We are in the midst of a presidential election cycle. If you are paying attention to election campaign ads, it might feel more like a cyclone than it does a cycle. If you believe the ads, life will get much worse if you vote the wrong way. There may be some truth to that, but pushing the limits of belief is what political spinners do leading up to an election.

Elections are a case study in brand marketing. What the public believes about one candidate or the other is shaped by how well their marketing is working. If you are in charge of marketing for your company, you should take note of the tactics used to suck the marketplace into the vortex of believing one way or the other. Here are a few marketing ploys to do just that.

Stick to the issues that solve problems

There are a myriad of topics that can get pulled into a political campaign. There are more special interest groups than you can count. However, smart political campaigns pick up on the issues that most voters are concerned about and don’t get sidetracked by less important matters. The same should be true of your marketing. Understand the pain of your target market and then offer your brand as a solution. Don’t get mired in the small stuff. Companies (and politicians) get swept off course when they get involved in minor issues.

Paint your opponent as incompetent

We all say we don’t like mudslinging politics, but the truth is, it works. If we’re honest, we really like a good fight. It is why football is the most viewed sport and professional chess is not. People like to side with a clear winner and that is hard to decipher if you don’t emphasize what your opponent is lacking. The same is true for your industry’s competitors. You have to make a clear distinction in your marketing between you and your competition or you risk looking the same. Looking the same as your opponent never convinced anyone to get out the vote or to buy a brand.

Understand your strengths and weaknesses

You are not good at everything. We all have our areas of feebleness. Politicians implode when they try to fake their way through flaws, often by word-smithing disadvantages to try to make them sound like advantages. It leaves them looking rather dim-witted. We’ve all seen it. The same is true of your brand and the company behind it. Marketing is tasked with making the brand look pristine. To do that, you must know where you are strong and where you are weak as a company. For instance, if you say that you deliver products on time, but in reality, you are missing deadlines every other day, your marketing will be proven false and your brand will suffer for it. This may seem rather elementary, but I see businesses make this marketing mistake again and again. It is best to market to your strengths and away from your weaknesses. So if you have a brilliant solution for customers through your business, say so with your marketing. But if your CEO is as abrasive as sandpaper, you might not want to sponsor a golf outing with your best customers as his foursome. Be smart about the way you lead with your strengths and not with your weaknesses.

There is a lot you can learn about your marketing from watching the cyclone of political marketing that will take place over the next few weeks. Elections speed these cycles up so we can see the impact of marketing on public opinion day by day. Glean from this unique time and incorporate the best of the whirlwind into your marketing strategies.