A Quick Guide To Selling Luxury Products
Do you want to sell products at a huge mark up?
Do your business daydreams end up with you rolling through the European countryside in an Aston Martin with a beautiful girl in the passenger seat and another one waiting at the destination?
In those daydreams, are you afraid to spill a drink on your shirt because it cost $2000 and is made of the finest silk known to man, delicately hand-sewn by a team of dedicated, fashionable oompa-loompas?
If that’s the lifestyle you’re after, you probably want to look into the luxury market.
Before you start on the road to inevitable riches, you’ll want to read this article.
This is what I learned writing direct response stuff for a pair of ladies who sell luxury Miami apartments to Chinese investors.
You Are Selling A Lifestyle
Let’s get something straight here before we start. If you’re a prole like me, you might be tempted to think of “luxury” as something like a Mercedes car or the latest Apple Mac Pro with the sparkly biggest-size screen.
If that’s the case then get out of here, peasant.
Or don’t, read the article to the end (and then share it on your favourite social networks.)
But those products aren’t luxury products. They’re high end, but they’re affordable for average joe (with a decent job, etc.)
The luxury market is something different. The luxury market is $50,000 handbags, gold-plated toilet seats, and outside of Instagram, it’s stuff like Rolls-Royce, private jets, multi-million dollar holiday homes and stuff that doesn’t have a price tag because nobody knows what the price will be until it’s done.
This is about selling luxury goods like that – and from the above – you can tell it’s a bit of a different world.
But at the root of it all is this: you are selling a lifestyle. You are selling exclusivity and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. You’re selling things to people who have everything and want more.
But…
This Doesn’t Mean You’re Selling High On The Maslow’s Hierarchy Pyramid
There’s a tendency for copywriters (let alone civilians) to operate under the assumption that rich people are different to less well-off folks.
Now, that’s true to an extent. Good luck explaining why poor folks don’t just “eat better food” to a trust-fund kid.
But in terms of motivations, we’re all higher-order primates.
Marketers make the mistake of assuming that when someone hits the ultra-high net-worth threshold, they suddenly become some guru seeking self-actualisation or a rich version of Saint Whoever, concerned mostly with helping the poor unfortunate starving kids of wherever.
In reality, this doesn’t happen. It’s not helped by celebrities and other rich folks pretending that the above is the case, but we’re copywriters and supposed to see through the excuses.
There’s a reason fast cars are sold with pretty girls and a reason luxury companies pay six-figures a day to throw exclusive parties for the rich and famous. And it’s not so they can discuss who gives most to the orphans.
It’s so everyone gets jealous like a bunch of school children. It’s so middle-aged rich men get access to young and beautiful women.
It’s mammalian behaviour. Sex, social hierarchy, more money, seven deadly sins.
There’s one silver-tongued secret. Let’s deal with the other.
All Value Is Perceived Value
Why would someone pay £10,000+ for a bespoke suit from Saville Row?
Why would anyone buy a Lamborghini?
It’s not because of function – although we’ll come back to that in the next section.
A car is a car and it gets you anywhere. A fast car can mostly achieve the speed limit unless you want to lose your license. Clothes are clothes.
The value of luxury items is a perceived value. You’re paying for the intangibles of the lifestyle, and because they’re intangible, the price can go up exponentially with no real regard to cost.
Again, more on that in a later section.
But let’s talk about the flip side to this coin.
The Devil Is In The Details
Some guys think they can start an ecommerce store, ship from AliExpress and charge luxury prices.
Now, dropshipping is filled with huge markups and a high fail rate for numerous reasons. But I’m talking about the guys that get a $4 item and mark it up to $100s of dollars.
Dumb for numerous reasons.
When you run a luxury business, you can’t afford that sort of stuff. Remember, you’re doing something exclusive, and people are paying for the privilege of being your customer.
You have to get one thing right:
The devil is in the details.
If someone pays hundreds for an item, it had better be built to a certain standard. The reason Ferrari give you all the details and specifications isn’t to sell you on their car – you’re going to buy it anyway if it looks good and impresses the girls – but the specifications are a checklist.
