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In 2011, retail was still a viable route to market for most luxury brands. Internet sales were increasing, but at the time, online shoppers were reluctant to buy expensive items out of sight from the Internet.

This reluctance has now all but disappeared. Around £ 17 billion in luxury goods are sold online, which is 8% of all sales worldwide.

The cell phones that most of us were using 10 years ago have nothing to do with the black portable touchscreen computers where we can find and compare luxury items and everything else in seconds.

In a new report titled “The Future of Luxury” by students of the International Masters in Luxury Management (IMLUX) program, 80% of sales are “digitally influenced” today, compared to 45% seven years ago .

What does that mean? On the individuals buying journey, four out of five shoppers accessed “digital touchpoints” at least twice before purchasing a product or service. Brands have no control over some of these touchpoints – they are bloggers, influencers, and social media peers who seek advice from consumers.

Luxury brands are investing a lot more money in these newer forms of marketing with the aim of increasing sales and building meaningful online connections with more of their target audience.

In this article, we reflect on the most successful digital marketing approaches used by luxury brands with a particular focus on their websites and social media campaigns.

Search engine optimization

Temple / Pixabay

Established brands have a built-in advantage when people search for them or their most famous products online.

Take the examples of Pandora and Tiffany’s – two very successful brands.

For terms such as “Pandora bracelets”, “Pandora charms”, “Tiffany engagement rings” and “Tiffany necklaces”, both brands landed in first place in the organic (unpaid) search results on Google.

None of the companies fell into the trap many well-known companies do by relying on the power and recognizability of their brands to drive traffic to their websites.

Pandora’s keyword-driven SEO strategy and tightly structured URLs mean that they come first in non-branded terms such as “promise rings”, “earrings”, “bracelets” and “charms”. Likewise, Tiffany is ready first for “Women’s Jewelry”, “Shop Jewelry” and “Real Pearl Necklaces”.

Your keyword strategy should focus on successful terms that match your range of products, but don’t trust a customer to use your brand name as part of their search query. This gives you the opportunity not only to compete with other luxury brands but also to sell to consumers who can afford your products and for whatever reason would not have used your brand name if they were willing to purchase a particular product.

Tell your brand story through great content

Google prefers websites that are constantly updated and added, just like Pandora and Tiffany’s with regular blog posts.

Ideally, much of your written content should be pillar content – content that is so thorough and generous with its information that others will link to it.

Articles about your products, articles about company history, articles that give visitors the information they need to make an informed purchase. Let visitors know why your company exists and what you do and why.

Video marketing also offers exciting opportunities. For example, a luxury tour operator may want to create in-depth articles about the destinations they take their clients to – articles about a destination’s history, its best restaurants, local ways to appreciate art, and more that assisted with a 2-3 minute immersion time their visitors become even more.

Whether texts, pictures or videos, by applying via your social media channels and e-mail newsletters, you can always draw added value from content.

Create enthusiasm for your products

Some brands want to sell online, but others need one more contact with a prospect before a sale can take place.

If someone visits a page that can sell or if they can leave their contact details for follow-up, assume that this may be the last time you will ever see them.

Use compelling text, beautiful pictures, and engaging videos to showcase your brand and explain why the product or service someone is interested in is the right choice. If possible, back up this with customer and reviewer testimonials to show the visitor why others think your brand and what you are selling was the right choice for them, too. After all, “social proof” is part of the attractiveness of every luxury brand.

Apple may or may not be a luxury brand – the debate continues. It may only be a phone though, but the way they showcase the iPhone 13 Pro on their website is one of the reasons many consider their products to be high quality, beautiful and luxurious.

Building your email list

Geralt / Pixabay

See each visitor as an opportunity to make a lasting connection by inviting them to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Email marketing delivers a very high return – up to 2,500%. Many companies use email marketing as an opportunity to send one advertisement at a time to their subscribers, but luxury brand email marketing should be different. With all luxury products and services, one reason people buy them is because they subscribe to a lifestyle and enjoy the benefits of the product or service.

The emails your customers receive should look and feel just as instinctively as part of your business like any direct mail campaign you would send out. The layout of the email, the choice of words (especially in the subject line), and the overall aesthetic should feel like an integral part of your overall external communication and Marcomm approach.

Create exclusivity

Early concerns that having an online presence would somehow dilute the exclusivity of luxury products and services have proven to be unfounded. Some argue that the opposite might actually be the case.

If one of the functions of owning luxury goods is to show status to others, it could be argued that owners of luxury goods now have a higher perceived status than ever before.

The Internet has sharpened public awareness of the quality of these products and the exclusivity of individual brands. This new visibility has created a new demand for these products and services, but since the price at which they are offered is an insurmountable barrier to entry for most, this demand remains unsatisfied. This lack of satisfaction leads to a feedback loop in which the perceived exclusivity increases over time.

For your actual customers, you can get a sense of exclusivity online through a mixture of:

• Loyalty benefits,
• Concierge services (as offered by the luxury magazine SWM to its customers) and
• private online member groups.

If your business has the branch network to support it, combining the online and offline worlds becomes theirs by inviting your key customers to events like launch parties where they can meet and share with other like-minded advocates Develop existing loyalty and increase the likelihood of selling to this important cohort more often.

Attractive, functional UX

Consumers are now demanding that all businesses’ websites be accessible on whatever device they use.

On a standard website, 55% of the traffic comes from cell phones. Visitors to the desktop version of a website stay 4 minutes and 50 seconds longer on a website than visitors to the mobile version.

Mobile users appreciate the ease with which a website can be navigated and don’t expect to have to work particularly hard to find the information they want.

Luxury brand social media

Wolkenluchs / Pixabay

According to Business of Fashion, luxury customers post twice as much as the average user, interact three times more and consume five times as much content. Generation Z will be responsible for 45% of sales of luxury brands in 2025 that spend up to six hours of their week shopping online.

Visual social networks

Many luxury products are admired for both their looks and the materials they are made of. Luxury service providers also offer their customers moments and experiences that they can share with their friends and followers.

Instagram offers brands the opportunity to tell their story through pictures and videos. You can encourage your followers and customers to share their experiences with other followers and customers through user-generated content to form a community.

Pinterest’s 460 million users are worth targeting for luxury brands.

Using social media to generate sales and website traffic

For luxury brands that want to sell their products and services through social media platforms, Facebook Ads can deliver targeted advertising to your most important audiences that they can respond to immediately in order to order from you.

Social media provides the opportunity for all businesses, including luxury brands, to connect on a personal level with their new and future customer base. While the vast majority of your content shouldn’t be purely commercial since it is there to drive new sales and traffic to your website, some of it should be.

While you are addressing new and future customers on Facebook and Instagram, your company is a guest on a platform over whose functioning and rules you have no influence. If you encourage social media followers to visit your website, where you are in full control, you have the option to collect their direct contact information either through a newsletter subscription or when purchasing from you.