump rally from anywhere that had internet connection. Until this year this type of campaigning had never been used by a presidential candidate (Fotrell). These livestreams made it even more accessible than before for people to see what Donald wanted for the country as it’s leader. On facebook during the livestreams there would be up to thirty-thousand viewers at that moment. These also show the transparency that Trump was willing to give to the country that has also never been shown by a candidate. Without this use of technology thousands of individuals would not be able hear it, building his support for his presidency (Fotrell). This type of marketing strategy is used by businesses for important events that they believe the public would be interested in. Trump took this strategy and applied it to his campaign which helped increase his support and allow for transparency in his campaign and ideas.

During the election, Trump used many hand gestures to get his point across. These hand gestures or simple body movements conveyed a message and illustrated his points to his supporters. He takes the use of hand gestures from his experience as a businessman many business leaders today use power points for pictures to illustrate their ideas and products for their company. Donald Trump was not able to use PowerPoints while giving a speech so instead he made his own illustrations using both body and arm movements. One of Trump’s goals for using body language was to make them a memorable part of his speech and many of the hand gestures that are used repeatedly throughout his speeches in the political campaign are ones which had those memorable characteristics. He used hand gestures to illustrate visuals that were connected with his messages to his supporters (Hall 74). These messages became synonymous with his speeches and were used extremely often to help illustrate what Trump was saying. Another candidate that used hand gestures as frequently was Ben Carson who was actually critiqued for using them. When Carson used his hand while speaking he seemed to throwthem up out of nervousness which was viewed as uncomfortable. As Hall and others write, “Even more critically, Trump’s hands differ from those of his competitors in that their movements are already established as part of the Trump brand” (Hall 80). This explains that the gestures that Trump used while speaking was looked at as an aid to his speech and beneficial because it was already expected from him. 

Throughout the political campaign Donald Trump used the same strategy of simplicity when speaking about the other candidates whom he was going against. For each of them he would give them short simple memorable nicknames that the news and the people of the United States would use. For many of these nicknames of the candidates they had to do with the way they acted as well as describe the candidates such as Little Marco, Crooked Hillary, Sick Hillary, Lying Ted, and Low Energy Jeb (Hall). No matter how elementary these nicknames sound, they were on purpose so that whenever someone thought of that candidate they would think of the meaning behind the nickname. During every speech that Trump had, instead of using the candidates real name he would use the nickname to further push that illustration of the candidate (Hall). This limited how much the other candidates were able to project their messages out to the public because it was being shut out by these nicknames. This strategy of creating a simple illustration of the competition and reiterating it repeatedly so that is what the populist thinks of that product. Trump through his experience in business transferred the strategy to help him in the election.

The most notorious slogan of this presidential debate was “Make America Great Again” or the acronym “MAGA” which Trump used in all of his tweets and repeatedly in his speeches. While this slogan was short it spoke to his target market which were people that believed America is not the leader of the world that they had been previously (Newman). With this slogan Trump spoke to these people by instilling the idea that he could create policies that would restore America to how they remember it to be. The slogan “Make America Great Again” also spoke to why Trump was running from the beginning. His goal was to truly make America great again and each time he spoke, he spoke about trying to accomplish that goal. Trump sold red hats that read the slogan in white words, Trump himself wore these hats to many of his rallies with his supporters that were wearing the hat as well. Creating slogans are the most relevant business strategy that are used in elections (Moorman). Creating the memorable hats that instilled a sense of nationalism with his supporters took his slogan and formed a brand from it.

During this period before the election there were people that were not able to see the effect of Trump’s brand on the voting population. After Trump won the election these people argued that these reason for this was not due to anything he did, but what the candidates he ran against had not done. This argument is shown in Domenico Montanaro’s article as he tries to explain that Hillary Clinton was not able to influence the groups she needed. He uses examples such as the total number of votes for Obama to Clinton’s total votes (Montanaro). While Clinton had less votes then democrats in the past it doesn’t mean that these voters went and voted for Trump. The CNN exit polls show that many of these voters that did not vote for Clinton voted for a third-party candidate. So to say that Trump’s reason for winning was just his opponents inability to influence enough voters is not entirely true. Trump was able to hold onto his base and continue to grow it throughout the campaign.

Throughout the election, Trump used many of his experiences as a business leader in the real estate world and from building his prolific brand and transferred it over to becoming the president of the United States. He used strategies such as social media like Twitter and websites like Facebook and YouTube to live stream all of his speeches and debates. With his specific target market he was able to spread his ideas and beliefs for the country incredibly fast to those supporters. Trump used his background and the fact that most Americans had already known how he was raised and the businesses that he created to his advantage. When people knew his background, he could use pathos to connect with them which allowed people to trust and believe that what he said he was doing was something that he could actually do. At this point in history Trump differs from many politicians in that he has a record of getting stuff done outside of government. Trump was able to use simple business practices to illustrate what he was going to do while in government and tell how he would accomplish those goals. He also used this strategy to describe candidates that he was going against that would create this illustration of those people in the light that he wanted them to be seen. Trump’s short and simple slogan with a very simple message helps explain his reason for running for president as well as what he would do once he became president. While many thought that Donald Trump becoming a politician after being an accomplished businessman would destroy his brand and how people looked at his company it has actually done the opposite. By using his background in business and leadership to become a successful politician and president of the United States.
