From what we have seen over the years, there are only two kinds of blogs about luxury products:
- The ones that sell you on life experience
- The ones that sell you on the shopping experience
I think everyone should be interested in life experience, in the idea of how to live better, more stylishly, and more elegantly. And yet so many luxury brands don’t understand this.
They don’t get that their customers are people who want to buy into a lifestyle and not just a product or a brand. They try to appeal to your sense of exclusivity, but it comes off as “Look at me! Look at what I have! “
Do you know who does this well? the French luxury design house, Hermes. Their marketing campaigns are all about being a “belonger” rather than an “owner.” You’re not buying something from them, you’re joining them. It’s about the experience and not just the product itself and this is why they have such loyal customers who will buy anything that comes from their brand, whether it’s a $300 or $3,000 bag.
So what does this mean for you as a luxury brand? You should be selling your life experience, not just your product.
Also, take another great example here, Apple. They don’t sell computers. They sell experiences that change the way you live and interact with technology in your life. Or Red Bull, who doesn’t sell energy drinks, they sell an experience of feeling on top of the world (even if it’s only for a few hours).
Make sure that your brand is offering more than just a product. This is how you build true loyalty and turn people into “belongers” rather than “customers.”
Conventional & Unconventional Distribution Channels
We are all accustomed to buying products from traditional distribution channels such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc. But what about using unconventional channels?
One example is the Fyre Festival, which was a failed music festival that took place in the Bahamas. The founders wanted to target millennials, who were often considered the most tech-savvy generation of all time. So they decided to skip traditional marketing channels and only promote their event on Instagram.
Their efforts paid off, as they raised $8 million in ticket sales in 2017. However, the festival was a disaster and left hundreds of people stranded on an island with no accommodation.
A more successful example is Soylent, which started out as a meal replacement shake targeted at busy professionals who wanted to save time in the kitchen. It turned out that these same professionals were also frequent users of Amazon Prime and began ordering their products from there. Eventually, Soylent launched a product on Amazon, which led to a big uptick in sales.
From there, Soylent has moved into other products, including protein bars and bottled water. Now the company is profitable and on track to be cash-flow positive by the end of this year.
Soylent is not alone in seeing an Amazon bump. Mattress startup Casper found that its products sold better when listed directly on Amazon than when purchased through its own website. Pillow startup Parachute also saw a bump when Amazon started selling its products.
In general, when people buy products online, they are much more likely to search for them on Amazon than on any other site. If you can’t sell your product on Amazon, it’s hard to see how you will ever make money in the e-commerce world.
Okey so we’ve talked about life experiences, now let’s move on. The blogs that sell you on the shopping experience are the ones that make you feel like you’re buying something special. Luxury products that sell you on the shopping experience are also called “experiential products”. They are not really a necessity, but the desire to have them will get you in the door. You can try on a pair of jeans or sit on a new couch before you buy it.
By far, one of the best examples I like the most is Apple. When you walk into an Apple store, you can play with the latest technology and pick up one of their devices before you buy it. These stores are designed to make customers feel good about their buying decisions and help them justify their purchases. Even we here at Elite Luxury Class use Apple products to write 🙂
Now, as a side note, if you are a luxury brand and you’re going to spend money on marketing, why not spend it on something that is proven to work? I can’t imagine any business owner who would buy the ingredients for a product and then throw them away. The same goes for your marketing budget. You should invest in things that you know will give you a return on your investment (ROI).
For most businesses, online advertising is the best way to get their message out there without spending a lot of money. It’s fast, cheap, and measurable. What more could you ask for? Your customers are online. If you’re not talking to them there, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
If you want to achieve your goals, then feel free to contact us and we will be more than happy to help you !
Conclusion: As a luxury product vendor, you can easily tell which blog posts are written by the kind of blogger that wants to sell you on the shopping experience. They probably won’t even mention how their product will improve your life or how it will change your life for the better in any way at all.
On the other hand, the blogs that are in favour of selling you on life experience will always take time to describe what using this type of product does for a person, and why it’s important to buy that particular item.
To take it a step further, you can tell the difference between someone who is going to sell you on a product, and someone selling on life experience by looking at their actual blog posts and how much time they’ve put into their materials.
