So many companies are in trouble and the economy shows us the trend won’t be over soon.  At the same time, many companies are flourishing – even now.  There are a lot of things that a company can do to assure its survival.

In the next several issues of this newsletter, we will show you how to improve your marketing effectiveness and help you turn your lemons into lemonade.

In future issues we will discuss:

• how better follow-up can bring untapped sales,
• how to measure effectiveness and adjust marketing efforts,
• how creating websites will attract new customers efficiently, and
• how better targeting help make the bad times good and good times better.

Worrying won’t pay the bills

Would you believe that according to a recent survey, one in four American small business owners believe that their businesses may not be able to survive the recession?  In our lifetimes, we haven’t seen such a pessimistic view of running a small business and it is a fact according to an article published in the Phoenix Business Journal that cites a poll conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business.  In addition, one in six is certain that the recession and its downturn in the overall economy has hurt business prospects for the foreseeable future.

For the independent business owner, what exactly is the basis for the problem?  Is it the inability to secure ready credit?  Is it that so many larger companies are failing?  Is it because people are being laid off and are therefore not buying products and services?  No.  These are results.  The problem behind those results is poor sales. Almost half of those business owners identified falling and lost sales as the root of their problem.  Fewer than one in ten identify credit problems as the culprit.  Typically, those who cannot get more credit cannot get it because they would be unable to absorb more debt into their business.  Therefore, it is easy to see that pouring cash into a creditor is not really going to provide much help.

How can I activate myself and my company to meet this difficult challenge?

Right now, the best thing a business owner can do is stop staring at the graphs and pie charts, quit pouring over the financial statements and look ahead to making the sales effort much more efficient.

Sales are six times more effective with existing customers than with new ones.  Statistically (according to Forrester Research), it will take six or seven new prospect contacts to turn one of them into a customer.  Depending on your business venture, cultivating that new customer out of six or seven prospects can be quite expensive and time-consuming.  On the other hand, by marketing and closing further sales with existing customers, you can increase your sales effectiveness by 600% compared to the alternative of finding one more new customer to take that sale.

A modern, innovative solution to a common, traditional problem

Email marketing is an excellent way to reach your existing customer base and can serve as a central focus in cultivating new sales with existing customers.  Keeping your customers informed and you in their memory is the best way to keep good customers and boost your own sales.

One effective and proven email marketing tool, automated marketing follow-up is a fantastic new way to accomplish that goal. Automated marketing follow-up uses email to keep customers informed and continue the follow-up efforts following a sales contact and it works.  This 21st century marketing tool is described in greater detail in a recent article, Tweaking Your Customer Base—Automatically, published on our website.

Possibly one of the most important things you can do to help assure surviving, and even thriving in a sour economy is keeping positive while looking forward to such new and creative solutions that strengthen your business.  It is difficult to be creative when under stress.  This is where getting some professional outside help may be just what you need and ThriveMarketing wants to be there to help.  Being on the front edge of using technology to generate greater sales through more efficient marketing is what we do.  Let us show you new ways that will allow you not only to survive, but to thrive.

About ThriveMarketing

We measure our success by your success. Through creative marketing strategies, we help our clients generate more leads, build more profits, shorten sales cycles and strengthen brands. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be effective. Not to mention right for you. We work with all types of marketing budgets and have become experts at working with what you have – with one goal in mind: to produce results. For more information, please visit www.ThriveMarketing.net or call 1.866.521.0827.

ThriveMarketing is a proud recipient of multiple American Marketing Association Spectrum Awards and is ranked in the Top 25 Web Design Firms by The Phoenix Business Journal.

Luxury Marketing. Does anyone really need an iPhone G3? For that matter, is there anyone who could not actually live without a cellular mobile telephone? Probably not, but in the recent introduction of the iPhone G3 in the United States, Australia and several other countries, millions have scrambled to be the first to get one and among them are people who really cannot (or should not) afford it. The iPhone G3 is probably one of the best, recent examples of an effective luxury marketing campaign.

Luxury marketing is not exactly a cakewalk

Luxury marketing is to marketing what cake is to bread—it is similar, has similar ingredients, but the expectation is nothing alike. Marketing luxury products is one marketing segment that is the more unfamiliar and more confusing to the marketer than other consumer products. Marketing luxury products is a specialized area that most marketing professionals avoid because of that lack of familiarity. Yet, luxury marketing is the most recession-proof. If a business wants to protect itself in tough economic times, it would be a good idea to keep luxury products in the product line. The reason luxury products are resistant to bad economic times is that buyers do not base decisions to purchase on need, durability or utility; they base their decisions on style, quality, glamour, and because they wish to stand out in a crowd. These buyers want the product; they do not need it.

