What Small Business Owners Can Learn from Hillary’s #NastyWoman Campaign

I wasn’t going to make this another political blog today, but there is just so much fodder that it’s hard to resist.

As I scrolled through my social media profiles and marketing news sources this morning waiting for inspiration to hit me, I ran across #NastyWoman t-shirts, slogans, hashtags, videos and memes everywhere.  And thought, “Hillary Clinton and her team couldn’t have created a better marketing campaign if they spent years trying!”  It’s utterly brilliant. And it stemmed by a childish name-calling rant from her psychotic opponent (I’ve decided to stop legitimizing him by using his name).

This came on the heels of a client trying to get a bogus Yelp review removed from his profile…so it made me think of how these two things are related: how can we turn negative reviews in our favor? 

What Hillary did was brilliant. So brilliant in fact, that if I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d be running around mad with ideas that she and her opponent have been conspiring all along to put her in office – but I’ll save the conspiracy theories for others.  What Hillary’s campaign did so brilliantly was take what was meant to be an insult and turn it into an opportunity to strengthen her “I am strong. I am competent. Oh – and I happen to be a woman” brand.  By owning and running with the #nastywoman jab, she, and millions of women are embracing it as a badge of courage and strength. The #nastywoman insult has become a symbol proving that sexism is a huge part of the 2016 presidential election- and has plagued Hillary throughout her career.   We, as a country are still threatened by strong, independent competent women, and the “nasty woman” insult was blatant illustration of this.

What’s the marketing lesson for you as a small business owner?

There will always be haters. There will always be competitors and people who will try to bring you down. Yelp reviews are one example; bad word of mouth or negative press might be others. My advice to you, as a  professional marketing consultant is to try to find the opportunity in those negative reviews or comments. Can you turn it around and make one person’s negativity a positive, like Hillary did? Is it an opportunity to improve your customer service? Maybe something is lacking in your onboarding or sales process that didn’t set proper expectations up front and left the customer disappointed?

Instead of focusing on the negativity in the bad review try to take a step back and analyze it for lessons.  Maybe you can even find your own #nastywoman moment and run with it like Hilary did.  How can you turn a negative into a positive?  You never know when an insult could be the best marketing idea you could have every created!

If you would like help making the most of your positive and negative marketing issues, contact me. I’m here to help!