On April 26th 2019, Taylor Swift dropped the first single for her highly anticipated 7th studio album. Unlike the majority of artists however, she is extremely cryptic and has a well thought our marketing strategy behind her every move, so releasing a single entails much for than letting fans know when it’ll be released and what it will be called. In this blog, we’ll look at Taylor Swift’s IMC strategy.

Back in February, Taylor began posting Instagram pictures with a more colourful aesthetic and theme, a total 180 from the dark and moody theme of her last album, so already fans were picking up on this and Taylor was gaining media attention, with articles and news segments trying to decode what the images meant. For all brands, it is important that messaging remains consistent across all platforms, so by changing up her social media aesthetic as well as her appearance in photoshoots, Taylor was signalling a full rebrand, as all businesses should. This was similar to the lead up to her last release, ‘reputation’, where she deleted all photos from social media, unfollowed everyone and turned off her comments. All businesses should follow this tip and make sure to build up anticipation and make it clear when something new and big is coming.

The main campaign began on April 13th 2019, when Taylor posted a countdown in the same colour scheme as her Instagram posts that lasted 13 days on her instagram and Facebook stories, and changed her social media bio’s to the date 4.26. She didn’t say what was happening on this day and didn’t do any posts or any interviews explaining herself, but fans were quickly in a frenzy. Aside from this to also gain awareness from people her weren’t social media followers, digital billboards began popping up all around the world with the countdown on them too, but the clever thing was that she didn’t have her name on them, instead there was just a website url ‘www.aprilTwentySix.com’, which redirected to her website which now had the countdown on it as well, and a form to sign up to her mailing list and receive EDMs for updates. This is an extremely smart strategy, because if she had her name on the billboards, people who weren’t fans wouldn’t take notice of it, but by having the cryptic website, curiosity more than likely got the better of many members of the general public all over the world, whether they were a fan of her or not.

During this time, fans and media alike were already going crazy speculating what the countdown was for, and through this, her albums and songs from over the past 13 years were back in the charts and rising, without her even explaining a thing. Taylor continued to post cryptic photos on Instagram with the caption ‘4.26’, leaving fans and media to try and guess what they meant. During this time, she was also on the cover of Time magazine as one of the most influential people, and she was also trending on Twitter almost every day.

Another element of her IMC campaign was on a platform that is not normally utilised in marketing activities; Spotify. Taylor changed the album artwork on her entire discography on Spotify to a vertical video loop with the date 4.26 in the same artwork as her website and billboards, again keeping all her messaging consistent across all her platforms. This way, even people who were just casual fans of her or even just accidentally came across one of her songs on Spotify, now even they knew that something was happening on April 26th.

As the date drew closer, it was hard to avoid hearing about Taylor Swift. She was trending on Twitter everyday, the media and fans were eagerly following her Instagram posts for clues on what was to come, she performed at the Time 100 gala and her old songs and albums were climbing back up the charts.

A mysterious mural of butterfly wings had appeared in Nashville which fans linked to Taylor simply because of the illustrations within the mural, and sure enough, on April 26, a crowd gathered outside the mural, then news crews, then Taylor herself appeared, without her telling anybody she would be there. Later that morning, she appeared on Good Morning America, and then announced that the she was releasing a single and music video featuring Brendan Urie of Panic! At The Disco at midnight during the NFL draft broadcast, which again captured more of an unsuspecting audience. More billboards then popped up around the world promoting the name of the song.

After the single and music video for ME! had launched, Taylor had all the banners on the home page of Spotify, as well as the playlist banner for ‘New Music Friday’ and ‘Get Popped’, with a reach of over 100 million users, had all 5 banners on iTunes and all 5 banners on Apple Music. She also had Instagram and Facebook sponsored ads, YouTube preroll ads featuring the entire music video (which also counts as views on the video). She then continued to change her Spotify album artwork daily to different vertical videos of her promoting the song, and currently it is a clip from the music video. The billboards from the countdown around the world then also changed to clips from the music video to promote the song. The song went #1 around the world, broke records for the biggest selling song on iTunes, and the music video became the biggest debut in Vevo history garnering 65 million views in 24 hours. Users who signed up for the mailing list on her website also received EDMs announcing the song’s release, and merch was also released to promote the song. To further drive views and streams, Taylor revealed in interviews that clues about the album name were hidden in the video, and her and her team were reposting pictures of people listening to the song and gifting it to each other on iTunes. She has continued to radio interviews and magazine features to build suspense about her album.

