Social media is a great hub where luxury brands can reach and interact with their audiences. It’s a chance for them to not only promote their products but also advertise new offerings to an ever-expanding audience.
Think of it as a medium to set yourself apart from the rest of the businesses in your domain and to build a loyal fan audience. And with a certain approach, luxury brands can shine on social media too – the same way big businesses or small brands do.
Social media for luxury brands – The platforms
Many luxury goods buyers rely on social media for their shopping. And when we say social media, we’re in fact referring to many different platforms. These are mainly the following:
Instagram is well-renowned for hosting a plethora of influencers and professionals who can have a direct link to their audience via the platform. Already popular, the platform saw a boom in anything sales and marketing during the CoVID-19 outbreak. A boom that is yet to slow down – post-COVID-19 days.
The platform offers numerous formats that you can rely on from stories, and image posts to reels. The latter has been extremely popular lately due to the rise of short, consumable video content (thanks TikTok!).
Instagram’s bigger brother, Facebook is still the biggest social media platform. They have one of the most sophisticated and effective ad managers in the market.
With a relatively reasonable budget, you can make wonders as a luxury brand through a Facebook ad campaign. Organic posting is effective as well – as long as you regularly take care of it and maintain a solid and coherent brand tone.
YouTube
Currently the world’s second most popular social media platform, YouTube is the perfect medium for sharing long-form content. As a luxury brand, you can either collaborate with influencers by sponsoring their videos – in return for them showcasing your products of course.
Or, you can create your very own content and upload it to your YouTube channel. While the first choice is usually easier and more straightforward, it doesn’t mean that the second one is ineffective.
A smoother, less intrusive way to get your brand in front of a YouTube audience would be to simply sponsor an influencer or content creator through product placement. So, instead of them focusing solely on your product or service for a whole video, they can briefly go through it at the beginning or the end.
With how people tend to think of ads these days, this approach is probably better – if done properly.
Pinterest, much like Instagram, is heavily reliant on visual content like images. And for that alone, it’s a great platform that can help luxury brands expand their reach and get a hold of a niche but effective audience.
Being a visual discovery platform, Pinterest is used by many people wishing to find new fashionable looks, new products, events & more. And given its convenient saving feature, people are more than likely to add images to their board.
Indeed, the platform manages to drive 33% more referral traffic to shopping sites than Facebook. 71% more than Snapchat and 200% more than Twitter, according to Tailwind. And more importantly, Pinterest is a platform that makes people enjoy looking up new products & services – which is exactly what luxury brands want to do.
The more products or services of yours that make it into people’s boards, the better.
Social media for luxury brands – Examples
One perhaps obvious and important factor in social media marketing is signalling that your products or services are of high quality.
Indeed, you claim to be offering nothing short of amazing in your domain and that should reflect in your social media organic posts and ads too. Think of Tiffy & Co’s “Believe in Dreams” campaign, a campaign that conveys fantasies of a higher status.
Luxury brands are creating content that literally enables customers to imagine and fantasise about life while owning products or services of said brand.
Anyway, without further ado, let us take a look at some examples of content created by luxury brands on social media. But before we get into it, let’s point out the elephant in the room. Although these brands are in no way small businesses, their initiatives can still be mimicked at the small business level.
Rolex
One of the key aspects that most luxury brands share across social media is showcasing a sensational lifestyle – as well as the feelings associated with it. And of course, the only way to attain such a fantasy is by buying the brand’s product or service.
One example of this is the sharing of a video of The Vienna Philharmonic. It’s a 30-second long video that is very highly produced – showcasing the luxury lifestyle that’s associated with wearing their watches.
They also share extremely well-produced and informative videos about environmental efforts and preservations. These videos will have people wearing Rolex watches while doing things that society deems important in this day and age. Nothing short of brilliant, if you ask us.
Chanel
Great at visual storytelling, Chanel’s Instagram account is full of well-produced images and layouts that blend together to tell the brand’s story.
One memorable campaign is the Mother’s Day campaign where Chanel posted 9 pictures of children’s coloured drawings of Chanel’s most popular fragrances. This seemingly random yet creative approach to marketing represents Chanel’s brand ethos.
While luxury brands rely on a style of advertising that transcends day-to-day human reality, this ad breaks from that. And such out-of-sync moves are great at attracting attention – if done properly of course.
Burberry
Another great approach that a luxury brand can take on social media is to tell its story – its heritage. One great example of this is the short film “The Tale of Thomas Burberry” by the brand Burberry (duh).
Directed by Academy Award Winner Asif Kapadia and starring Domhnall Gleeson, Dominic West, Lily James & more. The short film tells the story of the brand’s founder, Thomas Burberry. It ended up winning several awards.
Social media for luxury brands – People trust people
Home to more than a billion active users per month, Instagram offers luxury brands an opportunity like no other to reach a new audience. This can be done through user-generated content. In other words, influencer marketing.
With the rise of the Internet, your brand isn’t entirely what you say it is. In fact, in some corners such as Instagram, it’s what people say about your brand that matters most.
Social media made fashion (for example) and everything in between a democracy. People no longer listened to what the brands had to say about their own products and services. Bloggers paved the way for the individual to have an expert voice.
So, it should come as no surprise that certain influencers rack up hundreds of not millions of followers. And what came with such growth? Timeless collaborations between influencers and luxury brands allowed both parties to grow and reach a wider audience than ever.
Social Media for luxury brands – The different approaches
As a luxury brand owner, you should approach social media content-making and marketing in a unique and somewhat unconventional way. Here are just a few examples of how you can do so:
Be unconventional
Conforming to what people deem to be standard business & marketing strategies isn’t the way to go as a luxury brand owner. As we’ve mentioned earlier, you should treat your target audience as if they have the mindset of a luxury consumer.
The value you’re creating with your products and services needs to be tailored to a niche clientele. To achieve such a feat, analyse how your customers live, work and entertain themselves.
Such research might be time and money-consuming, but it’s very much worth it. Indeed, if your content and ads don’t resonate with the lifestyles and needs of your customers, you’re doing something wrong.
Embrace your uniqueness
Another important idea to keep in mind when creating content and ads for social media is to embrace your weirdness.
Luxury brands usually stay relevant because they offer a combination of weird and wow factors. Highlight your story and sell it. Showing what’s unique and interesting about you as a business and a business owner can really make a niche.
Deliver on your promises
One of the biggest challenges as an up-and-coming high-end business is delivering on your brand’s promises. Your customers – luxury customers – not only buy your product or service but everything your brand represents.
Superior quality must be the cornerstone of your business. And not only should you focus on that superior quality in your social media ads, but also deliver on it – when the time comes.
Conclusion
Social media is a great medium for brands of all kinds – including luxury ones. One of the most important elements for success as a luxury brand is to have a clear image of what to do. You can endorse influencers to do most of the work for you. Or, you can do it yourself – through well-produced content that represents your values as a luxury brand.
You can also aim to set new trends if you’re brave enough. Indeed, luxury brands live and die by their credibility as well as their innovation and experimentation.
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