7 Common Mistakes for Targeting Luxury Clients
Ah, the luxury market. How can you attract customers with money to spend? Are you positioning yourself and your business to the wrong market? If you’re looking to sell luxury products or high-end services, make sure you’re not making these 7 common mistakes for targeting luxury clients.
AND, as a bonus, we include our top tips on how to fix these mistakes. You can thank us later :)
Mistake 1: Showcasing work that doesn’t look luxury.
The work you showcase on your website and in your marketing will attract similar work in the future. So, if you only have budget work to show, find creative ways to show your luxury capability. Be selective on showcasing images that most align with your goals.
Tip: A brand photoshoot can help you uplevel the visuals on your site and social media. It helps you visually explain what you sell, even without an extensive portfolio or images of the services themselves. Taking photos in a setting that aligns your brand with luxury can shift how your brand is seen in the market.
Mistake 2: Relying on budget customers to generate high end leads.
Like customers attract like customers. If you’re working with budget clients, chances are they will refer you to clients with similar needs.
Instead of repeating this cycle, put energy into entering new circles. There are many free networking opportunities available online and offline to form genuine, long-term, mutual relationships. Paid opportunities like conferences, workshops, masterminds, and membership groups may bring more ROI.
Tip: Creating referral agreements with other professionals can be a great way to make it worth someone’s while to explain why you’re a good fit for someone in their network. Consider a legal contract for referral programs.
Mistake 3: Non-custom sales experience.
A luxury client wants attention and special touches. If you are selling luxury goods, package them up with attention to detail and premium-feeling materials. If you are selling high-end services, leverage a custom-branded proposal to deliver recommendations that are tailored to your client’s needs. This proposal can be templatized but easily adapted to your clients with their names, tweaked line items, descriptions, and even images.
Tip: To make this process more efficient, try using a password-protected sales page on your website so it matches the rest of your online presence. Alternatively, have your designer create a proposal template in an easy-to-edit software like Canva so it matches your branding but is fast to adjust and send out to your prospects.
Mistake 4: Ineffective sales process.
Is your sales process making it easy to buy from you as THE choice? Or, is your sales process creating frustration and even confusion over whether to become a customer?
Optimize and streamline your sales process to make it more efficient. If you are a service provider and there is a lag time between the time a client inquires on a service and gets an answer, leverage tech on your website to instantly get answers in their hands with integrations like Video Ask or an auto-responder set up specific to a query with Zapier. If you’re selling products, make the specs, FAQs, and elegant examples of your product in use readily accessible.
Tip: Make a list of all questions and objections you got in your business in the last year and make sure they are all succinctly addressed on your website and sales script.
Mistake 5: Focusing on target client avatars that lack a luxury budget.
Client avatars can quickly become outdated. If you defined your luxury brand's ideal client archetype a while ago, make sure the pain points and desires of this demographic or still luxury. You might be surprised to learn that in 2023, the generation most inclined to buy luxury services and goods is Gen Z. Make sure your brand voice and personality resonate with the group that aligns with your offer.
Tip: Revisit your client avatar annually and update it based on the types of customers that generated the most revenue for your business, made repeat sales and experienced the most satisfaction with your products or services. Using real data and actual customers as examples will help you tailor your messaging to the right audience.
Mistake 6: A website that’s hard to find and hard to navigate.
Your luxury customer is willing to pay more for a better experience. If your site isn’t rolling out the red carpet, and quickly, you could lose the sale.
Make sure your website is coming up when luxury-related keywords for your product or services are entered. And, once people land on your website, make sure it’s very easy to find information and convert it into a lead or a sale.
Tip: Get more of the right type of traffic on your site by investing in PR and SEO. Once people are on your site, make sure you’ve invested in UX to have a layout that is optimized to convert.
Mistake 7: A brand that’s all over the place and inconsistent.
Luxury clients are willing to pay more for a dependable experience. To position your offer as high quality, frame it up with high-quality branding and website design. Instead of having a bunch of different graphics, fonts, and colors, take a luxury approach to your design with a consistent, less-is-more look. By consistently using graphics to market your business, you can create a consistent, branded experience.
Tip: Make sure your branding is strong and appealing to luxury clientele before you roll it out across all packaging, collateral, social media graphics, and your website design.