Looking at data from several of my clients' Google Ads accounts, I've noticed that a significant percentage of these accounts work in the luxury sector.
Analysing various data from the last 10 years in greater detail, I've been able to confirm that even if the product or service offered changes, the purchasing behaviour of this audience is very similar.
I like to segment the luxury sector into 2 main segments:
Luxury Goods: Fashion & Accessories, Watches & Jewellery, Well-being, Beauty Products, Art;
Lifestyle Purchases: Automotive, Travel, Home & Interior Design, Alcoholic Beverages.
Sometimes luxury is classified by level of exclusivity, price and accessibility. Other times, such as in the fashion industry, it is classified by terms like premium, high-end, prêt-à-porter and haute couture.
Targeting a high-net-worth audience is notoriously difficult for many agencies and advertisers due to lack of experience – and, above all, lack of relevant sales & marketing data and behavioural analysis.
I have created and managed luxury industry campaigns for fashion, jewellery, well-being, real estate, beauty products, automotive, yachts, chartering, travel and interior design – and although it may seem unbelievable, the purchase journey is always very similar.
Luxury audiences stand out from other audiences in Google Ads for the following reasons:
1. Time to conversion is much shorter;
2. Search keywords are more specific;
3. There are rarely negative touchpoints regarding price;
4. This audience also makes decisions outside their home/country of residence (airport VIP lounges are a perfect example);
5. A planning-oriented audience (perfect for seasonal campaigns, new models, etc);
6. A broad audience in terms of age (not long ago this "club" was reserved for people over 40; now it has widened, with targets from 25+);
7. The decision maker/purchaser is not always the person who sees the advertisement. We have detected that they can be influenced by people they trust within the 2 nuclei of direct influence (family nucleus and professional nucleus);
8. If you offer a high-end, personalised and flexible service, this audience values you like no other.
Let's look at some real-life examples.
Let's say John lives in London and is a high-net-worth individual. Now, from home, he's looking for a luxury villa for holiday rental in Ibiza and a luxury charter service:
There are around 500 searches per month from the UK alone, from people like John who are looking for a luxury villa for holiday rental in Ibiza and a luxury charter service.
And as you can see, for all these search terms, our competition is low to medium, and we often find niche market words (in this example, the search for "luxury apartments Ibiza" experienced a +21% jump in the last 3 months and +89% YoY).
We call these “luxury trend searches”, and, in order to plan our clients' future campaigns, we often analyse these to discover new trends in the luxury sector.
Let's continue with another example, also from John in London.
Now that he has bought his new home, he wants to hire a prestigious interior designer, so he searches Google for "Luxury interior designer London":
The advertiser competition in this example is also low to medium, and we have about 1000 searches per month from the UK alone.
The system also gives us statistics on at what point in the year there are more searches for these keywords:
Since I know that these luxury sector searches are closer to conversion than other audiences, here's the answer:
Of searches like John's example from the UK using the keywords "Luxury" or "High-end interior designer London", 62% came from a desktop.
This is a type of audience that is less interested in mobile searches and more inclined to search/convert from a computer because in most cases they work with at least one computer (and in several cases they also have a laptop).
Luxury Google Ads is a perfect ally for the luxury sector.
On to the next conversion!
Dean.
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