6 Lessons Business Owners Can Learn from Taylor Swift

Welcome back. It's you and me and we are wrapping up season five together with our last episode of the season on the podcast. And I can't wait for you to hear this one because it's all about what is your biggest opportunity in marketing your business in 2024 and what does that have to do with Taylor Swift? Well, lover or hater, we're gonna talk about it and you're gonna come away with a ton of notes. So I hope you join me in this last episode of the season of let's kick things off together. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week it's a special week because it's the last week. It's the last week of this season. We are just about to go on a season break, which we've done the last couple of years. And so this week I just wanted it to be a conversation not only kind of about where do you think we are in the industry, but where do you think the biggest opportunity for you is right now in the way that our industry is changing. So just a heads up, we'll have this chat this week. We will be back in March for a new season of the podcast with all new guests. And you know what, some new, like, kind of shorter, bite sized episodes we're going to start throwing in so you guys can learn on the go and implement things really fast. That's what I really want this podcast to always be about, is you taking action and, and seeing results. So I've got a whole bunch of new things planned and up my sleeve. But again, before we get there, let's put a cap on this conversation. So when I think about our industry and what's happening and what's changing and what's working now, I'm going to get a little bit controversial if you'll let me. Are you ready for it? Let's make this conversation about one thing. Taylor Swift. Oh, love it or hate it, it's a cruel summer, right? Everybody and their mother has been talking about Taylor Swift and all the things and the romance and the super bowl and on and on. But I Want to take Taylor Swift into a conversation about you and your business? Because if we look at the facts about what's happened in the last year, they say that the ERAs tour alone had a five billion dollar economic impact. I know so many apparel boutiques had different ERAS collections. I know many of you sold a lot of concert goer outfits. Now many of you went to the concerts, maybe took family to the concerts. It was a major impact all across not only America, but now a global tour as well. So 5, $5 billion of economic impact estimated from that tour alone. Now enter the Chiefs and enter the Super Bowl. And it's also been estimated that T. Swift has added $300 million of economic impact to the NFL and to the Chiefs specifically in terms of merch sales and media deals and all of the fans wanting to catch a glimpse of her at the games. So this is starting to spill over into so many different areas. So the question is this. Our industry really, you know, has obviously been changing and we're seeing some of this play out in how our customers are spending money around Taylor Swift, right? So what can we learn from that? What can we learn from what she's doing? Right. And put that into play into our businesses so that we can have our own cruel summer next summer in the best way possible. So as our industry is shifting, right. I know many of you are having this conversation about, wow, our customers are. They're maybe spending more money on experiences than they are on the latest product. Maybe your customers are spending money on Shein and Temu and Amazon and some of these fast fashion sites that you just can't compete with. Right? Your customers are maybe spending more money on need than on want. And it's causing all of us to make a few shifts in how we're marketing our business. So. So when I think about the opportunity that Taylor really brings to us, it's such a shift away from the way that we've been doing things historically, like really being so product focused in this industry, but really focusing on instead being more community focused. And that's something here at the Hub that's always been my passion personally. The Hub works because it's a community. And I think that that, number one like goal and strategy of being a community for your business should definitely be the focus of 2024. And I'm going to use Taylor Swift's analogies to help show you that lesson. All right, so let's look specifically at what did she do, right. When it came to building a community this year that you can also do Inside of your business. So the first thing is nostalgia. Nostalgia. So when I think about the Eras tour, right, there's all these different eras of Taylor Swift. I go back to the very first time I started to listen to her music and she was brand new and she had the curly hair and it was her and a guitar and a pair of bo. Right? That is a whole different era than the lover era. And so many of them, you know, like the. The latest releases from Taylor today, there's so many different eras. And so this whole idea of mothers and daughters coming together and celebrating all the eras of her music, that is 100 a flashback into nostalgia. So how can you in your business bring together generations and also have flashbacks to those pieces of nostalgia? And I think something that we're so lucky to see are trends, Trends that have really transcended different generations that you can style in an old way and in a younger way. Or maybe it's products. Like, I'll think about like polar box. We were just looking at polar boxes at market the other day and thinking about, wow, that is a flashback to an old trend made new again. Right? I'm sure there's things that you as a boutique owner can remember, you know, loving five years ago, 10 years ago. I'm going to say Chevron and bubble necklaces. Those will come back again. So how can you and your marketing flashback to the nostalgia that's going to help bring mothers and daughters together as your consumers. How do you make the old, but make it new again? So there's so many fun marketing techniques you can do in terms of choosing your era or the flashbacks or love it or leave it, even just engagement questions on trends that you know they would love to see come back again, or hate to see come back again. So play up the nostalgia, play up the history, play up bridging generational gaps inside of your marketing. The second piece of community building that I think was just so powerful