How To Market Luxury Products – 8 Crucial Steps To Success

By: Frank DePino | May 18, 2023

As the world becomes digital, luxury companies consequently need to know how to market luxury products. It’s understandable that many businesses are resistant to changing their marketing styles. You might not have time to learn how to market luxury products. Generally, unsuccessful or new luxury companies need to know how to market luxury products. 

Luxury product marketing takes exclusivity, quality, experience, and good service. You can use storytelling, content marketing, social media, partnerships, and brand awareness. In either case, the strategy you choose needs to have a clear goal. Knowing how to market luxury products requires keen attention to detail and a deep understanding of your target audience.

Top luxury brands like Chanel have developed ingenious marketing strategies to drive sales. For example, they don’t have a Pinterest account but get hundreds of saved photos and videos daily on there. Gucci also had to think outside the usual marketing box when its popularity took a dip in the 90s. How did they do it? And what strategies are they implementing today to make billions of dollars a year?

What Defines A Luxury Product?

A luxury product is typically made with some of the highest quality materials. It could be silk, cashmere, leather, and many other expensive materials. It also needs to have an exclusivity factor. A luxury product being in limited supply is part of what makes it incredibly desirable. You obviously need to have a high price. The pricing shows the value of what you sell and establishes it as a symbol of status in the world.

What Is Luxury Goods Marketing?

It is the promotion and selling of your high-end and expensive products. You can use it to build the ideal perception of your brand – how you want to be seen. Luxury goods marketing is done physically like with signs and billboards as well as digitally with a website, social media, or an online partnership.

Targeting And Building Your Luxury Audience

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to marketing luxury products. If you try to get everyone to buy your product you will see a much smaller conversion rate than you would like. Figure out who your audience is, what they are buying, and what values you can share with them. 

Whom You Should Target

When it comes to selling luxury items you might think of targeting older people, 40s and up, since they are more financially stable. However, this is not the case. One big chunk of luxury consumers are 25-44 years old and another chunk is 16-24 years old. Social media and the internet were (and still are) booming as the younger generation grows up. Seeing flashy clothes, jewelry, and super cars at a young age made them more knowledgeable about luxury products and brands.

Understand Your Market – What Is Being Bought?

With who your buyers are in mind, you need to know what they buy. It’s smart to track consumer trends. Customers will buy gifts and souvenirs, electronics, and expensive food items and you can use that to your advantage. Evaluate what is being bought and adjust your products and marketing strategy accordingly.

Your Target Audience Values – Use Them To Your Advantage

As you start your marketing campaign, you need to identify what your clients look for in a brand.

How To Market Luxury Products – 8 Pro Tips

• Engaging Ads: Utilizing this effective marketing strategy includes various promotional methods like sales, digital marketing, word-of-mouth, and other advertising avenues. Feature a well-designed website, strong social media presence, surveys, blogs, and TV ads.
• Customer Service: Some people are comfortable dealing with waiting on the phone for long periods of time. But generally, most consumers would rather get things done quickly. Try adding a frequently asked questions section to your website. A very popular form of customer service nowadays is live chat. You can use an AI or real person and get to the root of problems quicker than on the phone.                                                                                                         
• Promotions: Having a promotion, deal or extra product for buyers after making a purchase is very effective for high close rates. In fact, consumers react better to high prices if you have an extra little treat for them at the end.     
•      Your Brand’s Origin: The luxury market reports that a strong narrative is essential to building and driving sales of premium goods. For brands in the luxury market, adding a backstory on websites and other marketing materials is important. This gives you the opportunity to tell your story, from early beginnings until the present day. This will increase customer loyalty and provide deeper context for potential buyers. You should emphasize these stories in any marketing materials you produce.

1. Provide Exclusivity

Luxury brand marketing heavily relies on exclusivity, as it promotes consumer desire through scarcity and rarity. Without realistic limits imposed on their access to Louis Vuitton products, naturally consumers will be far less likely to value them. Therefore, luxury brands often fear the immense availability of the internet and its implications for preserving this sense of exclusivity.

However, this is an incorrect assumption.

The internet does not mean wider distribution of actual products; rather, it allows greater reach for content that builds a foundation for product desirability. In effect, having active digital marketing strategies is similar to running more advertisements in public spaces or airing additional TV commercials. Online strategies have the potential to more efficiently target your ideal customer base and yield increased engagement in relation to offline methods.

Luxury brands can launch private member groups or offer concierge services tailored only for loyal customers in order to foster a sense of exclusivity online as well.

2. Create Emotion

Top brands try to provoke the emotions of their clients to build a loyalty-based community of customers. Take Apple for example:

The core marketing message for Apple is centered around the idea of challenging the status quo. This value drives a commitment to produce products that are beautifully designed, simple to use and have amazing user interface. Ultimately, this emphasis on challenging the status quo results in some of the most powerful and well-designed electronics available today. For your luxury brand, effectively communicating your story and values is essential to successful marketing initiatives.

3. Storytelling and content marketing

By emphasizing the values your brand represents, such as luxury, quality, performance, and style, you can build a sense of loyalty with existing customers. You can accomplish this by putting out well-written stories and content that resonates with the reader. Your customers will be more likely to provide positive endorsements when they identify with the values you promote. Developing value-based advocacy for your brand is an essential part of successful online marketing.

Luxury product brands can use content to appeal to customers’ need for status. Creating and publishing content that can easily be shared gives customers a way to demonstrate their style, intelligence, and trendiness among their friends. By taking advantage of this motivation, brands can encourage more engagement with their product or services.

4. Visual Aids

With so much of people’s time being filled with the consumption of media, visual marketing has become critical at this point. Some of the most common visual marketing media includes:

• Images
• Shareable memes and gifs
• Video Marketing
• Infographics
• Presentations

Creating the ideal visual marketing strategy requires thoughtful consideration and planning. There are various paths to success, each providing its own advantages. It’s important to explore every possible option in order to ensure that you devise a plan of action tailored specifically to your brand’s unique needs.

5. Social Media Marketing

Advertising luxury products often requires imagery that conjures up exclusive emotions. You want to show how it feels to drive a high-end car, wear designer clothing, and have exclusive experiences. Photography is one of the most effective mediums for communicating this aspirational tone.

Visual social networks offer some of the best opportunities for you to build brand awareness and develop a loyal following.

6. Partnerships with Influencers

Luxury influencers leverage platforms such as social media, blogs, and email newsletters. These are the top luxury influencers today. They produce powerful and relevant luxury content for their followers. The purpose of this content is to:

• Monetize relationships with the audience
• Promote recommendations and expertise related to luxury goods
• Establish credibility in the luxury brand industry

7. Pricing Strategy

In crafting an effective luxury pricing strategy, you should consider the unique value of your brand and product. You also need to keep your target audience and competition in mind.

Value-Based Pricing: This kind of price is based on the special benefits of your product. You could offer much better craftsmanship, materials, and design. Then, highlight these features so that people justify spending more money on your products.

Above Market Pricing: This is where you set a price significantly higher than what similar products are priced at. This promotes exclusivity that better attracts your target audience.

8. Market Your Brand

Work with praiseworthy influencers, tell a story, and make limited time deals. Undeniably, these are the best ways to get people talking about you and ultimately building your brand awareness.

Conclusion

Luxury products simply can’t be marketed the same way everything else is. You need to target the right audience correctly. In conclusion, by building exclusivity, brand awareness, an engaging story, and an online and social media presence you can have the next big luxury product brand that people can’t get enough of. Contact us today with any questions about how to market luxury products.

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals, building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.