“What’s all the hubbub, Bubba?”

The new model of iPhone was introduced a few months ago and the line-ups to purchase one were reminiscent of the line-ups for the last Star Wars movie. What causes such a remarkable hoopla over such a pedestrian product as a telephone device? Many of those lined up to purchase the iPhone would sleep in a car to save money, yet spend hundreds on the phone and up to $2,000 a year at ATT Wireless just to use its features. It isn’t the product that is needed; it is the status the product provides that is needed. The iPhone fulfills a need for status and exclusivity. The newest generation of consumers sometimes referred to as Gen-Y is picking up where Generation-X left off: a blurring of the difference between wants and needs. The basic characteristic of the generation is an “it’s all-about-me-and-what-I-can-do” attitude.

What is the main focus for branding luxury products?

Luxury marketing is largely about personal selfishness and indulgence. The primary audience is Gen-Y (the twenty-somethings), its predecessor, Generation-X (thirty- and forty-somethings) and the affluent buyers. Further, luxury marketing is not subject to the ups and downs of the economy because price is not the object. Actually, the price of the product is not a measure of quality or reliability as we all learned in past generations. Price is more of an indication of its scarcity or uniqueness. Think back three or four years ago to the introduction of another cellular telephone, Motorola’s RAZR. Although the RAZR commanded a high price, it was subject to failures and flaws that kept Motorola busy with its customers for many, many months. Quality and durability simply were not there but the uniqueness and cuteness of the product still commanded large sales, even throughout the troubled introductory phase.

What we once thought of as “rich people” has been replaced

Even the new definition of the luxury marketing audience is not the same as it was thirty or forty years ago. Our old definition of “rich people” focused on the “old money” population of inherited wealth, the elderly and white, male-dominated population. These were the children and grandchildren of the nineteenth and early twentieth century captains of industry. This audience bought Paris fashions, fine furs, and real gems in their handcrafted jewelry of unassailable workmanship.

The new products and the new “rich people”

The “new rich” is a completely different audience made up of athletes, film stars, rock singers, and trust fund kids. Even the children of the instant millionaires from the dot-com bomb era are part of it. In addition to all these people who have access to money (although many didn’t really earn it) there are what is known as aspirational buyers, or those who deserve to have the great, quality, latest-rage, cutting-edge items but really cannot afford them.

The Gen-Y buyer is at the heart of this audience and the iPhone is a perfect example of the promotion that rings bells with this growing and spending audience.

The appeal of the new generation of luxury products is different from the appeal of other consumer products. It is not about need, durability, utility or value. It is about exclusivity, scarcity, craftsmanship and innovation. Branding luxury products takes years of consistent promotion, focused solely on the attributes of luxury and pointed at the emotions of the new affluent buyers. The benefit, of course, is that successfully marketed products are virtually bulletproof when it comes to bad economic times.

Case Study

Thrive Marketing helped Vala Dancewear create a brand identity for their new dancewear manufacturing company, which wholesales to dance retail stores across the US. The inspiration for the brand identity and accompanying marketing collateral is 1940’s Hollywood glamour. This is not only a big trend in the fashion world today, but also conveys the classic elegance that appeals to their high-end audience. Read Case Study

Request a Proposal

Request samples of our work and/or interview us to help with your marketing efforts by requesting a proposal online or by calling 1.866.521.0827. We look forward to the possibility of working with you!

About ThriveMarketing

We measure our success by your success. Through creative marketing strategies, we help our clients generate more leads, build more profits, shorten sales cycles and strengthen brands. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be effective. Not to mention right for you. We work with all types of marketing budgets and have become experts at working with what you have – with one goal in mind: to produce results. For more information, please visit www.ThriveMarketing.net or call 1.866.521.0827.

ThriveMarketing is a proud recipient of multiple American Marketing Association Spectrum Awards and is ranked in the Top Web Design Firms by The Phoenix Business Journal.

Quoting Anthony Hopkins in the movie, The Edge:

“Never feel sorry for a man with his own plane.”

Marketing to the affluent is different in its aspect from marketing to the middle-class consumer. We really don’t have to feel very sorry for the product choices that are open to those with healthy disposable incomes. Those with accumulated wealth and cash reserves have the ability to make decisions based on a wider range of choices. Because of that, luxury marketing helps businesses recession-proof their own business while bringing the enjoyment of servicing high-quality products and services and a higher return on your dollars and efforts.

