Paid advertising is a central component of an effective digital marketing strategy, helping luxury brands to reach and engage with their target audience. When done correctly, paid advertising is affordable and measurable, giving an incredible return on investment and helping lead potential clients through the sales funnel.
Paid advertising is multi-faceted and spans different types of media, including paid social media, pay per click – known as PPC – paid Google ads, and programmatic advertising. When paid advertising is hyper-targeted it can help luxury brands reach new audiences, build awareness, and then drive them to action, ensuring a full funnel conversion. Unlike an SEO strategy, where it may take several months to gain a premium position on Google, a paid media strategy can deliver immediate results,
enabling premium brands to reach the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Page or SERPS.
Paid ads for luxury brands seeking to target Ultra-High-Net-Worth-Individuals requires a bespoke approach, one that speaks to this highly exclusive audience.
The products and services that luxury brands offer are particularly niche and come with their own unique keywords that help differentiate them from cheaper brands. It is therefore imperative to run highly targeted Google paid media search campaigns in order to reach people searching these specific keywords and not those in search of cheaper brand options.
A multi-pronged paid media approach should be taken, with ads tailored to appeal to UHNWIs as well as their trusted advisors, who are frequently the ones that introduce UHNWIs to luxury brands and service providers and are intimately involved in the decision-making process.
Finally, paid advertising requires a full-funnel approach – one that expertly guides potential customers through the awareness, consideration, and lead-generation phase. By embracing a full-funnel approach you will be able to get the right customers to your site.
Relevance’s paid advertising team share some of their top tips in developing a hyper-targeted campaign to reach and engage UHNWIs, as well as guidance on the various sales funnel stages.
Top tips on how to develop a hyper-targeted paid media campaign
Understanding who your audience is is the first step in building a hyper-targeted paid advertising campaign. Relevance uses proprietary audience insight tools coupled with our in-depth understanding and market intelligence of UHNW audiences and persona insights.
Key aspects to consider when building a paid advertising campaign are:
1 – Location targeting – Relevance handpicks postcodes where property is valued at over a million pounds
2 – Specific interest targeting – Our team understands the unique interests of UHNWIs, and will target audiences already engaged in these interests, including niche luxury brands rather than mass-market luxury brands that are not exclusively followed by UHNWIs
3 – Education – on select social media platforms such as LinkedIn targeting those who attended the most expensive private schools in the world can ensure ads reach the right audience
4 – Geo-targeted campaigns at certain events, such as exclusive events like the Monaco Yacht Show where there will be a high concentration of UHNWIs
5 – Targeting travel destinations – such as Gstaad, Necker Island, and The Hamptons, all of which attract UHNWIs.
6 – Targeting specific sites where we know UHNWIs browse. We utilise a list of more than 500 websites where we know UHNWIs visit and we use these to assist our clients with their paid media campaigns.
7 – Targeting specific products and experiences that UHNWIs crave, including fine art, rare and exclusive limited edition products, cars and watches, underground bunkers, rare wines, private islands, and tickets to space.
Funnel strategies: Top tips to lead your target audience through the sales funnel
Taking the time to lead your target audience through the sales funnel can reap dividends. Here are some tips on each stage of the sales funnel, with real-life examples that we have generated for our clients.
Sales funnel stage 1: Awareness
The awareness stage is at the very top of the funnel and enables your target audience on social media platforms to become familiar with a luxury brand. The awareness stage is an important part of a paid media strategy because it introduces your brand and product to new audiences.
This stage is particularly important for high-value goods and services, which are much more likely to be a highly considered purchase. Introducing a luxury brand and highlighting its core features and how the brand matches your target audience’s values and ethos can ensure an immediate connection and engagement with your audience.
Awareness display ads can be targeted to reach individuals who have an active interest in your brand’s offerings, are using key search terms related to your brand’s products or services, or have been on relevant competitors’ websites.
