Luxury brands are at the forefront of setting trends for other retail categories, meaning these brands above all must have their finger on the pulse of consumer desires. This is newly complicated by consumers looking to social media as their first source of luxury information.
So how do the top brands stay on top? Here, from the NetBase Luxury Industry Best Practices Guide 2018, are the social media analytics strategies you can borrow to emulate their success.
How Kiehl’s Wields Social Influence Wisely
Influencers should increase awareness and engagement for your brand, but how do you stack the deck to ensure that happens?
For starters, you need to compare prospective influencer engagement at baseline to your brand’s. The important metrics here are
- Engagements per post – telling you the influencer’s content is typically on point
- Engagements per 10K followers – telling you the influencer is strong on that particular channel
For cosmetics brand Kiehl’s, it made sense to partner with different influencers for different campaigns.
For a more general marketing campaign they sent beauty bloggers The Anna Edit and Fleur de Force to Coachella; to raise money for LGBTQ right they partnered with musicians Tegan & Sara; and actor Matthew McConaughey spearheaded their autism research fundraising campaign.
Influencers are only as good as their ROI – and all three performed well. To assess performance, look again at engagements per post for both the influencer and the brand and measure gains versus expectations.
Which influencer was best for Kiehl’s? Well, McConaughey’s post CTA definitely had an impact over Tegan & Sara’s simple product share. But Fleur de Force took the prize, highlighting the most effective content (for the Coachella audience, anyway): video.
This is what comes of understanding the various segments within your audience, and how to distinctively reach them.
Land Rover Finds Common Ground Between Buyers and Aspirers
Creating audience segments is just the first step. Once you do that you must look to uncover distinctions and overlap you can use to reach these segments.
For Land Rover, a top performer in our NetBase Industry Report 2018: Luxury Brands, that meant finding common interests between those who aspire to own a luxury vehicle, and those who actually close the deal.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so look to the full report for all the details, but here’s a taste:
Land Rover discovered both segments over-indexed for an interest in business outlets and technology outlets compared to the general population on Twitter.
A closer look revealed Bloomberg was a preferred channel for the Buyers segment – so ads for that audience were focused there.
As for the Aspirers, they particularly over-indexed on the technology front, so Land Rover used augmented reality (AR) as a touch point in the launch of their Velar model to reach the Aspirer segment. Smart move. Would you have thought to divide and conquer?
Louis Vuitton Uses Social Listening to Keep Brand Equity High
The rise of affordable luxury and casual styles has provided a challenge to luxury brands on the brand equity front. How do you balance meeting consumers where they are without selling out what makes you special in the first place?
Coach is an example of luxury brand erosion due to its availability and discounts. They are lagging behind competitors and in danger of losing their luxury status.
For Louis Vuitton, social listening allows them to benchmark sentiment, passion, and key topics like discounts against competitors, to know where they stand at all times. And you do need to be that on top of your data. Because social audiences are that fickle.
In this case, Passion Intensity – a measure of strength of positive Net Sentiment – is a crucial metric. Luxury isn’t something consumers “like” – it’s something they “adore,” “must have,” and are “wild about.”
It’s better to have a smaller passionate audience than a larger lukewarm one. Sorry, Gucci.
There’s a lot more to learn than we can include here, so be sure to download the complete NetBase Luxury Industry Best Practices Guide 2018. The lessons will apply whether you’re a marketer, customer care lead, or product manager. You don’t even have to be a luxury brand – but if you are, you definitely should have these best practices at your fingertips.
Want to see how your brand compares to others in your category? Reach out for a customized demo and we’ll show you how our social analytics tools work!
RELATED ARTICLES
- Social Media Analytics Report: What Makes French Consumers Say ‘Oui, Oui!’?
- Social Monitoring Industry Report: Consumer Sentiment For Luxury Brands Revealed!
