You’ve heard about the art of the deal? Well, we live in the age of the deal, where consumers are trained to only look for the very best bargains before proceeding with a purchase. Whether people are shopping for the holidays or simply looking for that one item on their list that they have to have, it is now ingrained in them that they should only precede when they have an optimum price that can’t possibly go any lower.
What does that kind of budget consciousness mean for companies who have built their brand around luxury? They can’t just give up and take half off of everything in the store because it would run counter to everything for which they once stood. And yet they also can’t ignore this trend that’s pretty much sweeping the world, one in which consumers are trained since birth to not settle for anything less than the best possible deal.
According to Jim Vernon, CEO of RockHer, the company behind the world's first algorithm and IBM Watson enhanced digital diamond expert, it can be a tricky balance to strike. “You can never lose sight of your identity, and what made you who you are as a company,” Jim explains. “But you also can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore the trend towards sales and bargains. What we have done in the creation of this unique algorithm, ROSI, is used technology to enhance the shopping experience. ROSI is programmed to identify the best value for the best diamond for your budget. We have also built a price comparison tool so you can compare the real values of diamonds across competitor sites, as long as the are certified by the GIA”
Yet there are ways to make this happen. If you’re the owner of a company that built its name on luxury, your marketing techniques need to draw on the history of the brand while incorporating the realization that bargains, finding the best value, and price-matching are the way consumers relate in the modern age.
Get People in the Door or to your Website
One of the ways that luxury brands have managed to draw in customers that might normally shy away from them because of the high-end prices is the concept of the door buster or coupon code. This is a specific item that is advertised heavily at an extremely low price that is hard for consumers to resist. The idea is that it at least gets people in the door and into the store or showroom. At that point, your salespeople will have a chance to do their jobs and explain why the rest of the merchandise on sale will be worth the extra money that’s being spent. It takes a coordinated effort between marketing and sales to make this happen, but it can make a huge difference in getting a larger crowd/traffic to at least sample what you’re selling.
Innovation Invites
People often associate luxury brands with a kind of fussiness and old-fashioned nature, as if the companies that perpetrate these brands haven’t changed the way that they do things for centuries. One way to combat that is to make sure that you can offer some sort of innovation within your business that speaks to a younger generation that understands and appreciates the wonders of technology. RockHer offers a digital gemologist to help customers pick out precisely the diamond that’s right for them. That kind of innovation combats ingrained assumptions about luxury companies.
Steer Away from the Curve
One other possibility for luxury brands is to focus their marketing on what makes them special. If you can position yourself as the alternative, the standout from everything else on the market, that will capture people’s attention. In that case, you won’t need to worry so much about keeping up with the lower prices and sales of competitors, because you will have carved out a niche as the place that people want to go when they want the best and not the cheapest.
It can be a difficult task for luxury brands to stay relevant and popular in the price-obsessed modern world. But there will always be a room for excellence in the market, as long as the purveyors of that excellence capitulate just a bit to the modern way of thinking.