Quality, craftsmanship, exclusivity, and heritage are the major factors that make up a luxury brand. These brands have prestige and their marketing storytelling and narratives are guided and controlled by themselves. Influencer marketing is not entirely controlled and guided, but luxury brands are consciously resorting to this newfound technique and taking the opposite approach. Why?
How Influencer Marketing Works For Luxury Bands
So, what is it all about? Influencer marketing has been a trend for quite some time now. It is a combination of the modern and traditional methods of marketing. It is done using posts from influencers who are bloggers, celebrities, and/or social media content creators. These posts can be related to brands, products, or services, highlighting them to followers of the influencers who make up a huge consumer segment. This marketing tactic develops collaboration between the brands and the influencers.
Influencer marketing has many details and sub-processes which are essential contributory factors towards its success. Influencer marketing is not a concept that has never been used by luxury brands. It has been used in silos but with the global shift and attention moving in its favor these brands are getting more and more inclined to use influencer partnerships, endorsements, and ambassadors. It is gaining more momentum especially in the current pandemic scenario and lockdown in effect.
Using Influencer Marketing As Part Of A Wider Marketing Strategy For Luxury Bands
Keeping the above in mind, who can be better to strategize and execute an influencer marketing campaign than an expert influencer marketing agency. They have the knowledge, resources, and proper time management to conduct such a campaign with fruitful results.
Luxury brands have always been extra careful while using this marketing form. With the changing scenario, the focus is no longer on mystery, intimidation, and secrecy. It is more about quality, values, sustainability, and much more. With the growing competition, it is difficult to get new customers while retaining the older ones. This is more so because the current generation resonates with a variety of lifestyles and values.
How Luxury Brands Can Approach An Influencer Marketing Strategy
Consumers today are very critical and conscious of what they consume, even ads. Influencers have a strong relationship with their followers based on trust and engagement. Their followers know that bloggers are authentic, and this genuine trust is exactly what is needed by brands currently. This is one of the major factors why luxury brands are shifting focus to influencer marketing. They also gain an additional boost when a fashion influencer is selected. When a fashion influencer endorses products it becomes an effective and organic marketing campaign for luxury brands.
As an example, luxury brands like Gucci, Dior, and Chanel invite these influencers to their fashion promotions for their content to gain further importance and thus gain an even wider reach, also strengthening the relationship between the influencers and the respective brands. Numerous beneficial collaborations are not only the driving factor to increased media value and awareness but also improved sales numbers.
You might know the famous YouTube vlogger Jeffree Star and heard the name Gucci. Jeffree’s proclamation of love for Gucci was known to most people. Gucci designed a line of luggage collections exclusively for him, and called it the ‘Pink Collection’. This resulted in millions of people in addition to Jeffree’s followers knowing about this gesture in detail from the posted images and videos. Thereby he was christened as the top influencer for Gucci increasing his followers by millions. On the other hand, the $1.6 million brands earned extensive brand awareness and media mentions.
Another example is Burberry. They went completely unconventional by hiring Brooklyn Beckham, Davis Beckham’s son, to take photographs of models in London wearing Burberry’s line of clothes. #ThisisBrit campaign used the service of an inexperienced but famous young influencer made famous by his lineage. Most people including experienced marketers thought this was a very amateurish move with no returns as per their predictions. However, this move was a genius masterstroke. The photographs were far from perfect from the photographic aspect but Brooklyn’s social media posts helped the brand gain huge publicity and awareness which transformed into huge sales and penetration into the millennial market, who had little love for Burberry as a fashion brand, so far.
Influencer marketing has quickly grown to become a billion-dollar industry, particularly with social media apps like Instagram having billions of active users. Also, artificial intelligence (AI) has broadened the spectrum and increased reach and engagement like never before. Imma, Miquela, Bermuda, etc. are virtual influencers who do not exist yet have thousands of followers. These AI-driven virtual influencers have undertaken campaigns for brands like Calvin Klein and Louis Vuitton among others.
The only decision a brand needs to make is what kind of influencer they wish to use to represent their brand and the kind of content they want to be posted. Do you want an influencer-driven, endorsement, or collaboration type? The audience you want to cater to needs to be kept in mind and the brand’s identity should not get diluted.
Influencer marketing has proven itself to be very effective in gaining a huge engagement and generating quite an amount of buzz for the brand. Luxury brands using this type of marketing are already getting benefitted from it. The most important thing right now is for businesses to create genuine content while keeping their brand value intact as an ever-increasing number of people are indulging in luxury, fashion, and lifestyle.
Conclusion
Using the services of an influencer marketing agency will let you have access to all the specialized strategizing and execution including sourcing and connecting with the influencer which is a daunting task. Most fashion influencers have a variety of followers as they prefer to do a wide range of fashion trend postings. Fact is, not all of them would be appropriate for your fashion brand and fit your line of clothing.
An agency will be able to find out the perfect match for your business and thus your brand association with an influencer will stand better chances of developing into long-term partnerships and be more successful in both, the short and long term. Your luxury brand’s influencer marketing campaign has a much better chance of success with the expertise of an influencer marketing agency at the helm of your campaign. Their expertise, resources, and knowledge will give you leverage that will benefit your business in multiple ways.