Digital Marketing has its influence on businesses of all types. The reason why many luxury brands have been hesitating to move towards online media. They were doing just fine using print media and by using display ads the returns might be on the declining trend. However, people who are nuts for luxury brands and goods spend more time online and on mobile devices. Keeping in view the needs of the future, luxury brands should not only need to adapt and survive in the digital age but also need to excel as well.
Venture Harbour created Qosy. It is one of the luxury platforms that provide help to luxury brands. These include known brands like Johnnie Walker, Marriott and names like McLaren as well. There work is to make sure that digital presence becomes a profitable media for such brands. There are 25 ways Luxury brands can make some immense profits and generate sales using Digital Marketing Strategies:
Take Advantage Of Social Media Networks Using Visual Media:
Photographs become one of the best ways to trigger a lot of aspirational emotions in the user’s mind when marketing luxury products. The user can associate himself or herself with the device, car, apparel or service shown in the photograph. This way it can give out a feeling of an exclusive experience. To serve the purpose, visual social media networks including Pinterest and many others represent a huge potential and opportunity for luxury brands. Hence, they are able to create brand awareness. One example that can be associated with this is of Chanel. Chanel is one of the most “pinned” brands that are there on social media. It has over 1,244 pins with Chanel products that get pinned on a daily basis. The interesting part is, they don’t even have a Pinterest account and it is all run by their advocates. Another brand doing an amazing job on social media is 77 Diamonds which is based in London. Their Pinterest account is very informative, aspirational and they don’t seem to be too sales / promotional and yet they are still conveying their message in an effective way.
Creating A Website That Is Stylish, Functional And Offers An Immense User Experience:
Luxury brands have very stylish websites. But they don’t perform well if we talk about user experience and functionality. For instance, if we talk about Dom Perignon’s and take that as an example, the site would load up very slowly even on an high internet speed. The loading time gets around 13 seconds or so to load up. The website’s layout is quite difficult to access and becomes a little confusing when it comes to navigation. Chanel’s website is more or less the same as well. Although these guys have done a marvelous job with the colors and using visuals, etc., the design lacks comprehensiveness. So much so that it gets impossible at times to figure out what you were looking for. Even from the buyer’s perspective, it gets difficult. Apart from keeping the layout and the website design stylish, luxury brands should consider investing in websites that are intuitive as well. They also look for sites with a high-end design that created keeping in mind the user’s perspective. Another example of Aston Martin and the brand Versace is worth talking about. I believe that these brands are amazing examples of ideal websites. The website has an amazing layout and at the same time is easy to use and provide high functionality as well.
Brand Heritage Becomes An Ideal Practice To Tell The Story Of The Product:
A known practice is shared in a marketing theory. It provides ways you can market your product by explaining their activities and the motives behind their activities. For instance, the way Apple explains how they communicate with customers. Communicating the story behind your product and providing users with the idea about all the values is a good practice. This will provide a clear picture of your luxury product/brand is one of the fundamentals of marketing luxury product in an effective way. In this regard, Aston Martin has been doing an amazing job. They have been using brand heritage on the product pages. These guys have been explaining that the brand represents things like the assurance of luxury, quality stuff, performance, style and the values that they stand by.
Facebook Ads Provides Amazing Grounds To Reach Luxury Shoppers:
Using Facebook Ads is one of the most effective media to advertise your brand online. It has features that provide a high level of segmentation and targeting capabilities. This includes target ads for married individuals who are 35 to 40 years old from USA, UK or any other target country. This segment can further be broken down into individuals who like the brand Prada, Reebok, Nike, IKEA or any other preferred brand. You can even go deeper and a step further in this. You can also create other segments as well. These might include educational backgrounds of your audience, the place they work, the designation they have and many other determinants.
SEO Gets You Covered All the Time:
The most influential channels that can help your luxury shopper to find luxury products and learned about your brand and make a purchase is Google. As discussed above, many luxury brands have poor websites. You will be surprised to know that some of these luxury brands have bad SEO strategies as well. This makes it difficult for websites associated with these brands to rank on Google. You can take the example of Prada when a user searches Prada handbags, you won’t get a link to Prada’s handbag page. The main reason is the poor selection of keywords, slow site loading and poor on-site structure. Also, the results are a bit messed up as well. SEO can be a goldmine for luxury brands. If your brand’s website is not SEO friendly, you will be missing a lot of traffic. This might be your ultimate source of revenue.
