5 Tips for Marketing to High-End Customers
When your product is an affordable cell phone, a pen, or another product that everyone must use, marketing to your target audience is simple. But when you have a niche-specific product or service that’s only meant for higher-end clients, it gets a little more challenging. The luxury product market is one of the most difficult when it comes to social media, digital marketing, and targeting. You know who your clients are, but attracting their attention is another matter altogether.
Don’t be intimidated at the prospect of marketing your brand to those with wealth and acclaim. With the right strategies, you can put your products in front of the right people and create a luxury brand people will talk about.
1. Establish Your Luxury Brand
Chanel, Rolex, Rolls Royce, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Prada—each of these brands is recognizable by name, logo, and quality. Their marketing is less about branding and more about sharing new products and keeping them at the forefront of customers’ minds. To market a luxury product, you need a luxury brand.
The quality of materials and sophistication of marketing will go a long way in establishing your brand, but the best path to recognition is through a celebrity. Find someone with great taste and a huge following, and ask them to endorse your brand. It’s not easy, but if you have the right product, you can make it happen.
2. Make Each Customer Feel Important
You’ve probably heard this mantra before, and while it’s true for the everyday customer, it’s even more important for the luxury client. There’s something about wealth that makes a person crave uniqueness.
A great strategy for making customers feel important is creating a premium client option that includes special perks. “Put a lot of thought into the bonuses and special privileges that you can throw in for big accounts,” says Brian Ainsley Horn of Huffington Post. “These perks are great manifestations of the business’s fine taste and effort to take care of big money clients.”
These perks may be exactly what lands you the high-profile client and their long-lasting relationships.
3. Let Prices Reflect the Importance of Your Products
Everyone likes a bargain now and again, but a luxury product isn’t luxury if it doesn’t reach a certain price point. If you have a product that claims a certain price, it will embody luxury.
Consider this company that offers private jet charters. The price alone, which varies from $3,000 to upwards of $9,000 for each trip, exudes extravagance. Pricing your products so that they only appeal to clients of a certain income is a great way to establish your brand.
4. Respect Client/Customer Privacy
Privacy for VIP clients and customers is huge. Your ability to respect their space and keep quiet about private information will work in your favor, or against it if you violate their trust.
“Nothing will get you blackballed in the VIP community faster than blabbing to the press, or anyone, really, about where they’re living or how much they spent, etc.,” says Scott Newman of the National Association of Realtors. “Keep in mind that while people finding out where you live wouldn’t be too much of a hassle for you, it can become a huge problem — and even a safety issue — for high profile people.”
Newman also points out that expressing your ability to be discreet—and proving it time and time again—is an excellent selling point.
5. Compare Yourself to Other Brands
A key method in any marketing strategy is comparing your position to competitors. In other forms of marketing, this is a must because you’re competing for the attention of the everyday consumer. When you’re marketing yourself as a luxury brand, the conditions are different.
“When it comes to luxury, being unique is what counts, not any comparison with a competitor,” says Vincent Bastien of Entrepreneur. “Luxury is the expression of a taste, of a creative identity; luxury makes the bold statement ‘this is what I am,’ not ‘that depends’– which is what positioning implies. It is identity that gives a brand that particularly powerful feeling of uniqueness, timelessness, and the necessary authenticity that helps give an impression of permanence.”
If you’ve never been in luxury marketing before, you’ll find that it’s a much different beast. You’ll have your share of trial and error, but hopefully some of these ideas can set you on the right track.