Three Ways to Be Relevant to Luxury Clients Right Now

If you run a luxury business, you might be puzzled by this moment. While mask mandates are being relaxed, you might not yet be enjoying sales at pre-Covid levels. You may have engaged in fewer marketing activities during the pandemic out of a belief there would be fewer results. In luxury travel, for example, your clients may have been reluctant to board an airplane or stay in a hotel because of safety concerns. In other luxury categories businesses are having the same experience. You may think finding new clients, is not what you should be focused on, but instead reactivating existing clients.

I’ve got news. The thinking in cultivating the new and reactivating the old is the same. You have an edge with existing and former clients as you do not have to introduce yourself or establish trust, but you do have to establish relevance. If you have not engaged with clients regularly during the pandemic, resuming conversation can be just as difficult as getting to know a prospect cold.

First, you should never stop talking to clients, even when the likelihood of buying has temporarily diminished. If they are well-qualified, there’s the potential of identifying new needs, getting referred to others, and overall increasing the value of the relationship. Second, every event that takes place in your client’s life, your business, your industry, and frankly the world, gives you another starting point to new dialogue. Think of every person in your database as a timeline reflecting their lifelong relationship with you. There will be revenues along this timeline, and periods where there will not be. That means your existing client and prospect are the same. One just has purchases along their timeline, and the other not yet. Right now, conversation is important with both. Three ways of engaging will be helpful to your business and quickly make you relevant:

1.     How have you and your family managed during the last 24 months?
2.     I’ve missed interacting with you. I hope you’ll think of us, as you plan to get back to living.
3.     I have recommendations for you, such as…

Your objective is establishing an emotional bond right now. This means, acknowledging we have all been through a difficult two years. Be willing to listen and share things in a human way. At the same time, remember you are in business to improve your client’s life, to inspire them, and to give them options. There is no one who hasn’t considered their life, work, and home options during the pandemic.

Always remember you are focused on achieving two things broadly: relevance and recency. Help those who know you and those who don’t, understand why you are relevant. From now on, never stop finding new ways to be relevant. Never stop marketing, even if it seems what you offer is a one-time, or rare thing to sell to your client. Luxury businesses that are relevant and recent will always prosper.