If you work in the luxury market, chances are you know something about branding. You know how important it is for the brand to know its customer inside and out, and to use this knowledge to continue to build and sell products or services that create a meaningful experience for those indulging in aspirational lifestyles. Your brand is your identity – from your logo to your website to the voice in which you communicate on social media, there’s a line that offers immediate recognition. It creates that feeling that the essence is “on-brand.”
Unfortunately, sometimes luxury industry branding includes making decisions that lead them down the wrong path. For instance, they may start producing lower quality goods in order to increase the bottom line.[quote]But the reality is, especially in the luxury industry, that customers can see right through this.[/quote] Making a person spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a shoddy project is a guaranteed way to make sure they never buy from you again. And, even worse, in this social media-driven world, you can bet that the person who has a bad experience is going to log on to Facebook and Twitter to complain about the experience to friends and followers. Imagine how rough it would be to recover if said unhappy customer is a fashion blogger with a million followers!
But brands do other things to dilute their brands, too, and in some cases, without even knowing it. For example, if your brand voice isn’t consistent on social media, that quickly becomes evident to your followers. People follow you because they’ve come to recognize a certain standard associated with you and your business. If you’re a high-end luxury brand that exudes class and elegance, you could lose credibility in tweeting out images of Miley Cyrus’s infamous tongue. It’s important to understand the types of things that drive your customers so you can keep your finger on the pulse of what’s relevant in their lives.
And, when it comes to luxury industry branding, the team at our Orlando marketing agency knows that more followers doesn’t necessarily translate to a better brand. I don’t fully understand the practice of buying followers from so-called “click farms” in other countries, because even if it does inflate your follower count, you’ve just paid for the experience of having tons of followers who don’t actually care about your brand. Sure, the number looks good, but with no real engagement, it seems like a waste of money. But this doesn’t just relate to click farms – this experience of doing off-brand activities in order to help raise your follows and likes can actually have a detrimental effect on your brand. Sure, you may get more exposure, but if that exposure is from people who don’t represent your target audience, then this can easily dilute your brand’s value on social media.
Another way you may be diluting the value of your brand is by having social media accounts that haven’t been updated in months. People follow you because they have an expectation from you, and if you don’t have the bandwidth or strategy to extend to that social media account, it’s important to assess whether you should take it down entirely. It’s my opinion that for most businesses on most platforms, having no page is better than having an inactive page.
If you’re a luxury brand, you have to act like a luxury brand —this is true in brick and mortar locations, as well as in the digital space. Remember that in branding, the customer is savvier than you think. If you need some ideas as to how to better understand your brand, your brand voice and your brand vision, contact our Orlando branding agency for a consultation.