for Taylor Swift this summer, and that you can do too, is the way to bring together your consumers for some sort of exchange or some sort of trading. When I think about the Eras Tour, so many people came together and made friendship bracelets and exchanged them with one another. I know a brand that's been a part of the hub and been a part of part of, you know, many of your businesses is the little Little Words project. The Little Words project had a huge part of so much of the Eras tour. If people were buying bracelets and exchanging them, or if they were making bracelets and exchanging them, what is the One thing that can be your signature in your business that your customers can all rally around your own little piece of, I don't know, you might even call this nostalgia as well. But this thing that can be your signature that your customers all want to be a part of. Now, those of you who have a big vision around giving back to the community or having a real mission behind your brand, maybe you have something like this already. You know, maybe you are heavily involved in a women's shelter and you have some sort of closet clean out challenge where women are coming together and doing this. Maybe you have some sort of give back to your community that is like a volunteer project, right? Building houses or whatever it might be, and your customers are coming back and being a part of that project. What is it that your customers can get behind and get involved in physically with your brand that's going to make that emotional reaction happen? Right? Because people don't remember what they bought. They remember how you made them feel. So what is that thing that they can come together and physically do with one another to build community? And the bracelets for Taylor Swift are such a great example. I also think about a third thing that Taylor did so well that we have all played off of is meme creation. And I don't know that this is really Taylor's thing, but this is what we made of Taylor's thing was the memes. We went a little hog wild here at the Boutique Hub with meme creation around Taylor Swift. Maybe we got a few Facebook warnings because of it. So we learned our lesson to don't run ads to the memes. Okay? Don't run ads to the memes, but use the memes. So I think this was a huge lesson when it comes to how to build reach and engagement on social media. What is it that's happening in this, in the world around us today? Whether it's Taylor Swift, whether it's a Super bowl, whether it's insert whatever celebrity here or whatever social event here. I go back to remember the Bernie Sanders memes with the gloves with the mittens, and he was sitting cross legged with his mittens on. Remember how that became such a crazy meme? There's always something happening in society, whether it's the Golden Globes or whatever red carpet. And you can quickly grab those images and make them meme out of them for your business. So our social team at the Hub is excellent at doing this shout out Shannon Gordon, she is the queen, but she very quickly jumps onto whatever trend is happening in society and pulls that in Makes it a meme, makes it relatable to our customer base and then puts it all across all of our socials. So that's a great way just to again build community. Get your customers talking about whatever this thing is that's happening in society. Get their opinion because it's great for engagement and it's going to help your consumer to really relate with one another. So jump in on the meme creation. Okay. Fourth thing that I think is really important that came from the ERAS tour is I really loved seeing how many brands got behind not only the ERAS tour, but just, you know, really getting into some of the social moments that we had, societal moments we had in the last year. So where there were brands that jumped on and were collaborating with Taylor around the ERAS tour. Or I'll use Barbie as another example. Like how many brands had a Barbie, whatever it was a Barbie lunchbox or you know, Barbie clothing or Barbie whatever this year because Barbie and the Barbie movie were so huge. So there's brands that are getting into also playing up these tours and these big society moments. You can do the same thing. So I know there's a number of brands that you're going to discover at market, maybe you already carry. I'm going to choose Makeup Eraser as a good example. They're always jumping in and creating some sort of specialty product related to whatever the big thing is happening in society today. Now, when you're looking for brands like that, what's really important to note is what brands actually are licensed to do this? Huge question, what brands are actually licensed to do this? Because if you join some random T shirt Facebook group and they're selling Barbie themed tees or shirts with Taylor Swift all over them, chances are they're probably not licensed. So make sure if you are going to carry some sort of specialty or licensed product relating to whatever, the big thing is that it is licensed and they have documentation to prove it. Because, girl, I do not want you losing your Shopify account, your social media accounts, losing everything that you've worked for. Because I have watched so many businesses have this happen to them, whether it's chief skier, any football team's gear, any sports team, any Disney, any big brand. If you're using someone else's likeness without their consent, it's not licensed. You can get hit with some heavy fines and you can lose all of your social accounts for that as well. So be really careful. But play that up if you do know there is a brand who is on board with what's happening in society today. All right, fifth thing that I think Taylor's tour has really taught us, and, boy, is this a lesson in business and in marketing, and that is storytelling. Her tour was so great at storytelling, right? Whether it was her going behind the scenes with the. The movie, the eras tour movie, whether it was her own storytelling on stage behind the scenes about all the songs and her own eras, whether it was her as an individual taking a stance on a political topic or some whatever hot button issue, even though that's polarizing, right? It's making people either love her or hate her. She. She knows her audience, right? And so she's taking an opinion that's going to polarize for good and polarize for bad in her audience and make her true fans that much stickier, that