IN OUR SWIFTY ERAS OF BUSINESS
Whether you're a Swifty or not, it is hard to escape the branding and marketing genius of Taylor Swift. With her Eras Tour descending on Australia with huge hype and frenzy, I’m feeling inspired by her talent, strategy and the sense of community she has built around her brand.
For full disclosure, I am 100% a Swifty. Before her current tour, I would have graded my enthusiasm levels as *medium* with a penchant for Midnights. I tried to get tickets last year to no avail and like many of you, let four hours of my life evaporate as I waited for my browser to move beyond the Ticketek lounge. But, as last weekend’s concerts lit up social media with kids, teenagers and adults singing their hearts out, I was captivated.
Taylor had brought with her a wave of pure joy and momentum to my city, Melbourne. The demand for her, was creating more demand; the hype was mind-bending. It felt like a concert we would remember for decades to come. Love her or hate her, everyone was talking about her concerts and the community she had created. My FOMO was triggered and so I stood outside the stadium on Sunday night with my bestie and thousands of other fans before hunting down a last-minute ticket to the Sydney concert (thanks Instagram family!).
As a Swifty from way back, Taylor Swift’s meteoric rise does not surprise me but her ability to appeal across generations has. Her brand and marketing prowess has created a swath of fans who love, listen and consume her content will allegiance. If I was so motivated to find a last-minute ticket to her concert, buy her merchandise, watch her documentary and swap friendship bracelets with people I’d never met before, what was Taylor doing to make me feel this way?
Inspired, I recorded a podcast episode delving into the Taylor Swift personal brand and insights which we can adopt into our own businesses. From authenticity and transparency to leveraging exclusivity and the power of storytelling, Taylor Swift offers a blueprint for building an enduring personal brand. Here are my four insights and some actionable tips to implement into your business today.
Let’s get into it
Authenticity and Consistency
Taylor Swift's genuine persona fosters a connection with her audience, emphasising authenticity and consistency in brand messaging. Her ‘girl-next door’ persona is relatable and her hard-working, caring, and confident nature are attributes we aspire to. There are many journalists writing insightfully on this topic and I recommend power-reading a few articles on how Taylor has built her fan-base of Swifties. It’s a dynamic and at times complex relationship where Taylor and her Swifties influence one another, not dissimilar to our experience on social media as small business owners.
Application For Your Business:
· Establishing trust with your community means being transparent and open
· Engage authentically sharing real stories that will resonate with your audience and ideal client.
Actionable Tips:
· Show up on social media consistently, ie- 2-3 times a week. Examples include recording camera facing reel content or layering audio over a video BTS of your every day. By hearing from you, your audience will build a deeper connection and also put a face (or voice) to the brand. You will be shocked how well personal content like this performs over static, carousel or reel content.
· Don’t forget to be relentless if your goal is to boost enquiries. Given the average reach of content on Instagram, its likely only 2-8% of your followers will see anything you post. The more you post high-quality content that your followers engage with, the more likely it is that the algorithm will share your content with others.
· Be intentional about the type of personal content you share with your community. Consider topics and trends that your ideal client would engage with and if there is an overlap with your personal life and interests, then share those insights. For example, I rarely share much of my family life online because I feel like my ideal client is not in the ‘family’ frame of mind. Instead, I share updates relating to beauty, fashion, art and culture because they are topics where my ideal client and I have overlapping interests. Note – I’m advocating for you to be the authentic version of you; don’t feel pressured to create content ‘just like other brands’ if it doesn’t feel genuine. You can curate your brand personality by showing aspects of your life, without showing every facet of your life. Test out certain types of content and see how your community responds. If your ideal client is sliding into your DM’s after a certain post, reel or story then it’s a very good sign that the content is really connecting with your community.
Leveraging Exclusivity
Taylor's use of limited releases and exclusive content creates anticipation and excitement among her fan base. From announcing limited shows, pre-sale codes for ticketing and selling out of merchandise; the limited supply, created more demand. I know that hearing that only 2% of people will be able to secure a ticket to her concert, motivated me to be one of those lucky Swifties. By making it almost impossible to secure a ticket, my motivation sky-rocketed. The harder it became to secure a ticket, the higher a price I was willing to pay.
