Which luxury yacht marketing trends are important in 2021, and will the way we market yachts and yachting services change forever in the post-COVID era? Relevance has produced a full whitepaper answering these questions, conveniently broken down into specialisms including social media, virtual experiences, digital advertising, content & PR, and SEO.
Our whitepaper can be downloaded for free today, contact our team for details. First, discover the topline takeaways below.
What you can learn from our luxury yacht marketing whitepaper
Social media
- Superyachts such as M/Y LOON, which has a highly popular Instagram account with 56,000 followers, accredit some of their charter success to their social media accounts, showing the ongoing relevance of these platforms. Having standalone social channels for different yachts can help increase their visibility and engagement, ultimately driving yacht charters.
- During the pandemic, yacht video tours have been shown to be a vital tool for marketing boats, and the popularity of these videos will continue into the post-COVID era. Create them in a way that works for different channels by shooting in both landscape and portrait, and take a longer form video (useful for YouTube, Facebook and IGTV) which can be cropped into shorter sections and used for Stories (15 second clips), Reels (30 seconds), and Feed videos (1 minute max).
- People who charter or purchase yachts love everything about them, so a top tip for 2021 is to create an IGTV and YouTube series featuring interviews with the architects/ interior designers/ engineers – all the creative minds that managed to bring the yacht to life.
Virtual experiences
- Digital experiences will still hold value after COVID-19 restrictions disappear, being a more environmentally friendly and less costly method of marketing. However, successful yachting brands will offer both in-person and online experiences, allowing them to meet different clients’ preferences.
- When going virtual, businesses must make sure that they include the same touchpoints and interactions that their in-person luxury yacht marketing show would have. For example, virtual reality, augmented reality and 360° tours can give a life-like experience of touring a yacht. Offer networking experiences by hosting a virtual drinks session, sending attendees their favourite drinks beforehand to add a personal touch. Hold a virtual design meeting online using a branded home hologram machine. The possibilities are endless.
Digital advertising
- Digital ads have taken up a key portion of the advertising budget of yacht marketeers for several years now, but COVID-19 has re-distributed even more funds towards PPC and social media advertising, with clients much less likely to be reached through Out-Of-Home advertising during the pandemic. Due to the granular targeting possibilities of digital ads, this investment will likely continue long into the future.
- For 2021, brands will want to target their luxury yacht marketing campaigns much more regionally, thinking about who can travel where. The days of “global targeting” campaigns are on pause; focusing campaigns by targeting specific pockets/regions is a much more effective use of budget and can help businesses manage spend and prioritisation of locations much more easily.
- Remember to think locally in terms of terminology. If a campaign is targeting the USA, use “vacation”, “boat”, and “rental” for charter keywords, whereas for a UK campaign say “holiday”, “yacht”, and “charter”.
Content & PR
- Online content consumption has continued to soar in 2021. What’s more, despite circulations of print publications falling, offline content still holds some relevance for luxury yacht marketers, with a U.S. Postal Service study showing that households with higher incomes typically order more periodicals.
- Brands should use social listening tools to understand who their yachting clients really are and solve the problems that they have, be it their requirements or desires. Often, businesses write content to meet functional needs but not so much emotional needs. If you can show that you understand your clients’ emotional needs and meet them in a unique and interesting way, that is what will make individuals remember and return to your brand, time and time again.
- Businesses should make sure they take the time to understand each and every community within their audience, and that they are reflecting that through their content. 2021 is no time to be ignoring certain groups of an audience, or ‘white-washing’ content.
SEO
- Changes are imminent for Google’s page experience algorithms, with one of the biggest ranking updates in years confirmed to be taking place in May 2021. This update will see page experience signals becoming a ranking factor, something that has been debated in the SEO industry for some time.
- However, the SEO fundamentals remain the same – targeting a website around relevance keywords is still an important part of luxury yacht marketing.
- Brands should create specialised landing pages on their websites to target very particular searches, featuring amenities or itineraries that only HNWIs might be interested in.
- They should also consider making their website multilingual and optimising for keywords in a range of languages, to target the many non-english speaking HNWIs around the world.
- Optimising for Google’s Featured Snippets allows a brand to occupy a significant amount of SERP real estate through organic means. Some methods of Featured Snippet optimisation work better than others.
To understand the full story behind these topline points, and to get plenty of extra insights and unique perspectives from our experts, download our luxury yacht marketing whitepaper today by contacting [email protected]