much more true. So there's definitely opportunity for you and your brand. I'm not saying you have to take a political stance on something, but make sure you're using storytelling to your fullest capability. Now, when I think about that for your brand, a couple of different ways. Number one, your customers. You're always acquiring new customers, right? So make sure on a monthly basis at least, you're going live or you're doing a reel or you're doing a video to constantly reintroduce yourself. Hey, I'm Ashley. I own the Boutique Hub. You know, on the side, I play old lady basketball, and I have horses, and my kids rodeo. Like, whatever random fact it is, it's random and it's different, but it's interesting and it's unique. So keep introducing yourself and then keep introducing the why behind your business. So here at the Hub, our mission is to change the lives of business owners. We know when we change a business for good, we impact the business owner's life, we impact their family, we impact their staff, and we impact the community around them. And so we do that through trusted education, through a thriving community, and through vetted, quality and curated wholesale brands and vendors. So what is that for you? What is the why behind your business? What is the big mission? What are people bought into with your business? Continually tell that story and bring your customers along the journey because they want to be bought into something along with you. Now, if you've also followed Donald Miller and the Story Brand framework, I love this. We also talk a lot about this inside of Retail Bootcamp. That's another way to tell a story. Because if you think about every good story you've ever read, right, Those of you who have kids and you read children's books, or maybe you go back to the children's books that you loved when you were growing up, what do great stories have in common? Well, they have a hero, they have a villain, and they typically will have the wise guide that helps the hero win the day. So your job in your business and your marketing is to find a way to also tell that story. So your job is not to be the hero. Your business is not the hero. Your customer is the hero. And you are the wise guide, helping the hero achieve their goals and overcome the villain. So for you, the villain might be time, it might be money, it might be fit, it might be body issues and images. It might be just a lack of understanding or skill around putting outfits together or creating gifts or, you know, decorating your home beautifully. Like, some people don't have those gifts. They want your help. You are the wise guide to that customer. So help the customer be the hero of the day by helping them overcome and defeat the villain. And then you can be the wise guide. You can be their Yoda along the way. So utilize storytelling. Taylor Swift has done that so well, and I know you're going to be able to do that so well as well. How many times can I say as well in a sentence? That was a new record, I'm pretty sure. All right, last lesson that I think we can gather from Taylor and what we saw in the last year was scarcity, the power of scarcity. So she so many times had limited releases, she had cryptic messages that you had to find out. She created a lot of fomo, if, I mean, in a million ways, whether that was around merch, whether that was around the tour, all those pieces. She also did a really great job at encouraging user generated content and behind the scenes, which really just creates a flood of even more of it. Right? Like we're all herd animals. Animals. Once we start to see that UGC come up in her socials and her start to share it, that makes even more people want to jump in and share it. All of those lessons and things are so easy for you to do in your business as well. So when I think about limited releases and scarcity, your marketing has a huge opportunity here. When you do your collection drops, when you do releases, when you do a countdown that, hey, I've got this great thing coming and I only have a couple of them. So if you snooze, you lose, right? You can definitely do that in products every single day. You can also do that. Those of you who are hosting fashion shows or live events of any kind and you only have so many tickets, maybe you're having a customer appreciation weekend in your business and it's an in store celebration. And again, you only have so many tickets. Maybe you're doing an anniversary for your store and the first 10 people get these amazing swag bags or the first 50 people and you show up and you have a line around your business and maybe you do that same thing on the website and it's Easter and the first, you know, 10 to 15 orders that are placed get an Easter egg filled with some sort of special in it. So there's all kinds of ways for you to create limited releases and to create scarcity and to create a lot of FOMO in your business which is going to keep your customer coming back for more. The other thing when it comes to that scarcity like I mentioned, was user generated content. You may have to plant your first couple of user generated pieces of content from your mom or your crazy aunt, but your customers, once they see that and they know that's what's encouraged and you're going to reward those who are participating with the user generated content, they're going to start to join in as well. So really make a push for that on a regular basis. What can I pull in for user generated content? Okay, last thing I want to mention when it comes to the lessons that we can learn specifically from Taylor and from the eras tour is just overall marketing is changing in 2024. There's some new tools that are coming available in 2024. There's some trends that you definitely like. If you aren't jumping on these trends, you're going to be missing out in 2024. So I want to talk about those in addition to what we specifically can learn from the ERAs tour. So the first tool I want to mention that's brand new this year, maybe you've heard us talking about it. If you're a part of Retail Bootcamp or if you're a part of Boutique Hub Black, we're doing a lot of education on this inside of those two places. But this is Google Perspectives. So Google Perspectives is Google's brand new way of pulling and ranking your social media content for Google Rank overall. So when you go to Google something, not only will you get the blog posts and the websites like you