Promoting Luxury Goods on the Internet-Why it's so Different?

Why are cities like Guangzhou, London, and New York located where they are? Easy: these locations provide ocean ports connected to complex river systems. For thousands of years, trade has involved the movement of goods down rivers, across seas, and often up rivers as well. So buyers and sellers typically stationed themselves at these focal points. And on a micro level, location within those cities has been equally important. Retail space on New York's "Fifth Avenue", or in Hong Kong's "Central" is bid so high because that's where the well-heeled buyers are to be found. In short, if you want to sell luxury products, you go where the money is.

But the Internet, and the astonishing speed at which commerce is moving onto it, brings traditional paradigms under attack. In the jewelry industry, marketing managers selling to the trade usually obsess over securing key locations at industry fairs, "owning" the back covers of trade publications, buying up sponsorship opportunities, and doing whatever else is needed to get their name in front of the buyer.

All that is now considered annoyingly last century. When one sits in meetings with young and ambitious marketing executives today, the new vocabulary is bewildering: search engine optimization, top-ten placement, viral marketing, sticky pages, long-tail impressions, meta-tags, and crawlers. An over-fifty Advertising VP might be excused for shouting out in frustration: "Hey, can't we just buy the back cover of JCK and be done with it?"

Sadly, no. Today's commerce is no longer about ports and river systems. And no longer even about key locations at trade shows, prestige addresses in chic cities, or even about making the right choices with print-advertising spend. Today's buyers are moving onto the Web, and today's marketers have to be moving there right behind them-or preferably ahead of them. The key takeaways from the graphs nearby are (1) the speed at which jewelry sales are moving online-at current rates, doubling every four years-and (2) less noticed but perhaps even more important, the nearly universal tendency of today's luxury goods buyers to research those products online, ahead of purchase. In short, they're still buying mostly in stores (for now), but they're doing their homework about the products-deciding what they want to buy-online.

And when it comes to promoting luxury products online, reaching those consumers who are using the Web for their education, there are three critical things the brand marketers need to get right.

First, their site has to be found. With most consumers approaching the Web from the starting point of a Yahoo or Google key word search, ensuring that your company will rank high in the search engine listings is critical. There are two ways to achieve prominence: earn it, or buy it. Earning search-engine prominence is a complex and highly technical art, outside the scope of this article, and generally requires the services of a competent website design firm or marketing agency. However, anyone can buy placement. The "result screens" will serve you up as one of the "sponsored links" and show you right at the top. Buying search-engine placement is crass, but effective.

Second, when a customer does land on your website, it's important that they be greeted with an environment that's attractive, professional, and easy to navigate. Too many things that blink or flash, or a phone number that can't be found after ten minutes of searching, is a frustrating website and the customer is likely to move on to one more user-friendly.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the site must deliver the valuable information that the buyer is presumably seeking in the first place. 92.5% of (US) consumers are now turning to the Web to research high end product. They have questions, and it's up to your website to give them answers.

Speaking generally, top jewelry and watch firms are doing an excellent job at #1, and #2, but often fail miserably at #3. That is, their sites are ranking well in the Search Engines, and the sites themselves are professional, sophisticated, and easy-to-navigate. What's missing is content.

A brief search on the Web illustrates this point. I chose three prestige watch brands at random, and rather than mention names, I'll call them Watch A, Watch B, and Watch C. They are extremely well known names, two Swiss, one American, and represent the high end of the market. I went to Google and typed the name for Watch A. Their corporate website was listed right at the top. Perfect. That means they've done what they needed to do in terms of maximizing search-engine listings. (If "Triple-A Pawn Shop - All watches 60% off" was at the top, that would be a problem.)

The Watch A website itself is elegant, professional, evocative of the brand image, and easy to navigate. Their use of Flash to create movement adds polish and sophistication. Scores of watches are served up to the consumer, grouped appealing by "collection."

So what's missing? Content! The site is heavy with beautiful pictures, live video of promotional events the Company has sponsored, and close-up views of all the watches themselves. But today's Internet shopper is there for information, not just pretty pictures. No information about any of the watches is shown on this site. Are they mechanical or automatic? Are they water resistant and to what depth? Do different models come with different options? Do any of them have built in alarms? How complicated is it to set or change the time?

I tried the same exercise with Watch B. Again, their corporate website floated right to the top of the search in both Google and Yahoo. Their site was elegant, sophisticated, and did a good job of reinforcing the brand image. The site even provided a mechanism to download the User Manual for each of its watches. Excellent! But answering key questions about the product? Sadly, nothing was there. The User Manual explained how to set the time, but didn't mention water resistance or any other technical features about the watch.

These two companies' advertising teams are thinking of the Web as nothing more than an online brochure-with movement. So they are concentrating on the image of the brand. One might say they are appealing to the "right side of the brain," which sees aesthetics, colors, and emotion. But the left side of the brain-so important to that consumer, who is seeking exact information on the Web, is being ignored.

This is why it is so vital for firms marketing luxury products to break out of their traditional mindset. Magazine advertisements, billboards, TV-spots, and other forms of media that seek to capture a consumer's attention for a brief moment of time, are almost the opposite of what's happening on the Web. Traditional advertising is brand driven: Words, images, feelings are forced onto a consumer by virtue of their placement in magazines, billboards, etc. In this traditional environment, the consumer is being bombarded with messages, most of which are of no interest to them. Thus there is a premium on being short, impressionistic, and evocative.

Yet buyers researching product on the Web are there for a reason. They want information. They want details. They want content! And rather than promotional messages being forced on these Web shoppers, those shoppers are actually seeking out the information. They are self-selecting their areas of interest, based on where they click. Luxury goods marketers therefore must train themselves to see the Web differently. It's not a brochure with pretty moving pictures. It's an infinite library where everything about a product-every detail, no matter how minor-should be made available if it's relevant to a consumer.

Traditional Advertising versus Web Advertising

Watch C, thankfully, did include not only each model of watch, but also minimal technical information such as water resistance, features such as alarms, etc. Ironically, while Watch C provided the critical content the shopper might need, it was provided in a very drab and uninspired way. There was no attempt at real merchandising, no "romancing the customer" on this site. Just the facts, ma'am. But at least the facts were there.

These three examples illustrate how the luxury products industry is still struggling to get it right in terms of what they should be doing online. But a good starting point is addressing these three critical steps:

1. Make sure the product is near the top or at the top in the search engines.
2. Make sure the website is professional, sophisticated, easy to navigate, and reinforces the brand image.
3. Make sure the website goes beyond pretty pictures, and delivers all the content that the consumer might be seeking.

In today's world, commerce is driven not by key river intersections, but by key words. And successfully reaching the consumer means not just finding the consumer and shouting your advertising message, but helping them find you and politely answering their questions. Get these elements right, and your Web marketing will be successful

By: Jacques Voorhees