What Taylor does so well, is that she offers products that are priced so that everyone can access her. For example, if you missed out on her concert tickets or couldn’t travel to see her, you can watch a documentary of the Eras Tour Concert on Prime for $24.99. The doco is a high-value production at an affordable price. Genius.
Application for Your Business:
· Embrace limited availability and offer exclusive access to reward loyalty and drive demand, while still providing opportunities for engagement for all.
· Exclusivity creates strong desire, so ensure your experience lives up to your hype.
Actionable Tips:
· Market your availability as limited to ‘x number’ bookings per year, so that your audience feels a sense of scarcity. Ensure this message is on your website, enquiry page and part of your messaging on social media.
· For limited release products or services, use a countdown timer on your website showing the days/minutes until the offer expires. Limited release products include; a price discount if clients book before a fixed date, a free slipcase with an album purchase within 3 months of their wedding date or for educators, early bird pricing for workshops or retreats.
· Create an event around the product or event that has limited number of sales. For example, I have seen other photographers and educators create launch parties around their brand launch or new course launch. Events are a very effective way of bringing your community together, either online or in person. For your wedding clients, ideas include hosting a Q&A Masterclass with an Event Planner so that your ideal clients can learn from over Zoom or offering a Top Wedding Trends PDF for the first 50 subscribers to your newsletter.
Power of Storytelling
Taylor Swift's storytelling prowess, evident in her music, resonates deeply with her audience and fosters emotional connection. Beyond the songs, her lyrics have spurred trends such as wearing and swapping friendships bracelets which are symbols of fans’ allegiance to each other and by extension to Taylor, herself. Whether the lyrics and stories she tells through her music are fictional or not, they resonate with core emotions and narratives that we can all connect to.
Application for Your Business:
· Incorporate storytelling into your brand narrative by sharing personal experiences, product journeys, or customer testimonials to make your brand more relatable and memorable.
Actionable Tips:
· Your audience will connect more with content that tells a story because transformations are relatable, memorable and inspiring.
· Build storytelling into your personal brand by using imagery, branding and language that allows you to share your craft and authentic self with your audience. For wedding photographers, we are looking to tell our story for our community to connect with and also show them real examples of how you can tell your client’s love story.
· Storytelling can take on different dimensions in your marketing. For example; share your origin story and why you started your business, document your journey designing and delivering a product for a client such as a wedding album or share customer testimonials from real clients. Don’t be afraid to infuse your storytelling with your brand persona such as if you’ve got a great sense of humour, play to that strength.
If you’re looking to write your origin story, I can recommend Donald Miller's "Building a Story Brand": A guide to crafting compelling brand narratives that resonate with audiences and drive business success.
Adaptation and Evolution:
From 7-year-old girls to 37-year-olds (me) and older, Taylor resonates with multiple generations. Swift's ability to adapt and evolve with changing trends and demographics ensures her relevance across generations. Over the years she has been consistent with her brand messaging but has stepped up and embraced new technology and how her fans listen and experience her music.
Application for Your Business:
· Stay agile by continuously gathering feedback, monitoring industry trends, and analysing competitors to pivot strategies and stay ahead of the curve.
· Look inside your industry and more importantly outside your industry to see how businesses are changing and evolving as consumers change the way they shop.
Actionable Tips:
· Ask for feedback. As part of your customer journey, ensure you give your customers an opportunity to share feedback with you so that you can grow and develop as a business owner. Google reviews or TypeForm surveys are good alternatives.
· Review your social media analytics monthly to assess what content is performing well and whether there is a correlation with the number of leads being generated. If it’s not working, ask why? Is the content resonating with your ideal client? Is there an issue with the way your customers navigate from social media to your website enquiry form making it hard for them to send you an enquiry?
· Keep your creativity flowing by joining creative challenges or workshops with other like-minded creatives who can inspire you to step out of your comfort zone. Recently, I have seen educators Trent and Jessie run editing challenges for their community which I thought was a great idea!
· Run an audit of your business and select one area that needs most improvement and focus on finding other experts who can support you in leveling up. For example, if you struggle with content creation, consider a content calendar to make creating content more systematic. Or, if you think your website copy need a refresh, invest in a copywriter to craft website copy that makes selling effortless.
Hope these tips inspire you to get out there and build a brand like Taylor has!
Lei xx