Overall in this campaign, Taylor and her team created consistent and coherent messaging and created hype and suspense through the countdown and related posts. She cleverly utilised many different channels to gain as much interest as possible which ultimately resulted in an extremely successful release and even more sales of her past music as well as her merchandise.

Leave a comment below letting me know if you noticed this campaign whether you are a fan or not, and what you think about this kind of marketing strategy for musicians, and whether you have seen anything similar

Stream ME! Featuring Brendan Urie By Taylor Swift here and watch the music video (which now has over 160 MILLION views!) here

When optimising webpages, brands are often more focused on making sure they have backlinks, social media shares, comments, and bids on the right search terms, however without satisfying user intent, all this could be for nothing. User intent is the categorisation and identification of what a user wanted or was looking for when they used a search engine. Google’s number 1 goal is to make people happy, and to show users the search results it thinks they will like and meet their needs most.

Google does a lot of research to further understand what their users are looking for, such as these pop up surveys you might have even seen before yourself

Sometimes it can be hard for Google to figure out exactly what a user is search for, for example a search for ‘Apple’ could be for the technology company or for the fruit, so Google categorises and deals with queries in 3 different ways.

The first is the Dominant Interpretation, which is what most users mean when they perform a search. For example, according to Google a search for ‘Windows’ usually means the operating system instead of actual glass windows.

The next is Common Interpretation, where a search could have multiple interpretations. For example, a search or ‘Mercury’ could be looking for the element or the planet, and Google can’t know which one they mean so therefore can’t provide results that fully meet the user’s intent, so will provide a mixture of results for the two.

The third is Minor Interpretations, which are searches that are not very common, and usually specific to certain areas, such as the name of a cafe.

So as a business, it is important that your page titles are as clear as possible with dominant interpretations, so Google is more likely to push you up in the ranks.

Do, Know, Go

Do, Know, Go is a concept that splits user intent into 3 categories. This might remind you of the theory of micro moments, (you can read my blog about that here) and of course these two are closely linked. The Do, Know, Go concept states that users are usually either looking to do a specific action such as book a movie or purchase a specific product, looking for information on a topic, or trying to find out where to go to achieve something.

To take advantage of this information, a great tip for business is to do a Google search for their own keyword and see what type of information comes up, and investigate what kind of user intent do these results satisfy? Are people looking for instructions, lots of information, the basics? Business can then shape their website titles and keywords to ensure that their pages fit the user intent most people have when searching for their terms.

Intent Can Change – So Results Can Too

An important thing for businesses to remember is that user intent can change, so therefore search results can too. So it is important for businesses to adapt their websites and information accordingly. For example, before the fire at Notre Dame, a Google Search for ‘Notre Dame’ would come up with information about the cathedral or the University of Notre Dame, but on the day of the fire any search for Notre Dame would have come up with lots of information just about the fire, as that was people’s main intention for searching.

Another example would be common words that have taken on different meanings, prior to Taylor Swift’s 6th album ‘reputation‘ coming out in 2017, a Google Search for ‘reputation’ would have probably garnered a collection of random results, but now results pages are almost exclusively taken up by information about the tour, the music videos and songs.

This shows how important it is for businesses to ensure they keep on top of their websites to make sure their information is satisfying the intent of their users.

Let me know in the comments below if you found this interesting! Can you think of a time where you thought Google read your mind and knew exactly what you were trying to find out? Or a time where you couldn’t find the information you wanted? Let me know

In this week’s blog, I look at how Australian makeup retailer Mecca is there for all our mobile micro moments. According to Google, micro moments are critical touch points within today’s consumer journey and ultimately determine how the journey ends. I looked at 3 different micro moments and how Mecca is there in each of them.

