Lady Gaga has officially introduced her new era of “Chromatica” last May 29 around the world. With a little hiatus from her last full-length album “Joanne”, Gaga is back with a new sound from previously released singles such as “Stupid Love”, “Rain On Me”, and “Sour Candy”.
“Rain On Me” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 breaking records for both Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. While it’s no surprise that her song is performing well, this success was built by months of detailed marketing.
With an already huge social media presence (81.6 million Twitter followers, and 42 million Instagram followers), it’s important to know how to maximize this huge reach and engagement online. To be able to stand out in such a saturated market like the music industry, marketers have applauded Gaga’s way of building and maintaining her brand.
There are a few lessons that the whole digital marketing industry can learn from her. Be sure to pull out your notebook and list these down:
1. Know your brand to the core
Gaga is out of the box. That is what she’s been doing all throughout her career. Who can forget the dress made out of meat? How about when she entered an awards show red carpet inside an egg? Or her Superbowl halftime performance a few years back? This is her brand. She might be considered “weird” to some, but she knows exactly how to market herself.
Laying out the details of your brand and culture will allow you to come up with strategies that are more aligned with your brand goals and potentially more innovative. Don’t be afraid to change things up here and there as long as you know that it’s still in line with your marketing core and brand objectives.
2. Focus on your target market all the time
By knowing your brand to the core, you can easily identify your target market and the other markets you’ve yet to tap. You always have to keep your target market in mind, which means considering the buyer’s journey and how people interact with your product or service.
Look at how your audience reacts to each marketing effort, so you can double down on strong points and improve on the weak ones. Just like Lady Gaga, focus on your “superfans,” or in the context of marketing, your “target persona”.
Once you have identified your market, you can build a solid community for your product or service repeat customers.
3. Be detailed in everything that you do
Customers will always see right through half-hearted or inauthentic marketing efforts. These days, with the increasing popularity of inbound marketing, customers can really sense if what you’re offering is an answer to their problems as a consumer, so commit to the details and be consistent about it.
From her first album “The Fame”, to “Chromatica,” the most recent, Lady Gaga built a universe for each era so strong that you can distinguish each album and each sound from one another. Details are not only present in her songs or album covers, but also in her music videos, daily life, and marketing materials.
If you want to have the building blocks of marketing success, you have to lay a solid foundation by gathering and analyzing all the details.
4. Stay relevant
Authenticity and originality can go a long way in both music and marketing. Lady Gaga’s presence can be felt in and out of her music cycles. She’s very vocal about certain issues and she personifies the idea of living your truth.
By having this mindset, she’s able to stay on top of the news and encourage people to talk about her. This applies in your marketing strategy. Don’t just do marketing to sell a product or service. Continuously challenge the way you approach digital marketing by looking for different angles in certain topics, or keeping tabs of the latest tools and strategies in the marketing industry.
5. Reinvent when you know it’s not working
Needless to say, it’s crucial that you analyze the performance of any marketing strategy. Look at your analytics and identify which of your marketing efforts have resonated so well and reinvent the ones that didn’t.
Find new ways of doing things when you know they’re not giving you the KPIs you’re looking for. Lady Gaga has ventured into TV (American Horror Story), and movies (A Star Is Born), all the while increasing her fanbase and showing the world the extent of her talent.
Marketing’s Gaga for Gaga
Taking marketing lessons from a global pop star can be very helpful in changing the way you look at your branding goals and objectives. This review of Lady Gaga’s marketing efforts should encourage you to keep on thinking outside the box (or no box at all) and support your marketing with accuracy, details, and consistency.
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