Luxury marketing is a category of its own. The concept started with small brands that realized the potential of a global market, but knew they couldn’t use traditional marketing to reach the masses. By using traditional marketing, luxury brands would basically remove themselves from their elevated, unattainable position. Maintaining their exclusive status was vital and their approach to marketing themselves as such proved genius.
How is luxury marketing different from regular marketing? Luxury marketing is different from traditional marketing because the science is not consumer facing. Instead of wondering what the high-end consumer wants or needs and crafting a way to present your product as accomplishing that, luxury creates something outside of the consumers’ perceived needs to present as desirable. Luxury gets to make its own rules in its own world and make the consumer believe they need this product and lifestyle.
There are three approaches in luxury marketing. They don’t seem too different at first, but if you allow yourself to think deeply about each approach, you’ll see just how different these strategies are.
- Luxury. Luxury sells itself as its namesake, making its brand carry the highest possible intangible value. Think of some of the most luxurious brands you know, they likely come from foreign origins and exemplify super niche lifestyles to easily target high-end consumers.
- Fashion. Fashion sells itself on itself on the now. This product is what everybody is using and wearing right now- a concept of time that will last finitely. For these reason, you want to buy that product.
- Premium. Premium operates on a comparative logic. Premium compares itself to other, similar products or services and presents itself as the best option. Conveniently for the brand, this product is better because it costs more and you get more.
Basic rules to market by
- No positioning. Never try to position your luxury brand! By positioning, you enter the races with the common brand folk. Always be elusive.
- Make your own desires. Don’t cater to what you know consumers need. Present a new life for them to want and crave.
- Communicate to a second market, to whom the product is unattainable. This is like having a fan base. This group will never be intimate with the band, but the overwhelming desire from the audience makes the singer that much more enticing.
- Always increase demand, even if it’s by decreasing supply. Never make it easy to get your product. Make it better quality and as a result more expensive, fewer in number or physically hard to find and buy.
Do you want to expand your target audience through marketing to reach high-end clientele and the luxurious class? Get in touch with EM360 Digital, one of the best digital marketing agencies in Detorit, to find out more!