Educate Customers Using Some Aspirational Content:
This is one of the most effective ways to generate traffic and user engagement. One can get all the attention they want for their brand by creating high quality and aspirational content. If you can focus on the long-form visual content, it can get you thousands of shares on social media and immense SEO traffic. Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your luxury brand.
Remove Low-Quality Traffic Keywords:
This is one of the initial and the easiest Digital Marketing strategy for marketing luxury brands. You probably would have been doing this already and be adding negative keywords as part of your optimization techniques. There is a lot of time that can be saved if you’d upload them for your accounts. Account-level negative keywords can be quite simple for your AdWords efforts. To get this done, all you will need is a CSV file and load it up with negative keywords. From there onwards, you can simply upload a file and apply it to as many campaigns as you might like. Doing so has quite a few benefits, the most important for marketing your luxury product is it actually gets rid of the unqualified traffic. Account-wide negative keywords make sure that you never have to go bidding for terms you don’t want to pay for.
Use B2B Marketing and B2B Marketplaces Effectively:
B2B Marketplaces connect different sellers and buyers where buyers have the option of comparing and buying products from a pool of sellers that are there in a single place. When it comes to B2B marketing. Many Luxury brands provide their customers with different provisions like ordering product as a bulk order, offering discounts after a certain quantity, the capability to edit an order online, quotations and requests for proposals, pricing proposed by customers and the capacity to accept different payment methods that is payments via bank transfers and scheduled payments etc.
Provide Content That Appeals To The People:
Experts explain that one of the main reasons that people talk about a brand or a product or service offered by the product or spread the word for it using online and offline media is to make sure that others see what they want them to see. For instances, charities are one of the most preferred categories that people look at on Facebook. The main factor that drives likes and users to your charity on Facebook is to show your audience that you guys are a charitable organization. One of the primary factors that motivate people to buy your luxury goods is to show status. You can create and post content that looks stylish when a user shares it on his profile.
Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Bing:
For many search marketers, AdWords is everything. Bing and many other networks do exist within their grasp. For many luxury brands, this might be a bad idea to ignore Bing. According to sources at Bing, around 30 percent of the audience that visits them has an estimated income of $100,000. This 30 percent means that there are around 160 million unique searchers and 5 billion searches on a monthly basis. Bing allows your brand to be around 59 million people who are not able to reach you using Google. Moreover, clicks on Bing are cheaper than on AdWords.
So try to harness the power of Bing and make your luxury brand a success.
You Should Sound Exclusive When You Are Online:
Being exclusive is one of the basics when it comes to marketing your luxury product or brand. Even if you don’t want to be exclusive, at least sound exclusive. It maintains the customer’s desire by giving out a message posing that your luxury goods or services are scarce and rare. A brand can create exclusivity while using online channels. As a brand, you can create private member groups, some dedicated customer care services, provide gifts or vouchers for old customers. Also, don’t forget people who buy on a more frequent basis.
Encouraging People To Create Unboxing Videos Of Their Luxury Outfit or Accessories:
It is a great digital marketing strategy to create some unboxing videos of products. This works well with footwear, tech and gadgets and other goods that might give some major insights on a product. But there are things that you should keep in mind while making your unboxing video. They are as follows:
- Make sure that the video is less than 3 mins, is short and to the point
- Make sure that you focus more on the product and the features rather than you
- Give out your opinion on the overall product including its appearance, performance etc.
- Keep things honest rather than being or sounding grumpy, nasty or showing off that you are so clever
- Make sure that you elaborate more on the key features of the product and how these can be useful.
To know more about what to add up and what to cut out from your unboxing video review some videos that are already there on YouTube and Vimeo etc. and follow their example.
Maintain Lists Of Customers and Visitors:
One of the most effective techniques for marketing your e-commerce business is email marketing. It helps you increase customer loyalty and provides information to customers. It also tells them about new products and services offered by the brand. In this regard, one of the most exceptional jobs is done by Harrods. They are doing exceptionally well with the email marketing. You can subscribe and have a look at their email marketing campaigns. Also, get an inspiration and an idea about it looks like.
