Political marketing: Part 10: The largest political marketing platform: The Internet

As already shown, the media will help you to show German voters through political advertising, skilful campaign management and other areas of political marketing that you can lead the country out of its malaise and end the crisis of democracy. In the best case scenario, however, you have to start exactly where the crisis of democracy today has its origins, namely on the Internet.

The free, almost anonymous expression of opinion makes it very easy for critics, extreme fringe groups and other enemies of democracy to exacerbate the crisis of democracy and undermine the political system. While traditional political marketing and election campaign management has been limited to traditional forms of dissemination for political advertising, today political marketing on the Internet is an indispensable part of any election campaign. News spreads around the world in seconds on the Internet and reaches every genuinely interested potential voter far sooner than the evening news.

However, you can conduct political marketing on the Internet just as quickly and extensively. Above all, political marketing and political advertising in the major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter must be included in your election campaign management. These public profiles are akin to the ancient forum - a public discussion forum in which you have the opportunity to establish and maintain far-reaching, more personal contact with voters. In times of democratic crisis, such highly personalised political marketing on the Internet not only creates proximity to voters, but also gives you much greater trust.

This belief in you as a person and politician creates new trust in politics and in the German state, which is ultimately the most important means of combating the crisis of democracy. However, your political marketing and your political advertising make it necessary not to use political marketing on the Internet purely as a means of self-promotion. In fact, it is essential that you offer your potential voters a dialogue. One-sided election campaign management is also, or even especially, completely out of place on the Internet.

Whether you monologue at a podium somewhere in the city centre during a public appearance and hand out flyers, or whether you have an account in a social network, do not respond to comments and also send political advertising in the form of emails, makes absolutely no difference, because the voter is not regarded as a friend, as with Cicero, but is merely a means to an end in your political marketing. Such one-sided political marketing on the Internet should be excluded from your election campaign management right from the start.

By staging yourself, you do not symbolise closeness to the voters, gain no sympathy points, no trust and, in particular, no friends who would support you in your election campaign. By acting in this way, you offer critics more room for attack and ultimately even contribute to a worsening of the crisis in democracy. Therefore, when planning your campaign management and political marketing, you must always remember that political advertising and political marketing on the Internet are absolutely necessary means to overcome the crisis of democracy, but that this only works with intelligent implementation.