How Taylor Swift Hacked Marketing to Become a Billionaire.

Every marketer and artist should be taking notes.

We all know Taylor Swift as a singer and songwriter, but we don’t often think about her as a marketing guru. We should, though. You can watch the full video above or read below!

Yes, she is obviously a tremendous singer, songwriter, and performer, but, in fact, Taylor Swift’s marketing ability and knowledge might be her greatest asset. Her savvy marketing moves and quality products have turned her into a literal Billionaire with a capital B this past year. While there are marketing gurus aplenty on LinkedIn, we should all be studying T-Swit.

Her marketing starts with how she engages with her fans and friends on social media.

This level of marketing is extremely powerful in building a fan base and keeping them active in her daily life. Yes, she does post consistent updates across socials, but she also directly talks with them, Likes their content, takes selfies and films TikToks with them, and shows them love back.

It is actually frustrating how many artists do not have this level of engagement with their fans. Instead of speaking “with” their fans, they speak “at” their fans. That works for some big artists, like Beyonce, but when an artist as big as Taylor Swift Likes your TikTok — it’s massive. It’s an entire Search category unto itself on TikTok. That’s just a ton of extra organic user-generated content that any self-aware artist should covet.

This level of engagement, of course, then translates into a relationship and bond that fans continually gravitate to. When it comes to releasing projects, they immediately jump at it because of an extra special bond with their artist. Even if Taylor did not like their content in particular, they still appreciated Taylor's level and depth of interest for her fans. Also, they might one day hope Taylor Likes their content if they post something. Additionally, this kind of relationship surpasses “Musician” and “Fan” and turns into a “Mother” and “Daughter/Son” relationship. The term originated in the LGTBQ+ community to describe a favorite artist, “slaying,” but it is also seen as a term of endearment, in the more literal meaning of “Mother.” Really, only a select few artists have earned that term from their fans.

This sort of engagement also leads to a massive following.

Just between her TikTok and Instagram, since Twitter doesn’t exist anymore, she has 300 million followers. Naturally, this following leads to millions of organic views on her general content and content announcing releases. On TikTok, her video announcing the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has over 21 million views. The album art has over 12 million Likes on Instagram. The announcement of her tour movie dropping in theaters has over 24 million views. No additional ad dollars were needed to advertise that. Incredible.

As we can see, she can easily leverage her social media platforms at will, as she always has. She has and continues to clearly see the importance of having that active and vibrant community across her platforms. Even if she isn’t posting every day or every move she makes, she posts enough to stay in the conversation. The press usually takes care of the rest regarding tracking her daily life. Any artist or brand should pay attention to how effective this is because it isn’t just promotional content, even though it is.

Videos that are more-so-evergreen content, such as filming her dad on a Segway, which has 33 million views, also contribute to sales. This is the part most marketers and brands do not grasp because they can not calculate directly how many tickets that video sold. Someone in the room would probably say, “Wait, we aren’t Segways.” You aren’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that the Segway video with her dad is more viral than the videos announcing the album release itself. This keeps her in people’s feeds with fun content, which creates something people like to call “ad recall,” “brand recall,” and “ad lift.” Correct, it is not particularly an ad, per se, but in this day and age, every social media post can create “brand recall” and essentially functions as an ad for a brand and/or product. Taylor has perfected this over the years. Most executives, unfortunately, can’t see past metrics like “conversions” or “link clicks.”

Ask yourself if you saw a post or news article about a favorite artist of yours doing something like showing up at a sports game, like Taylor Swift at the NFL games this past year, which triggered you to play their music on Spotify later when you were trying to think of what to listen to. Whether or not her NFL appearances were genuine and/or carefully calculated PR, that content went absolutely bonkers, causing fans who would never watch football to watch football, buy Chiefs gear, tune into Taylor Swift’s socials, and more. It also put Taylor into the crosshairs, in a fun and viral way, of a new fan base in the form of NFL fans. The best brand collaboration of 2023, intentionally or organically, sent her and Kelce’s (and the NFL’s) popularity through the roof.

The NFL saw record-setting views on their TikTok content, as did most people reposting the content, and Peacock saw record-streaming views on games she attended. It doesn’t seem like a carefully constructed ploy between the NFL and Taylor to rack up massive views by combining their brands, but as they say, “The devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder.” Yes, Kris Jenner was not involved in any of this (I think!), but the saying refers to how Jenner is always manipulating public perception and conjuring up behind-the-scenes PR moves to drive sales. Another recent example is when she was pictured walking around in New Balance shoes in NYC after the Jets vs. Chiefs game, which sent their resale value up the charts on eBay.

