How to use tactics of luxury brands to get more customers and sell for more money.
Why do people buy a 100 000 dollar watch?
A business meeting. You have probably been there. New people across the table and you are trying to establish how do they fit in the hierarchy. Who is more important, who is more successful? You or them?
Successful people are mostly very competitive. They like to “win” they are the boss and they want everybody to know it.
At your work where everybody knows you and your position and your power, all is good. You can be calm, everybody knows where you are in the hierarchy of status.
The problem comes when you are meeting those new people.
Why does a policeman has a uniform that is instantly recognizable? To immediately give him the status of a policeman, so when somebody sees him they immediately know what they are dealing with.
Do you know who you are talking to?
Maybe you have seen someone screaming that to another person. Maybe in an airport, in work or wherever else. It is very frustrating when another person doesn’t immediately identify you as the high-status person that you are. We hate to be mistaken for “somebody less successful than we actually are”
With this in mind, we can back to the real reason behind buying a 100 thousand dollar watch.
Someone who just bought it will be telling you about the brand heritage the craftsmanship, how deep they can go underwater. They will not forget to mention that the best fighter pilots have similar ones. I am sure that there are also only 10 in the world, made by Austrian gnomes from the gold dug up and molded straight from the earth’s core, or whatever…
Doesn’t matter. Those are the things they are using to justify the purchase to another person. To not seem stupid.
The real reason why they bought an overpriced piece of historical equipment such as a watch is very simple though, and they will most likely not admit it.
The real reason to buy a 100 000 dollar watch is that when you walk into a meeting, to talk about selling one of your business or whatever else. The watch immediately translates your social status.
Just like a policeman’s uniform.
Policeman’s uniform immediately translates his status. An expensive watch immediately puts you in the correct box when you walk into the meeting.
The real main feature of the watch or other luxury items is not about what it is made of, or what it can do really. It is about how much it costs.
Simply the fact that the watch costs a lot of money and other people can tell that it costs a lot of money is the only important feature.
If the same exact watch costed just 4000 dollars, the person would not be interested at all in it.
It would lose its main function. Which is to immediately showcase the person’s status.
The thing is that a hundred thousand dollar watch is exclusive to people who can afford it. If you can afford it, it puts you into a certain bracket.
It is not about the watch. That is not what you are selling.
What you are really selling is social status anxiety removal.
For that reason it can only cost that much. Otherwise, it would essentially be worthless.
It is the same with Ferrari.
They have three tiers of cars.
The “basic ones” anyone can walk in and buy one.
Now imagine all your friends have the basic Ferrari, but you know you are richer than them. What you are going to do then?
You might think ok, I just buy the more expensive model.
Well, Ferrari is clever and they came up with a way to really boost the status of the owners of the more expensive models.
How?
If you want to buy the best models of Ferraris, they will only sell them to you if you already own at least a few of the cheaper ones.
What about that status boost?
When you turn up in your expensive let’s call it “second-tier” model Ferrari, everybody knows, “Wait a second, this means that this guy must also have at least three other Ferraris.”
An excellent way to boost sales and dramatically increase the value of the high-end models… it boosts the status factor dramatically.
But Ferrari also has the third tear of cars.
The special editions. The ones you will not find on the Ferraris website. The ones you might see in the magazine when you are already cant buy them because they are all sold anyway.
Those are available only to people that Ferrari specifically reaches out to.
So if you turn up in that one. It doesn’t just mean that you have other Ferraris. It means that even Ferrari as a company thinks you are so special that they put in the work to find you and reach out to you to offer you one.
Massive status.
You don’t want to be seen as a millionaire when you clearly are a billionaire.
If you have made your billions running toilet paper factories and nobody can instantly recognize you as the massive successful person you are, Ferrari has a solution.
Luxury products are mainly solutions to status anxiety. They show your status to people you meet.
Just like uniforms
Just like trophies
And all the other types of products that are exclusive and only certain people can obtain them.
Now with this in mind, there might as well be a possibility to add some extra perceived value to your product or service, using these principles.
Try to think outside of the box.
For example, we are essentially an online marketing agency.
We can offer management of campaigns, we can build websites and so on.
If you offer that, it is straight forward enough. Basically, any business can hire someone to do their website. Nothing special about that.
What we have decided to try is to offer “investment partnerships”
It works in a way that we either buy a part of the other business. We then help with marketing, help the business grow. Sort of a traditional way to invest.
But more often we just invest by offering our marketing services for free. We even pay for the ads. Then, we don’t even ask for a part of the company, but instead, we ask for a part of the profits.
Basically, we take the risk, we completely take care of the client acquisition and let the business just focus on delivering their product or service without worrying about marketing and whether it is going to be too expensive. The profit is guaranteed for the business we work with.
In the end, it works largely similar to what we were trying to achieve with our clients before. Since the beginning, we wanted to work with our clients in a way that would guarantee that they make money.
However, when we switched out the approach and combined it with the “investment idea” to better illustrate what we are trying to achieve, which is not just to get a client, but to get a partner. To sort of become a part of the other business, and become responsible for the results the other business achieves, it did a few extra things we initially didn’t even realize.
As a business owner, what would you rather tell your friends who are also business owners?
Hey I have just hired a marketing agency.
Or hey I have got an investor.
I guess the second thing is better.
It is more status elevating than just hiring an agency.
It is more exclusive than hiring a marketing agency.
Anybody can go and hire a marketing agency, however, not everybody can just go and get an investor. If you get an investor it means someone else believes in your business enough to dedicate their resources to help it grow.
It gives you status and it is exclusive.
You can compare it to the watches. It is like buying a nice 80 dollar watch vs buying a 50 000 dollar watch. Anyone can buy the cheap watch. It doesn’t mean anything. Not everyone can buy the 50 000 dollar watch so it gives you status.
Everyone can just hire a marketing agency, not everyone can get an investor.
Now, think about a way that you could make your product more status elevating and more exclusive, without really cutting off your customer base?
Talking about the customer base. Another thing that approaching our services more as an investment brought is that it widened our potential customer base. Because even though it all seems more exclusive, even people with a good product but not enough money to pay their marketing can actually work with us.
How could you take a completely different angle on your product or your service that would make that much more desirable?
There is almost always something that can be done.
If you have a lot of other things to be figuring out and would like to leave your marketing to us, let’s get in touch. Just click here.