typically do, but you're also going to get a rank of the social content that pulls from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, of course, YouTube, all of those things so that you, as you're searching for an answer to something, you can see multiple different mediums of where you might Find and digest that answer. The reason Google's doing this is it's estimated that in the last year Google lost something like 40% of brand new searches that were originating on Google. Now we're originating on TikTok. Isn't that crazy that many searches moved from going to Google first to going to TikTok first? Because you wanted the user generated experience, right? So they put into play Google perspectives so that you can go back to searching on Google and still get the answer from TikTok but multiple different places and hopefully get you a better answer. So what does this mean for you? It means making sure a you and your website are good with Google, your index with Google, you have GA4 installed, Google Analytics 4, Google My Business, making sure that is set up and then really understanding that in your social media they aren't just going to pull keyword stuffing, but they're going to pull quality over quantity. So what type of content are you creating on a regular basis that really does generate interaction. It generates a great user response. It's detailed in its answer to whatever the question is that someone might be asking. That's how they're going to start to pull and rank your content. So make sure you are good with Google and you're starting to think about this with the social content that you're creating. All right. The second huge tool I really want to talk about in trend in marketing in 2024 that we just can't ignore any longer is short form video. Short form video. And I know a lot of you guys in the last year, apparel stores especially got heavily involved with TikTok shops. Now that's a whole conversation on its own. I don't love TikTok shops. I never really have loved TikTok shops and now I'm starting to see the fallout of TikTok shops and so many people leaving that platform. But there still are lessons to be learned from that experience and that's the power of short form video. So making sure that you are taking time to have behind the scenes videos, to have educational videos, to have introductory videos, to have product education, to have trend education. Any kind of short form video you can create, it doesn't have to be just about a product, but it can be about life. Right? You're building a lifestyle business. That's what retail is today. It's a lifestyle business. But you're creating that short form video. Whether you're using Inshot or Cap Cut, which are two of my favorite apps for creating short form video and then repurposing that content for TikTok. Maybe not TikTok shops, but TikTok YouTube shorts and definitely Instagram reels. Definitely Instagram reels. The video content ranks higher than any type of static content, so making sure that's a part of your ongoing strategy is really, really important this year. All right, last, last piece of advice for today. I dropped this quote in my notes for today because I thought it really summed up this entire conversation of what can we learn from Taylor? What can we learn about community building and why? Why? I think community building is the most important thing you can do in your brand, Period. People do not want to buy products. They want to buy experiences. They want to buy emotional engagement. They want to feel good. Right? People don't remember what they bought from you. They remember how you made them feel. So when I read this quote, I was like, oh man, this is just spot on for what we're trying to accomplish. So the quote is this People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, ally their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help throw rocks at their enemies. And that quotes from Blair Warren People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, ally their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help throw rocks at their enemies. And when I hear this, I think, wow, that is rallying around a common cause inside of a community and going back to the story brand framework of your customer has a villain. You must in your community identify what the villain is and who the villain is and confirm their suspicions about that villain and ally their fears around that villain and justify their failures thus far in trying to defeat the villain. But also encourage their dreams that it's possible to overcome that villain. And you're going to show them exactly how to do so by using your products, by being a part of your trusted community, by building allies with one another in community, by getting not only your customers to talk back to you in your content, but getting them to talk to one another in your content. So don't rest on this. The biggest opportunity you have this year is to build a community around your brand and lover or hater. Taylor Swift has been able to do just that. So hope this was helpful for you guys. Hope you got some new ideas. I can't wait to hear your feedback. Please send me a message at AJ Alderson on Instagram or at the Boutique Hub on Instagram. Guys, we're going on a short season break, so for the next month you'll have to catch up on some old episodes. I already have so many new things planned for the new season. So look for us to launch in the middle of March. We're going to have tons of giveaways and some exciting, exciting things coming your way. If you have a chance, I would genuinely appreciate it so much if you would subscribe to this podcast. If you would please leave us a review and a rating. I mean the more five stars the better. But genuinely, I would love to hear your feedback and hopefully this podcast has been helpful to you this season in a number of ways. I hope you've met some amazing people through this podcast and through our community and I can't wait to continue you guys. Your business is my business and I don't like the fluff. I just want the meat and the potatoes and I want to see you have access to ideas you can put into place and see results with right away. So again, I hope this podcast has been super helpful for you along your journey. Thank you for being a part of my journey and I will see you in the next season. Take care guys. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week. Sam.