It’s got horsepower, super, let’s move on to pretending I’m James Bond.
The details can be a selling point, but they’re more a pre-selling point or an after-the-fact justification.
But if they’re not there, you lose the luxury tag.
Imagine a new supercar company that used Ford Fiesta 1.0 engines. IT wouldn’t tick the box and nobody would take it seriously. Speaking of which…
Your Brand Is Luxury – It’s Not “Everything And Luxury”
Some people think you can “tag a luxury option” onto your existing business.
No. No. You can’t.
Imagine if you went to your local Ferrari dealership and they said, “oh, you don’t have $250,000. Don’t worry, here’s our collection of used Fiat Puntos.”
It’d be a joke.
If you sell luxury, you sell luxury.
If you sell stuff that’s not luxury, then new brand, new business, keep them unrelated.
Remember, selling luxury products is about saying KEEP OUT PEASANTS, THIS IS OUR TREE HOUSE.
You can’t do that with one hand and then have your begging bowl in the other hand.
And while we’re on the subject of begging bowls…
You Must Give The Appearance Of Not Selling
Don’t get me wrong.
You must sell, sell, sell.
But think about all the juicy tactics you learn in copywriting: urgency, scarcity, social proof. All of those things apply with luxury products. Perhaps more so than with non-luxury products.
The issue is that you have to be more subtle. Nobody needs a countdown timer to buy a Ferrari, and they’re not going to be pressured by a cold-call salesman.
Instead, you have essentially the same things wrapped in glossy paper.
“Limited Edition.”
“Bespoke.”
“Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
I’d recommend using funnels, but you don’t have to. Funnels are good because you can then pre-sell the exclusivity.
For instance, you might say, “Sales only available to the exclusive club.”
Then someone has to join the exclusive club just to get access.
If that’s a bit on the nose, you can say something like, “Last time, our item never went on public sale because pre-orders were too high.”
That’s what a lot of luxury companies do. In fact, I watched one interview with the Aston Martin head marketing guy once: They started their marketing campaign for one car after they’d sold out, just to make the car seem mythically unavailable.
(More on this another time because I just remembered the anecdote and I’ll find it and write it up. Genius.)
Never Apologise: Forget Non-Customers
“But Jamie… doesn’t the lack of availability and ridiculous price piss people off?”
Absolutely. That’s part of the appeal. Remember, the golden words are, “Only for the exclusive club.”
Or, “GO AWAY PEASANTS” if you’re feeling less politically correct.
It always weirds me out when I go on Twitter and see people tweeting at guys like Kanye West about their $500 shoes or WRITING IN ALL CAPS AT SOME CELEBRITY GIRL FOR WEARING FUR.
Those people honestly don’t care, and the companies they’re shilling for don’t care. All they see is a big sign above your forehead that screams in neon letters “I’m not part of the club.”
If you aren’t paying for the luxury items, then luxury companies don’t care about you.
Unless they’re run by stupid people, they never lower their price. They never negotiate. Non-customers simply don’t exist.
(This is a good theme to run any business on.)
Moreover, if you want to run a luxury label you must never ever apologise for doing so.
“Sorry I charge $500 a pillow… it’s made of unicorn feathers.”
Don’t do it. Budget stores don’t apologise for being cheap.
“Well, sorry this mattress is like sleeping on granite, but you only paid $10… maybe go down to the actual bed shop down the road.”
You go to a budget store because you want something cheap. They give you something cheap. Don’t walk into the snooty jewellery store in your city and ask for the cubic zirconia, because they don’t do that, they provide expensive and that’s what you get.
Final Thoughts
That about sums up today’s topic. There are more technical aspects that I’ll talk about in future instalments, but the above lessons are a good general guide to selling stuff that most people can’t buy.
These tips work whether you’re the copywriter or starting your own luxury company. I can’t say I’m an expert on the latter, but I’ve done the former.
Maybe we’ll try and invest in some research and development on luxury branding.
But not tonight.