And How To Apply Them to Your Business
Luxury brands often work because they (at least in part) have no essential value or utility. They’re aspirational. They’re a way of showing you’re not just keeping up with the Joneses but also getting ahead of the Morgans, Thomases and Llewellyns. They allow us to feel good about our lot …with just a spray of Chanel, a sip of Veuve Clicquot or a drive along Penarth Esplanade with the top down.
But there’s more to it than that. Here are 3 success strategies that luxury brands use and that you can apply to your business.
1. Have a Story to Tell
Most luxury brands have a story. This could be about celebrity, chance encounters or rags to riches, for example. It could be a story that becomes legend – maybe an adventure of how the founder, against all odds, managed to get an audience with the king of some distant land by sailing through stormy waters to bring food supplies to his daughter, trapped on a remote island – and then was commissioned to provide the royalty with their caviar, in recognition of his efforts. There’s often an air of mystery around the story. The story needn’t be so grand but it does need to be interesting. So think, what’s your story (we all have one!) and how can you tell it in a way that relates to your market?
2. Provide a Statement for your Customers
People who buy luxury brands are making a statement about their lifestyle and good taste. Allow them to make this statement with your product or service. Even if your product or service represents good value for money and may not be associated with luxury, there may be something you can offer or a way of presenting your business that makes it feel like luxury… for example, a broker often saves you money on business, personal or professional services but even though the buyer of these services may want to (privately) save money, a more powerful public statement for them is “I have someone that takes care of all that for me.” How can your product or service feel like luxury to your customer?
3. Go for Excellence
People who buy luxury brands usually have a genuine appreciation of product or service excellence. This expectation can also spill over when they’re purchasing non-luxury items with a non-luxury price tag. Whilst this may seem unfair, a savvy small business can take advantage of this by meeting or exceeding expectations to make themselves the obvious buying choice. Sometimes achieving a higher level of excellence doesn’t really cost much, it can just be about doing things differently. Becoming known for excellence can also mean you can tap into higher paying client work or higher profit product sales. How can you package your product or service that gets your brand associated with excellence?