Clearly, seeing Taylor on TV at NFL games, in evergreen content, or just walking around the city in public builds her brand and recall. So, when someone asks the ignorant question, “How do followers, appearances, and social media translate into revenue?” you can easily look at how it has led to record-setting tours, films, and albums because all three of those things have put up records this year. If they can not grasp how this has led to insane numbers across her products, you should tell them they should not work in marketing. It’s more than just “being popular.” It is all part of the marketing soup, so let’s get into those things now.

The ability to stay in the conversation, on social media feeds, and in real life all leads to an overall increase in popularity, true, but this directly leads to an increase in sales, even if you can’t tie in a nice metric to it. The Eras Tour, of course, was already extremely successful without all of the additional hoopla over the NFL, and now, apparently, hosting watch parties with NFL wives. The tour itself is allegedly on pace to gross over $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone and $5 billion in consumer spending overall. She’s producing more than some countries. Speaking of which, the tour is going international in markets like Mexico City, Tokyo, Singapore, and New Zealand. Air New Zealand has had to accommodate the “Swift Surge” and added 2,000 additional seats. In a post-pandemic world, the Eras Tour is creating an unmatched experience. It is a mindblowing experience for fans; some even get amnesia and have out-of-body experiences at the show. Mother is definitely mothering.

Of course, it doesn’t end there.

There is still the Eras Tour movie and her recent re-release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version).” Let’s look at the Eras Tour movie first, which debuted at #1 at the Box Office upon its premiere and has since grossed over $200 million globally. It also managed to hold off Martin Scorsese’s “Killers Of The Flower Moon” from reaching #1. That’s some quality cinema for you. Not to mention, even Beyonce showed up at the red carpet-premiere. Unsurprisingly, Kanye was not invited. Anyway, besides debuting at #1, it was the way in which Taylor rolled out the movie that was unique.

First of all, it was produced entirely by herself and her team.

That means there is no 3rd party producers to share the profits with. Next, she cut out 3rd party distributors, who usually buy rights to distribute the film in certain markets, provide the marketing spend, and then earn a percentage of profits. However, Taylor partnered directly with the theater owner, AMC, to distribute the film and go straight to the cinema. It’s unclear what P&A spend was put behind the film, if any, considering her fan base's hunger and extreme engagement. It would seem that there was no marketing spend behind it, which makes sense since, as mentioned above, Taylor’s swift ongoing presence on stage, in feeds, in the streets, and at NFL games is the marketing in itself. It’s all day, every day.

Naturally, all of this is accompanied by her 2nd re-recording album release of the year with “1989 (Taylor’s Version).”

In fact, she used her organic marketing to announce the album, which was made at the final Los Angeles Eras Tour stop on August 9th. There is a trend here with how she leapfrogs and connects her events to the next event to drum up excitement. It seems simple, and artists announcing projects on a tour is not a new phenomenon. However, sometimes, just doing the simple things is extremely hard for artists to do, and they do not capitalize on such events and are sometimes incapable of developing a coherent schedule to roll things out in advance. All of this took significant planning and staying on schedule, and she capitalizes on stuff like this like she is writing sentences in CAPS lock. This is due to her work ethic, which conveniently you can witness in her Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana.”

With that announcement, the stage was set for “1989” to put up some monstrous numbers, and it delivered. The 16-track album debuted (re-debuted?) to the largest Spotify streaming day in 2023, beating her own album, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), racking up the best streaming day of all-time on Amazon Music, topped the charts in 18 territories, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, had 7 songs debut in the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and she topped numerous music charts globally and in the US, such as the Weekly Top Artists chart, Weekly Top Songs chart, and Weekly Top Albums chart. Whew, that was a lot. Oh wait, there’s more. It became the best-selling album of 2023, her 13th #1 album, and her record-extending 6th album to sell 1 million units in 1 week, including the original “1989”. That’s right, the same album sold 1 million copies in a week, twice. *Cue every artist re-recording their best hits for a new compilation in 3…2…1*

This also gave her the top 3 best-selling albums of the year with "1989 (Taylor’s Version"), “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and “Midnights" which actually momentarily reclaimed the #1 spot in 2023 with a deluxe version, despite coming out in 2022. With the new version of “1989,” she also set the record for highest vinyl sales in not just 2023 but the 21st century. I think we are beginning to see how all of these events connect and lead to further sales, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the new “1989” outsold the new version of “Speak Now” due to the combustible nature of her appearing at NFL games in combination with the “Eras Tour” film release. She is completely dominating the pop culture conversation.

If all of that wasn’t enough, “Cruel Summer” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 four years after its initial release due to the popularity of…you guessed it…her Eras Tour. So, take notes and pay attention to the marketing guru, Taylor Swift.