As we all know, luxury brands have been relying on in-store shopping for a long time. It was their primary, and pretty much only, way to sell up until the COVID-19 came for a turn. The pandemic pushed lots of buyers online, and since then, things have been different. Now, they need to find new ways to replicate their rich in-store experience in the online world. And believe us when we tell you, that’s not an easy task. On the other hand, digital marketing strategies for luxury brands can get you close, but only if you know how to use them. So, what do you need to do?
Well, we don’t have to tell you how competitive your market is. However, if you want to stay on top of your competition, you’ll need to invest in data-driven digital advertising. The goal is to reach your audience through each channel they use. This way, you’ll be present everywhere, and the buyers will love that they’re always just a click away from your store.
Of course, we’ll share with you all the tips, tricks, and SEO trends you won’t be able to ignore in 2022. But before we dive into all of that, we need to talk a bit more about your audience. You must understand the people who are buying your products to create a strategy that works. So, let’s take a look at what kind of research you should do before you proceed.
Who’s my audience?
Now that luxury buyers are buying online, you can’t rely on your sales representative to help them around the store. They won’t come to your website just to spend their time there and maybe buy something along the way. On the contrary, if you don’t put in the effort to get them to your site, they’ll forget that you even existed.
So, even if you think you know who your target audience is, you should think about it again. As a matter of fact, you should ask yourself these three questions all the time.
- Who are my buyers? – Demographics and psychographics
- Why are they buying what I’m selling?
- Where can I find them? – Figure out where they spend time online
When you answer them, you’ll find yourself surprised how things aren’t as you thought they are. And if you go a step further and work with the marketing team from Digital Dot, all the chances are that they’ll help you uncover new audience segments that you didn’t even consider before. A whole world of new prospective buyers will open for you, and that’s not a small thing.
Digital marketing strategies for luxury brands
So, you know what you want to achieve and who your target audience is. All that is left is to find a way to reach them. Here are the best digital marketing strategies for luxury brands you can use and that are proven to work.
Creative planning and tactics
People connect luxury brands with glamour and exclusivity, so all your ads on digital channels must evoke those same feelings. And that is indeed the first challenge you’ll face. It’s not easy to say right away which ad will work with which part of your audience. So, your best bet is to create a few and test them all before you spend ”real money” on one.
With that said, focusing on a data-driven strategy will ensure that you get as much as possible from your efforts. Learn about how to collect data for your company, and use that data to create ads that will drive audience engagement. Give your followers what they expect to see from a luxury brand like yours.
Email marketing
You can ask any marketer about it, and they’ll tell you right away that they love email marketing. People open emails from brands, and they respond to them. So, it pays off to spend time working on these. And when you put it like that, it’s not surprising why it’s expected for the global email marketing market to reach the price of almost $18 billion by 2027.
Think of your email strategy as a replacement for your in-person shop assistance. It all needs to look as nice as in your brochures, and all the content must be as helpful as something that the in-store sales rep would tell your customers. It all must be as impressive as the displays you have in the shop.
But the crucial thing here is that all the emails need to feel exclusive and personalized. Generic email blasts won’t cut it here, and you can bet on that. You can’t approach your audience with something they already saw. You’re there to set trends, not follow them.
Paid social
As we already established, luxury buyers aren’t what they were a few years back. And one of the areas where they changed the most is age. Right now, Millenials and Gen Z make about 40% of the luxury market, but in 2027, that number could be more than 60%. So, if the audience you’re looking for is younger, you should look for them in a place where they hang out. Yes, we’re talking about social media marketing.
Now, you can dedicate your time or hire an employee to build you an audience on social networks and take it from there. But that will take time, and most of us want instant results. In that case, you can always pay for social advertising placements. You’ll get to your target audience, and it won’t cost you nearly as much as you might think for the number of benefits you’ll get.
Paid search and SEO
Although each buyer will have their own reason why they bought something, one constant there is that people always trust luxury brands for quality and expertise. No matter what industry they’re in, they’re always the leaders, and that’s what’s important to consumers.
If you have a perfect SEO score, your site will appear as the first on Google when people search for one of the keywords you rank for. That, however, isn’t the easiest thing to do on your own. If that’s the path you want to follow, be sure to outsource it, as it’ll be a lot easier for you that way.
On the other hand, if you want to see results right away, the last of the digital marketing strategies for luxury brands is using paid search. Here, we’re talking about paying Google to promote your site and place it on top of the SERPs. It works amazingly, but it’s not cheap. So, be sure to get help from a PPC expert if you decide to take this route. This way, you won’t pay for something you don’t need.
Author bio:
Joe Harper is a writer and a journalist from New York City. In the last couple of years, he developed a strong passion for digital marketing, and that’s what he’s been doing since then. He spends all the free time he gets with his two daughters.