It Is a Good Practice to Take the In-store Experience Online:
In the coming times, having an online presence and an offline presence would be integral to each other. Burberry is one of the best examples of combining their in-store and online experience. These guys tend to run an online brand-awareness campaign that motivates luxury shoppers in stores. Once the customers reach the stores, they can take pictures, share content, watch out for live streams and get to use iPads in the stores.
Use Banner Ads In A Sensible Way:
Banner ads have a magical effect when you are selling products using online platforms if it is used in a proper manner. The only problem with Banner Ads is that it interrupts the user from doing what they were doing currently and appears in front of their current screens. This might make the user a little annoyed. To make a banner ad that works for you, you have to make sure that is kept on relevant websites as you might have to pay for your ad’s poor performance. Also, you have to stay creative when addressing your potential visitor. Volkswagen in this regard has done an amazing job by making their banner ads creative and by adding up humor to it. And finally, it is always a good idea to test your banner and keep a track of your ad to make sure they have the best effects with your web analytics.
Find Modern Ways To Add More To Your Brand Identity:
Luxury brands try to establish legacies to remain timeless. The reason is they know ways that they can use to blend heritage with a touch of modern desires. To stay relevant, these brands have to be on their toes to find new means of connecting with consumers. Maintaining an emotional touch will be a good idea. This requires reaching new platforms, adopting new styles and new influencers so that the brand’s identity stays firm in the modern world. The luxury brand of today needs to have a firm grasp of the market. This can be achieved by having an established presence in the digital realm. For instance, Burberry established an image in the head of the users that is very democratic and fashion forward. The trench coat is one of the chief products. The main buyers of the product are celebrities, soldiers, and royalty. A social media campaign that is reliant on user-generated content would be a great idea. In 2009, the Art of the Trench made things a lot easier for the brand. The website allowed Burberry customers to submit their photos wearing Burberry trench coats. The photos submitted on the website replaced models who were wearing their clothes. To make sure that Burberry gets an increase in the user engagement these guys moved ahead. Burberry allowed users to share these pictures on social media platforms. This means that Burberry now has the power of powerful social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and email campaigns. Within a year, Burberry’s Facebook fans grew to a fan following of more than a million users. This made Burberry, one of the most followed amidst luxury brands of the time. Moreover, the brand had a 50 percent growth for their e-commerce sales along with higher conversion rates as well. The brand became an inspiration for brands around the world. Also, it made them realize that to make their brand successful like Burberry, they have to do a lot more. This would require them to have a beautiful and attractive homepage.
Give Rewards To People Who Are Loyal To Your Brand:
Aspirational Marketing is one of the pillars of digital marketing in the current era. Apart from all the other marketing practices getting your brand to be emotionally attractive will add a plus to your marketing endeavors in the digital realm. All of this depends upon how well you create a buzz around your brand and get successful in making your brand and the offerings exciting. Keep one thing in mind, that you should channel your email marketing efforts for customers who spend more on your brand. These guys deserve loyalty rewards and perks. One of the myths of marketing is that email marketing is something old now. In reality, it is one of the most important tools as far as luxury brands and marketing for luxury brands are concerned. You can create your very own email list from the information obtained from the shoppers and on the basis of this list, you can implement your rewards and perks for your brand loyalists and evangelists. You can set criteria to the amount of money that a certain customer spends at your outlet, they can reach out a certain level or earn a VIP status and enjoy more insights from the products that have not yet arrived in the market. Such rewards and reward programs help the brands to maintain exclusivity and cultivate a kind of excitement where the customers are always on the toes to make a purchase online or by visiting your outlet more often.
Let Your Customers Tell Your Success Story:
There is nothing better than a bunch of satisfied customers bragging about your product. More than half of the people who want to buy your product rely on customer reviews and then go for purchasing a product. It is always good to share a real-time experience that is expressed by any of your customers on your blog, social media account or on your website. This going to bring you results that will be more than any other marketing initiative. Here’s what makes comments and reviews so important.
- More than 85 percent of people go through reviews and determine the quality of your product or business.
- More than 70 percent of people reveal that comments and reviews make them trust a product or service.
- More than 85 percent of people trust reviews online more than a personal recommendation.
Reviews can make or break the image of your brand, product or service and encourages users who are satisfied with your services to share their experience with others. This helps businesses to generate a social proof of their amazing services and products. A good example of Hotsy Totsy can make things more clear. Hotsy Totsy is one of the fashion websites that sells fashion products and accessories online. These guys display testimonials and feedback using a separate page on their website.
