To my friends and readers-

I rarely do this- publish someone's blog on my page. EVEN if you aren't a fan of this woman, you NEED to read this piece… it's a Direct Response Marketing business plan! I hope you enjoy it! Leave a comment!

Sandi Krakowski

*****************************

Fellow Business-Builder,

I’ll be the first to admit … what follows scares the crap out of me. I NEVER thought I would write an article about this person, but feel I must.

Have you heard of Lady Gaga?

How could you NOT hear her name these days?

In two very short years (light speed in the music business), Lady Gaga has become an international sensation – selling millions of albums, breaking Billboard’s record as the first artist to have her first six singles reach number one. She’s won two Grammys, and has sold eight million albums and 15 million singles digitally worldwide.

She is everywhere … on TV … on YouTube … on Twitter … at the awards ceremonies … everywhere.

Why?

Hint: It’s not her music.

She does have a very strong voice, but the rest of it will not change the music industry forever.

She is an incredible marketer … and we should be taking notes watching what she does and how she has captured the attention of the world stage.

So hang on to your thoughts about her music, her dress, her looks, her lack of clothing … and look at what she has done to go from no where to a world famous star in record time.

Pay VERY close attention to her outlandish outfits,
 her bizarre big-eye makeup,
her wacked-out videos.

You will start to catch a glimpse of some of her secrets of success … plus … you WILL (no maybe here) catch a glimpse of some other things she doesn’t worry about keeping private.

That’s her entire point.

She WANTS to stand out … and be extreme. She WANTS eyes watching her every move. She WANTS critics speaking out against her.

It’s all part of the package.

What you may not have thought about was her genius marketing ideas.

Those are the key … and what she wants most?

Fans … millions upon millions of them.

And she has them.

Her one best selling song, Bad Romance, has … get this… 185,777,092 YouTube viewers! On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays of her songs.

Love her or hate her – that is an amazing feat that we should be paying attention to.

Lady Gaga, formerly known as Stefani Germanotta, was an obscure go-go dancer who worked burlesque bars in Manhattan.

But, she had music in her blood and was playing piano by age four and was accepted at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts at 17.

She was once performing at a bar filled with drunken NYU students. No one was watching or listening to her until, fed up, she began stripping down to her lingerie. "I started playing in my underwear at the piano and I remember everyone was all of a sudden like ‘Whoa!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’re looking at me now, huh?’ "

She found a guaranteed way she could get the attention she needed to break into the music scene.

A few of her customer loyalty secrets:

After Tweeting her tattoo picture to her MILLIONS of Twitter followers, the Little Monsters started getting their own tattoos and sharing them with the world as well. All of her albums have a monster theme to them as well

Take away: What special club or name could you give your clients? Many of the best loyalty type programs and continuity programs do this … shouldn’t we all?

Take away: What one thing could you do monthly to pay special homage to one of your clients? Something random that would give them exposure to everyone else in your world, and make them feel fantastic at the same time. It could be a special write up about them that you send to your entire database. Make it like an editorial style and send them one in a nice frame ready to be hung on their wall. You could have a photo with you and them done up and sent out to your entire list on a postcard or greeting card. It could be special mention on your website, on your blog, the possibilities are truly staggering.

Take away: You may not have a secret handshake or claw for your business, but you may have a special acronym or formula you share with your clients. Give them something that is unique and proprietary to your business, make sure they understand that it was designed just for them, and encourage them to use it frequently (again, with pictures, mentions, etc).

Take away: Leverage social media if at all possible. I personally am not a huge fan (you may have read my Twitter challenge last year on this blog), but I realize that Social media is huge and very fitting for loyalty. Find people to help you get good at it, and leverage outside resources so social media management doesn"t suck your time dry.

"When you’re dealing with someone as good as Gaga, a lot of it is how to stay the *&^% out of the way," said Steve Berman, Universal Music’s president of sales and marketing. "Gaga has worked tirelessly in keeping up daily if not hourly communication with her fans and growing fan base through all the technology that exists now."

Take away: Work your ass off. Overnight riches are a thing of fairy tales. No more needs to be said.

Take away: Get to know your customers intimately, and make sure they know what you know about them. If you personally can’t relate, have a spokesperson or employee who IS just like them.

1. Give your customers a special club they can belong to. Lady Gaga doesn’t like using the term "fans," so she started calling them her "little monsters." Taking it a step further, she had "Little Monsters" tattooed on herself. Even in her videos you can see the Monster mentions.
2. Gaga also recites a "Manifesto of Little Monsters" at her concerts. Her Little Monsters see this as a dedication to them, that her fans have the power to make or break her.

   This is the Manifesto of Little Monsters:

   There’s something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras; so precisely intricately and so proudly; like kings writing the history of their people. It’s their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will later be perceived as the "kingdom." So, the real truth about Lady Gaga fans, my Little Monsters, lies in this sentiment: they are the kings, they are the queens, they write the history of the kingdom, and I am something of a devoted Jester.

   It is in the theory of perception that we have established our bond; or, the lie, I should say, for which we kill. We are nothing without our image, without our projection, without the spiritual hologram of who we perceive ourselves to be, or rather to become, in the future.

   When you’re lonely,
   I’ll be lonely too, and this is The Fame.

   Take away: Shouldn’t we all have some form of manifesto that shows who we are and where we stand with our customers? It wouldn"t take much to do, and it certainly can make an impact with those who pay your bills.

3. Special Recognition for a Special Monster. During her live stage shows, Lady Gaga will place a call to one of the Monsters in the audience. Her fans have already given up their cell phones to her (another lesson on mobile marketing) and she chooses one, dials it from stage, and waits for the screams. When the Little Monster shows themselves and their phone, they are put up on a big screen, and invited backstage after the show for a drink.
4. Have a secret code or sign. Fitting with the Little Monster theme (album titles, tattoos, songs, etc), she also has a claw that she forms with her hand while on stage. The clawed hand is part of the choreography in the video of her song "Bad Romance." She first got the idea at one of her concerts while watching two of her fans greeting each other this way … and an idea was born.
5. Leverage social media. Gaga has over five million fans on Facebook and almost three million Twitter followers! She keeps in frequent communication with them and shares the exciting, and not so exciting parts of her life with them.
6. Work your ass off to build a fan base with your clients. This quote pretty well says it all on why she has been able to do what she has:
7. Know WHO your customers are. While she seems to have attracted a wide range of Monsters from all age groups, the majority of her fans are young, lost and confused. So was she. An absolute misfit at school. Ridiculed for being different. Pretty well sounds like most of the teenage population out there. And she makes sure they know that she is absolutely NO DIFFERENT than them. When they become a Monster … they know she is one of them.

Lady Gaga isn’t the music industry’s new Madonna.
She’s its new business model.
– Forbes.com

All this by 23 years old.

Not too shabby, at all.

A quote to herself: " ‘Now that you have everybody watching, Gaga, you’d better be f***ing great.’ "

Last lesson, based on this quote: once you get the success you wanted, work harder and don’t blow it!

To your success,

Troy White
Editor, Small Business Mastery
Supplement to THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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