Luxury products continue to outperform other sectors across the globe.
The total dollar investment in luxury brands achieved higher dollar returns compared to retail, technology, and S&P 500 markets, according to research from McKinsey.
From the U.S. to China, luxury brands use sales strategies that attract new segments of aspirational consumers. Brands like Louis Vuitton continue to lead the apparel, fashion, and luxury (AFL) industry. However, smaller companies are seeing mixed results from their luxury product sales strategies.
Cost pressures, supply chain disruptions, and consumers shifting to ecommerce are some of the blockages to growth for smaller brands.
With Millennials and Gen Z consumers driving growth with increased buying enthusiasm, now is the perfect time to update your luxury brand’s sales strategy.
Sales and marketing strategies are two distinct components that drive your brand’s growth. Both strategies need regular reviews to keep up with changing consumer behavior. Many brands still view marketing and sales as part of the same strategy – to sell as many products to as many satisfied customers as possible. The truth is, these strategies are different by necessity.
Marketing focuses on getting your products in front of potential customers. The two most popular strategies include inbound and outbound marketing. These strategies typically include:
Marketing strategies are how you identify and qualify good leads (or filter out bad ones). Sales strategies, therefore, focus on:
The best luxury brand marketing campaigns will attract ideal customers that your sales team can close consistently. Aligning your marketing strategy closely with your sales strategy can help you grow your brand exponentially.
Some of the emerging luxury brands that are getting it right include Lukhanyo Mdingi (which recently became part of the Louis Vuitton Moёt Hennessy group) and Studio 189. Both brands use modern sales and marketing strategies to broadcast their unique designs on platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
The digital age makes it much easier for brands to qualify, convert, and retain new aspirational consumers. Social media increases a brand’s reach exponentially while ecommerce platforms make closing the deal a lot easier.
For this reason, the six tips below will help you align your marketing and sales strategies into a single, frictionless funnel.
Luxury brands are all about appealing to the customer. The first step is to provide a frictionless, engaging, and enjoyable customer journey. If the customer reaches your site from a social media post, everything from the visuals to the brand’s personality should be consistent.
An ecommerce site that doesn’t match the brand’s personality will fail to convert potential customers even if they have buying intent. Fender regularly posts vintage guitar designs on social media and not surprisingly, customers rave about their products.
What sets Fender apart is its Mod Shop. It allows customers to personalize products and post their designs on social media. Customers get feedback online, and many will be willing to buy if their networks approve or “like” the design.
Product personalization gives customers a greater sense of satisfaction because it provides an engaging experience. To get started with product personalization, check out this blog from ConfigureID.
You should have rich and engaging visuals on your ecommerce site. The human brain can process visual information in as little as 13 milliseconds. What’s more, 90% of the information the brain processes is visual – and it does so 60,000 times faster than text.
When it comes to your ecommerce luxury sales strategy, visuals are the best means of communicating with your potential customers. Consider how important data visualization is for marketing and sales analysis in our organization.
The same applies to your product’s visuals. With modern technologies like WebGL and photorealistic 3D rendering, you can provide fully immersive, product visualizations to your customers. Consumers want interactive visuals and 3D models that allow them to zoom, rotate, and flip products. Because they are making digital buying decisions, photorealistic renderings create trust between the customer and the product.
Visuals also contribute to customer satisfaction which increases sales and loyalty. If you still use 2D photos on your site, you should consider improving your product visualization strategy.
Modern consumers have unique tastes and styles that luxury brands should help highlight. Not only are customers more likely to buy personalized products, but they are also willing to pay 20% more for these items.
Besides the Fender Mod Shop mentioned above, another example is Louis Vuitton, which allows customers to put a unique touch onto their products. Customers can add their own monograms to handbags, change the color of certain elements, and add additional accessories in an interactive, product personalization platform.
Ray-Ban also provides a complete product configuration experience for all its classic sunglass designs. These sales strategies resonate with consumers as they are co-designing their products. Seeing the product change in real-time immerses consumers in the shopping experience, making each potential customer more likely to proceed to checkout.
Product personalization is now a core element of any luxury brand’s sales strategy. The more personalization you offer, the more sales you’ll receive, and customers will become brand ambassadors by showing off their designs with friends and family.
Selling physical products online is only one way to attract new customers. The rise of digital assets and emerging platforms like the metaverse gives you new opportunities. Many brands are creating digital products that accompany the purchase of a physical item.
The digital product belongs to the buyer, and they can even sell these to another person if they want. Technologies like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are already part of the sales strategies for several luxury high end brands.
You don’t have to provide NFTs just for virtual goods. Brands are using this technology to provide digital experiences and exclusive offers to events that help elevate the appeal of their real-world products.
Augmented reality and the gamification of shopping experiences continue to surge in popularity. Brands that want to stand out need to consider including phygital buying experiences in their sales strategy.
Brand collaborations and activations appeal to the new generation of consumers. Just like celebrity endorsements, today’s influencers can bring many benefits to your sales strategy. These techniques increase your reach and create trust between your brand and any potential customers.
Activations can include hosting cocktail events like Louis Vuitton or having a pop-up shop at someone else’s event. Along with the exposure this gives you, it also increases your brand’s reputation by associating with people or events that your ideal customers love. These activations create an air of exclusivity that speaks to aspirational shoppers.
Considering all of the other tips above, you can create brand activations that incorporate visualizations, augmented reality, phygital experiences, and product personalization into your luxury sales strategy.
A see-now, buy-now shopping experience for VIP clients lets you show your creativity, product quality, and attention to customers’ desires. Even those guests who don’t make a purchase will broadcast the event to other shoppers over social media, which adds to the air of luxury your brand has to demonstrate.
Another way that celebrities and influencers can help you is to provide you with hyper-exclusive products.
Imagine how customers will respond to a custom guitar design by a famous artist like Adele or Jimmy Page. By creating limited-edition celebrity designs of products, the scarcity of the items will drive up the price while willing buyers will flock to your ecommerce store.
Fender also helps boost emerging artists’ careers by releasing the top 25 guitarists every year, who in turn help boost the guitar manufacturer’s appeal to younger audiences.
Exclusive products are collectible and will likely increase in value along with the rise of the celebrity’s career. To keep up with today’s youth culture, you should include hyper-luxury in your sales strategy.
ConfigureID delivers immersive, engaging shopping experiences to luxury shoppers with 3D visualizations, augmented reality, and product personalization features. Universally compatible with all ecommerce platforms, ConfigureID’s product personalization platform can let customers co-design and co-create items with real-time, photorealistic visuals. The capabilities available from ConfigureID enable brands to streamline the entire sales funnel and implement all of the tips mentioned above.
To see ConfigureID in action, schedule a demo. We’ll show you how we can help improve your luxury product sales strategy.