Using Inbound Email Marketing Campaigns:
Luxury Brands can use inbound email marketing campaigns for many purposes. They can do this to provide assistance to their customers in a more effective and efficient manner. Also, they can do the same to provide updates regarding their products. For instance, if a customer has issues with his or her cellphone and seeks a speedy solution to your problem, inbound emails can be one amazing solution to troubleshoot the problem the user might be facing. To make good use of the situation you can also mold your email to serve your business purpose as well and get them an offer, or ask them to visit your social media profile or website or simply share it amidst friends. You can also add up different Call to Action and ensure that one of them is prominent enough and the other one could be of a second priority. A more effective approach is to make your message to convey your message in a more effective manner. More than 70 percent marketer consider this approach to provide more customer engagement. Also, keep your content relevant so that the needs and challenges of the user can easily get answered. Proofread, test and then send off the email to the user.
Consider Using B2C Website:
B2C websites are pretty much the same as B2B websites, but it has different dynamics. There are a lot of different elements that make up a B2C. In fact, things get better for your luxury brand if you are on both B2B and B2C platforms to make the most of your B2C website make sure that your website has a responsive design. More than half of the American population likes to make purchases using phones while around 15 percent of these individuals make a purchase by saying that they like to make a purchase using social media platforms. So in order to make your website provide an easy shopping experience make sure it becomes accessible and seamless on mobile devices. Luxury brands like Jimmy Choo have product videos on their website and effectively represents their brand message to the visitors. In case of your B2C e-commerce website make sure that your product video should help consumers to understand how your product works. This might get you a conversion the moment the user sees that video. Moving further, make sure that you use social media selling and email marketing campaigns. These can be helpful to get conversions for your luxury product.
Sell Your Product To Affiliates For Promotions:
Marketing products via affiliates become a win-win situation for affiliates and sellers alike. It gets businesses to target a greater reach and get more business. Also, people who are marketing their products don’t have to stock or ship their own products to achieve something extraordinary. Affiliate marketing gets you more people to reach out to. The reason being that you have already sold a product to one buyer. That buyer can further build up potential customers for you. Using a bit of search optimization and the ability get more traffic on their websites these affiliate marketers can get you conversions and get some commission from you. It is also very safe to do so. For instance, if you are someone who is into a Leather Goods business, the best way to get in the game is to look for people who are already selling leather goods.
You Need To Be Active On The Right #Hashtags:
A greater part of social media has been organized by the hashtag. It has made it easy to join in for discussions and track out events as well. It also helps you out to post under the ones that are relevant to your luxury brands or niche. You can use different tools like Hootsuite. This helps you find, like, reply to posts. Also one can perform different activities using hashtags. One more tool like Hashtagify helps you find many other hashtags that are related to your target hashtag. Make sure that you don’t consider hashtags to be the same on every channel. Some amazing facts about hashtags on different social media platforms are as follows:
- Twitter posts stuff with a single hashtag. You can do a lot with it if placed in a sensible way. It is capable of generating more engagement than tweets that have more than 2 hashtags.
- Instagram posts look out for the most engagement when you use more than 2 hashtags.
- You can even add up more than 10 hashtags per post.
- Facebook posts are better off without hashtags
If you know of a high-end event coming ahead of you, you can prepare for that in advance. Also, you can make sure that you are ready to make the most from it. Make sure you keep it in a more targeted manner. If you are someone associated with the fashion industry or one of the luxury brands, make sure you try out some live-tweeting. Also, you can cover a high-profile event as well. There you can comment on whatever celebrities are wearing. There are many events associated with hashtags. But the key to hijacking a hashtag is not to hijack that hashtag at all. Other than that, you should aim towards contributing towards all the conversation in a more comprehensive and natural way.
Consider The Ever Changing Digital Environment:
Staying stagnant when it comes to practices can kill your progress. Whatever worked out for your brand sometime before, might not work for you today or tomorrow. There are many factors including the dynamic consumer perspectives. Many smart marketing gurus have identified the obsolete strategies. They have also made considerable adjustments to these strategies as well. Brands these days are providing content that the user needs. This approach requires more detailed and broadened strategies.
Digital Marketing has now grown into a giant. It now covers almost all the aspects of traditional and modern-day marketing practices. Also, make a habit of being on the lookout for updates and new techniques.