You can read more about micro moments here and here

I Want To Know

First, I looked up ‘best foundation’ on my iPhone while out and about, after 2 ads for a L’Oreal foundation and a Maybelline foundation, there was a list of Mecca’s top 10 selling foundations. As a consumer in my I Want To Know moment, the L’Oreal and Maybelline websites did not interest me as they were just trying to sell me their product, and not actually educating me on what the best foundations were. As Google says, in the I Want To Know moment, we want snackable, educational information, not the hard sell. The Mecca page listed each product with a short description, and then had links through to each product so I could buy it or read more information about the product if I wanted to. On each of their products, Meccas has lots of reviews and also a question and answer feature, so there is plenty of information available for consumers.

In this moment, Mecca was ‘there’, as it was the first listing in my search that was relevant to me, it was ‘useful’ as it actually gave me a variety of good information, and it was ‘quick’ as it was easy to find, load and take in the information on my phone.

I Want To Go

Next, I searched in a few different ways to see how Mecca would help in an I Want To Go moment. Firstly, by searching ‘makeup store near me’ Mecca came up first every time. On their mobile website, they also have a store locater that could use my current location to easily find the nearest store. In another search, I chose a product and within seconds I knew which stores near me it was in stock at. According to Google, consumers are 61% more likely to purchase from a mobile site that uses personalised information based on their location. Mecca has the store locator on the header on every page of their website so consumers can always find the store. I tried a trickier search by just searching a brand name and ‘near me’, and Mecca came up first again.

Again, this was extremely quick, useful and accessible.

I Want To Do

According to Google, the I Want To Do moment is all about the ‘how to’. On their website in the hamburger menu, there is a whole tab called ‘How To’ where consumers can scroll through lots of different How To videos and articles using their products. Around 50% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from and feel more favourable towards companies with instructional video content on their websites. Mecca also has a YouTube Channel and lots of content on IGTV that consumers can view.

I Want To Buy

On the Mecca website, you can easily purchase online via smartphone, by simply clicking a button, Mecca also lets you know if you qualify for free shipping, and also lets you know that you can receive a free sample with your order. Approximately 60% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase when it is easy and quick to do so. To make it even easier, Beauty Loop members can look back on their order history to see what they have ordered in the past, which is handy both in store when recalling an old favourite product or shade, or online when you need quick restock of a product.

Let me know in the comments how other brands or companies have been there for you in your micro moments, and let me know of any times when you have made a purchase based on information you found during a micromoment

In their 2015 report, Hodis et al create a 4 segment framework which enables marketers to target each segment based on their motivations and behaviours

You can read the report here

In this week’s post, I’ll see if these same segments can be applied to Instagram users.

Attention Seekers on Instagram are those who post a lot of images, videos and stories, but do not consume that much of other people’s content. These users will have a high ratio of followers compared to people they are following. On Instagram, brand pages approach these users and ask them to collaborate, and may send them product and ask them to post with it, or ask them to repost an image or story in return for a discount code for their followers or free product. Brands may also send these users PR packages, which they will then post and share with their followers. These are very common strategies used by brands who target the Attention Seeker group.

Devotees on Instagram post a lot, but also consume a lot of content. Similarly to Facebook, these users would make great brand ambassadors who have an ongoing relationship with a brand. A company who does this well is Mecca, who have a team of ambassadors or ‘Official Mecca Beauty Junkies’ with their own dedicated Mecca Instagram account to post their own content of new products, demonstrations and reviews. They interact with their followers as well as Mecca themselves, and are trusted by consumers as they put a face to the Mecca brand.

Connection Seekers are those who consume a lot of content, but do not post much. They want to feel involved in a brand and want to feel like brands care about and want to engage with them. A way that brands on Instagram can attract this segment is through the various features on stories such as polls, questions or slider reactions. This way, Connection Seekers feel like their opinion is valued and being listened to, especially if the brand then reposts and responds to their question, but they do not have to create any content themselves.

Entertainment Chasers consume a lot of content, but do not want to spend time creating their own. They are easily engaged with competitions. It is extremely easy for brands to create competitions that are easy to enter (usually just by tagging a friend in the comments), and brands can share these competitions via their own pages or by the pages of influencers. Entertainment Chasers will follow the accounts necessary to win these competitions and tag their friends who may be in different segments, which encourages word of mouth and will increase engagement and following.

Let me know in the comments what you think of this framework, do you think it applies to Instagram too? Do you think that there are more than just these 4 segments?