How tight is today’s money?

Regardless of the chatter about down-turning economy and the official administration position on that the price of gasoline is not going to adversely affect the economy, those of us who work for a living have a clear view of the recession that has been underway for the better part of last year and this. Even the price of gasoline is approaching the price level of a luxury item.

However, those with wealth make purchasing decisions in a different way that the rest of us. When marketing to the more affluent audience, one of the challenges is to be able to think in those terms. The wealthy consumer exhibits a loyalty to products that is different than those who select products out of need or budget limitations. The affluent do not simply choose a product to fill a need at a reasonable price. For example, usually, what each of us buys is to fill a specific need: tools for the garden, basic cars for basic transportation, or office, school and business supplies. Luxury items are bought for reasons surrounding the experience of owning them, and the decision process does not make a lot of sense to the average consumer.

People choose between luxury products with a different measure than other products

It seems funny for most of us to imagine basing a purchasing choice between a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW because one has a better stereo system than the other, or because one has wider arm rests than the other. Again, that is because the decision is based on the enjoyment of the experience rather than filling a specific need to solve a problem (in this case, providing basic transportation). The choice between these two products isn’t about practicality or efficiency; it is about sensory pleasures, quality and status. These consumers, like most consumers, are discriminating about their product choices but the game of product discrimination for luxury products is played by very different rules.

Marketing luxury products has an enjoyment not unlike owning luxury products

Marketing luxury services and products is enjoyable, too. Because decisions are based on superior experiences rather than need fulfillment at an economical price, the style of selling such services and products is different.

To get into the proper mind for creating marketing for luxury products, exercise your expensive tastes and aspirations for top quality. For example, think about automobile marketing. For most of us, we look for comfort, roominess, fuel economy and good luggage space. For the wealthy, the choice has more to do with style, elegance or sportiness, leather, wood, and steel. The choices are not so much practicality as it is touch and feel. For vacations, most of us check rates, get a good deal on transportation and have plenty to do at little cost, like nice lakes or beaches. For the wealthy, the choices have more to do with new adventures, isolation, superior service and uniqueness—something to talk about when they get home.

The basis of choices differ and so do the basis of marketing strategies

Likewise, the strategies differ.

Do you think that BMW runs magazine advertising in consumer magazines with the idea that one of their readers would be prompted to go out and buy a BMW? That isn’t really the strategy.

The intent of the advertising is really to substantiate to those who buy BMWs that they have made an intelligent and quality-oriented decision. This is a strategic aspect of luxury marketing that may not occur to those who are used to broad-based consumer marketing. Consumer products companies would not spend the kind of money needed to run a decision-substantiating advertising campaign.

Not only does the wealthy consumer get to enjoy luxury products and services available for his or her choice, but also marketers of luxury need to have the same appreciation. If a marketer does not have the sense of what touch points trigger the purchasing decisions of the affluent, then the target may be missed.

Thrive Marketing can help your business become better at reaching the luxury products and services market. Not only do we have good taste, but we also have the experience you made need to adjust your selling strategies provide luxurious appeal to your quality and experience conscious customers. Your products and services will never have to apologize to “a man with his own plane.”

Happy Clients

“Christie and Thrive Marketing did an outstanding job with the branding of my PR firm. Every time I give out a business card I receive a compliment on the originality, color and overall design. I am very happy with my Web site as well, and look forward to working with Thrive continuously over the years. It’s also nice to work with someone who is a detailed and reliable account manager. She always kept me informed on where Thrive was during our branding process, and stayed on top of me when I was falling behind on my deliverables! I highly recommend working with Thrive Marketing for all branding needs.”

-Aly Saxe, Phoenix PR Firm

More Testimonials Read Case Studies

Request a Proposal

Request samples of our work and/or interview us to help with your marketing efforts by requesting a proposal online or by calling 1.866.521.0827. We look forward to the possibility of working with you!

About ThriveMarketing

We measure our success by your success. Through creative marketing strategies, we help our clients generate more leads, build more profits, shorten sales cycles and strengthen brands. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be effective. Not to mention right for you. We work with all types of marketing budgets and have become experts at working with what you have – with one goal in mind: to produce results. For more information, please visit www.ThriveMarketing.net or call 1.866.521.0827.

ThriveMarketing is a proud recipient of multiple American Marketing Association Spectrum Awards and is ranked in the Top Web Design Firms by The Phoenix Business Journal.