How Obama won the 2008 election…

No matter your politics, Obama and his team did a masterful job of winning the election that year. I know it’s hard not to get overly passionate about this, but please listen to the point of what I’m telling you, this is not political. Instead of your blood boiling on way or another, look for the lessons every online entrepreneur needs to follow.

Obama didn’t win because he was the “change and hope” candidate. He didn’t win because he made promises to overhaul healthcare. He didn’t win because he’s a very charismatic speaker. He didn’t even win because he was offering the majority of Americans a huge tax cut. Those things didn’t matter as much as what he did, that you must learn from…

He won because he and his team were masters at quality lead generation. All his ads led to a pure optin page, or what I call a “Catch” page. This means people had to enter their email address and become a part of his “list community”.

Well, Obama and his team are at it again! Check out a banner ad I recently came across: It’s conversational. It assumes you want to be part of his tribe. It has a button on it with something other than “Click here” 1) What you should learn from this: Be conversational and authentic to your business character. Use language that “assumes” the optin, “assumes” the sale, “assumes” your prospect would love to be a part of this. Use buttons on banner ads because they work and make sure you have text that asks a question or is action-oriented. Like “Grab your report now”

This is what happens when you click the banner ad:

It’s clean and very obvious what they want you to do.

Join their list community.

2) What you should learn from this:

There is no other choice. Every online business owner should have at least one page like this. Obviously, this one needs very little copy. You’ll undoubtedly need a little bit more and you’ll also need an Irresistible Hook. Some kind of freebie or freemium to get prospects to want to be on your list. Only thing I would change and definitely test from this optin (Catch page), is taking off the zip code field to see if that increases conversions.

And finally, when you do join their list community, this is what you see:

They are immediately asking for the “sale”. In this case, it’s actually a donation but it’s the same principle that I want you as a small business owner and entrepreneur to follow.

3) What you should learn from this:

Ask for the sale now! Be sure to let your list community know as soon as possible that you are not a non-profit. That you are actually in business. You can’t train your list community to receive and receive and receive great information from you for free and then much later ask for value in return. You want to ask for the sale quickly to let them know you are a real business.

Lead generation and list building is how Obama and his team masterfully won the last election. And it looks like they’re doing it again for Election 2012. Why? Because it WORKS. And it will work for your business too.

Do you have a lead generation campaign that is clean, simple and compelling like this? If so, share it below. If not, are you going to put one into place asap?