Luxury brands’customers and Social Media
Published by swissiteinternational March 11, 2010
Category: Social Media, Social Media Marketing
The online spending in US has always been very high, higher than in other countries and internet users are demonstrating optimism beyond the turndown. This is a clear sign of a wealthy market where retailers are turning to social media to attract new customers and attain new clients.
According to that the question that www.Emarketer.com recently made is: will upper-income consumer be as receptive to social media marketing as other web users? In other words are the richest people a segment of that target group?
As Unity Marketing reported, most affluents, which would be clients of luxury brands, mostly use social networking sites to keep in touch with friends, family and old friends and only 7% to connect with brands.
Potential luxury brands’clients check out fan pages but do not necessarily become a fan. They don’t expose themselves to the commercial side of social media: in fact they have viewed brand pages, but only one-quarter have become a follower or joined a group.
Therefore the way to measure the engagement should be to look to visits rather than followers and fans. So Ms. Danziger by Unity Marketing said that luxury brands should rethink their websites in social networking terms rather than having a Facebook fan page.
Conversely online interaction on the company’s website is a must.
Edelman reported in January 2010 that among informed Internet users in the top 25% of household income, only one-quarter used their friends and peers for company information. “Affluent consumers may not necessarily respond to common social marketing tactics,” said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. Richest people look much less persuadable than the average Social Networks users. They probably expect more from the brands they pay so much and want to have less advice from friends from which they would probably be distinguishable in terms of purchases and style.
To sum up eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson recommends smart marketers to “segment their social marketing efforts, customizing their communications and offers based on the audience they want to target.” In other words: marketing rules are as effective in social media as in all other marketing initiatives.