Lady Gaga is a very talented musician and performer. She gives outrageous and memorable performances with great music, elaborate productions, incredible costumes and wild staging. Her shows have truly become EVENTS! She can now make news for going to a baseball game, going out to dinner or walking through an airport, as she seems to have captured the attention of the mainstream press by being in the newspapers and on TV almost every day!
Just what can we from Lady Gaga when it comes to the marketing and branding of your art?
1. Design a Package That Stands Out From the Crowd
From the earliest days when she was singing in bars, Lady Gaga realized that in order to get people's attention that she had to be a performer, not just a singer. She needed to stand out from the incredibly crowded entertainment field. She learned how to market herself and she crafted this outrageous persona that is now projected on to whatever she does and wherever she goes.
As an artist, you can try each day, through various means and media to be visible and engaged with your existing customers and target audience. This will make you stand out in the crowded art marketplace and will eventually broaden your market.
2. Keep Your Customers and Prospects continually Engaged
Lady Gaga has a base of fans (over 9,200,000 fans on Facebook alone) that she stays connected to on a daily basis through various social networking platforms. She keeps them informed and engaged with what she is doing, what she is thinking and where she is headed (appearance & events).
In addition, another thing that she does extremely well with, is that she is constantly thanking her fans for their support. From her posts, we can see that while she is promoting her brand she is also engaged with her fans. To her, she has named them "her little monsters". It is a good mix and a soft sell.
As an artist are you using social media to stay in touch with your customers and target market? Everyday is a good day to post messages and to interact with your base in order to expand your target audience.
3. Try to Improve Your Product on a Continual Basis
From the time she was a little girl, Lady Gaga has devoted herself to her craft. She is extremely talented and she continues to improve upon that talent in order to provide her fans with a quality performance. She was not someone who was "created" by some music label or some producer. She is a real artist and performer and that quality comes across in her shows. In other words, she is an original. As an aside, she refuses to lip sink in her performances, like so many other performers do today and that is part of her brand too.
Artists have so many choices to make when it comes to career development, improving their art and marketing their artwork. Whatever is not working for the artist should be changed, discarded or improved. What are the blocks in your career that is holding you back from improving your art and making more sales?
4. Have a Concept and Works Towards it
Lady Gaga had a concept of what she wanted to do in terms of her music and her performances. She wanted to create a musical extravaganza with each show and she has done just that! Her shows are a mix of elaborate set design, catchy music, and memorable costumes. Her performances are something that her fans have come to expect of her and she does not disappoint them.
With each show and with each event she delivers the goods. Her performances and music videos will always be remembered by her fans. The concept and vision as a performer is something that she builds upon and supports in everything she does. In turn, the press features her costumes on the news, which helps to spread her message too.
As an artist are you focused on your vision of what you want art to be or have you allowed outside influences to take over in your life to the detriment of your art? Go back to that vision that you had at one time and reevaluate where you got off track. Create an new vision of your art and each day do something that gets you closer to exposing that vision to your target audience.
5. Consistently Deliver Your Product to Your Customers
Lady Gaga delivers her product (brand) consistently with her elaborate performances, staging and costumes. She has promised her fans that she will provide a memorable performance and she delivers that promise very time she makes an appearance, on stage or in person.
She has not tarnished her brand by being in the gossip pages for bad behavior, like other performers today. Her music career, developing her brand and being a performer is too important to her, as she is the consummate professional.
As an artist can you say that you deliver your brand in your marketing, promotions and with your art? Your promise is your brand and everything you do and say to your customers and target audience should deliver that "promise", just like Lady Gaga.
6. Leverage Your Brand to the Max
Lady Gaga has a product and she has leveraged her brand through collaborations with other performers such as Beyonce, Kanye West and Madonna. By doing this she expands her base by exposing her product and brand to new and different audiences. Thus, there is something there for most demographic groups in her performances.
Today, the Lady Gaga brand is being leveraged and tied in with product placements wherever possible. In addition, her brand is so strong that she is able to help revive a dying brand in Polaroid Camera Corporation! In addition, she also participates in helping other brands, by endorsing and marketing cosmetics, glasses and headphones.
She is the first performer to have one billion hits on her videos on YouTube and 9 Million plus of her music has been downloaded! That is a very strong brand that marketers want to be associated with and because of this, surely there will be other products coming on line that she will be involved with too.
As an artist are you leveraging your art and your brand through social media, the internet, in forums and through postings? Do you try to make contact and expand your base everyday? Sales will not just come to you. As an artist and a marketer, you need to expose your art and make every opportunity count, whether it is with your existing base or with new prospects.
She has become an incredible marketer and her brand is robust, incredibly alive and growing. The Lady Gaga brand is constantly out there in the public's eye and in the media. What more could a business want than what Lady Gaga has achieved? It would be wise to follow her brand in the future, as she is extremely innovative and seems to have a real gift of promotion and branding. We can all learn from her on how we should market our art and how to develop our brand.