For a Monaco-based media company, our paid ads social media team created highly targeted awareness stage ads, generating results that speak for themselves; 56 million video views, 865 thousand likes, and 133 thousand shares since launch in July 2019. We started the campaign by identifying 10 specific audience personas and then creating targetable audiences within our ad network.
To ensure the awareness stage ads were hyper-targeted we identified the audience groups that the client wanted to reach, then refined the groups into six core personas, segmenting by country. This enabled us to allocate the budget effectively to where the largest audiences were located for optimal delivery and maximum reach. This system also allows us to be flexible with our budget and optimise based on the performance of each persona, country and platform.
Sales funnel stage 2: Consideration
The consideration stage of any paid advertising campaign is the luxury brand marketers opportunity to influence the purchase decisions of their target audience. They have warmed up the audience in the brand awareness stage and introduced them to their brand, products and services. Now is the time to re-engage with your audiences and show them why your products and services are better than your competitors. At this stage of the sales funnel a user has a good idea of what they’re looking for and maybe comparing and considering products and services from a variety of different providers. This is the opportunity to show why you are the best.
The consideration part of a paid media campaign enables luxury brand marketers to pull traffic to a brand’s site and gain a better understanding of their audience. At this stage of the sales funnel you can also start to build a remarketing audience – by targeting specific individuals who have already interacted with your brand – for example, they have liked your page on Facebook, or gone onto your website.
For one of our luxury yachting clients, we were able to generate significant traffic to their website for the 2021 summer Mediterranean yachting season. By running highly targeted super-specific keyword-targeted Google search campaigns, we were able to drive consumers actively searching for selected keywords to our client’s website. Compared to the 2020 summer Mediterranean season, we generated a 145% increase in impressions, a 128% increase in clicks, a 159% increase in conversions, a 13% conversion rate increase, all at 40% less in cost per conversion.
Sales funnel stage 3: Conversion
Conversion is the final stage of the funnel. This is when you will have a highly engaged audience. For example, they may have signed up for your newsletter or viewed several pages on your website. Now is the time to drive them to action, utilising popular conversion ads such as lead forms and shopping ads.
Remarketing to an audience that has already engaged with your brands requires a very considered approach. Paid media ads must very clearly convey the benefit of your product or service offering, and appropriate language and tone of voice should give a clear call to action.
Google Analytics can also support conversion ads by ensuring they are targeted correctly. By segmenting audience data to show only website traffic from users who have completed a goal on the website we are able to create our own benchmarks to determine how long a user may need to spend on our website and how many pages on average they may need to view before they complete a certain action. We are then able to use these averages to create remarketing audiences based upon these average figures. Our paid media ads team uses these audiences to re-engage with these highly valuable users to bring them back onto the website with the aim of them completing a goal on site.
We recently ran a series of lead generation campaigns on select social media platforms for a global yacht brokerage during the Monaco Yacht Show and Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, delivering quality enquiries on both Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as enquiries via our keyword targeted Google search campaign.
The growth of e-commerce
In the post Covid-era the importance of e-commerce as part of a paid media strategy cannot be overlooked.
According to Statista, online shopping is now one of the most popular online activities in the world. In 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars, compared to 1.336 trillion in 2014. Projected figures are expected to rise to 6.338 trillion in 2024.
More luxury brands than ever before are embracing paid advertising e-commerce strategies, including running targeted shopping ads on Facebook, for example, to a highly engaged audience that is ready to purchase.
There is no question that paid advertising can generate incredible results and reach new engaged audiences for premium brands. When done correctly it can deliver immediate results that are also trackable.
However, it is important to note that paid advertising can not work to its full potential on its own. To truly reap the benefits of a paid advertising campaign it needs to be part of a border digital marketing strategy, including SEO, social media, and digital PR. Having an effective CRM system can also further bolster paid advertising results. By combining a 360 digital approach luxury brands can ensure they reach the widest possible target audience and drive them to action.
Relevance is a full-service digital marketing agency specialising in reaching UHNWIs via a 360 digital approach. If you would like to learn more about our paid advertising services, contact our team today.
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