Good business needs good strategy. A good strategy, like all quality products or services, should cost money. So much is clear. After all, by investing in a strategy, you ensure that everything else built upon it will be also of top-notch quality, be it sales, marketing, operations or finance. But what sounds like an obvious statement that should be written on page one of any business school textbook, is sometimes not as obvious to business owners or luxury marketers, who are focused on getting those quick, but ultimately futile short-term wins. So let’s take a closer look at why investing in a luxury marketing strategy is so important for the successful future of your business and why you should never skip this step.
Why do you need a
luxury marketing strategy?
* In our previous blog posts we talked about what it takes and what it means to work with an agency. If you are not sure whether you have the right mindset for something like this or if you are ready to hire a luxury marketing agency in general in terms of business maturity, check out this blog post first.
Let’s think for a second about why do you need a strategy. And before we answer that question, think about this: Would you really hesitate to answer yes if somebody would ask you if investing in the future of your business makes sense? No one wants to see their company slowly decline and die in the long run. So the obvious answer is yes.
Everything in business starts with a strategy. Marketing is no exception. Be it a business plan, a sales, financial or marketing strategy, you need to have an overall strategic direction and map out all the key components and little screws and levers that will make your business machine run smoothly. Essentially, a strategy serves as a foundation for all future business efforts or initiatives, in this case, your marketing and sales support activities. Instead of producing content or doing a little bit of social media here and there, or running advertising campaigns that don’t bring any significant results due to the fact that they are executed by amateurs, you can follow a solid road map outlined in a sophisticated strategy and steadily work your way towards achieving your business goals with patience and wisdom.
And for that reason, we always start new client relationships with a strategy project. We rarely make an exception in this case. That way we can make sure that a custom funnel we want to build for a client makes absolute sense in terms of who they want to reach (luxury buyer personas), where they want to reach them (media mix), how we want to sell and convert them (the funnel design), and what kind of results they are looking for (goals and ROI forecasting).
Additionally, a strategy project is a great way to get to know each other. Ultimately people want to work with people they like or at least respect. We don’t believe in rushing into things and proposing straight away a years long binding contracts to our new clients. First, we want to understand your business better, we want to understand what drives you as an individual, and, of course, the expectations your management, market or team has towards you.
Investing into the future of your business
Now that we know why a well researched, well formulated luxury travel marketing strategy is an important step, that you should never skip, let’s talk about why it needs to cost an appropriate amount of money.
As a business owner or a luxury marketer yourself, you should know that no high-quality services or products come cheap. No matter what industry you’re in, be it high-end hospitality, luxury tourism, private aviation or yachting, no one expects you to give away your products or services absolutely for free, and you shouldn’t expect that from your marketing service providers either. And in a rare scenario you do get it for free, would you really trust anyone to deliver a solid and creative solution, free of charge? At best, you will receive some kind of a templated, recycled solution, that doesn’t require a lot of effort to produce and is not very personalized or customer-centric.
One of our core principles here at Jadewolf Marketing is ‘quality over quantity’, and we stand by it. We believe in the quality of our work, and we put a lot of our time into research, interviewing your team and providing creative, custom direct marketing approaches for your company that will help you grow and scale your business in the future, not only in the short and mid-term.
Of course, if you had a lot of success before with, let’s say, free PR, celebrity endorsement or maybe solely by relying on your sales team to generate leads and drive deals, then you might want something similar that doesn’t require a lot of investment in terms of your time, money or effort. But then again, is this kind of approach sustainable in the long-term? Is it global? Does it fit a company with ambitions to grow and scale? Every enterprise luxury company out there is heavily invested in multiple forms of digital marketing these days. Digital is on the rise more than ever, and it will only continue to grow and evolve. In 2020, travel companies are estimated to spend nearly $13 billion on digital advertising in the US alone. On top of that, it is always good to diversify your lead generation strategy and move away from relying solely on one or even two sources of customer acquisition. If you are not sure if this is the right time to invest in a luxury marketing strategy and the future of your business, remember: there is never going to be the right time, the only time is now and with reward in business always comes a certain level of risk.
The bottom line
Here is the simple truth: fundamentals are everything. If a house is built on a solid foundation, it will last. If the foundation is weak and full of cracks, the whole building will collapse sooner or later. Much like a whole building structure depends on its foundation, the future of your business and the success of your marketing efforts depend on having a professional strategy. Only by accepting the fact that you need to invest to get good advice and sustainable growth can you outpace your competitors and dominate your segment of the luxury travel industry.
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