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Few marketers would question the value of engaging with high net worth individuals. But until the past few years, many marketers thought that using digital strategies to target high net worth individuals was a futile effort. Conventional wisdom held that digital approaches cheapened the perception of luxury goods and travel and that the high net worth were generally either less engaged with the digital world or more skeptical of it than the average consumer. More recently, as a result of a greater understanding of high net worth digital immersion, as well as new approaches to digital marketing, those perceptions have changed dramatically. Still, reaching the high net worth is a distinctive challenge. This session will look at how Worth magazine has used digital outreach to connect with the high net worth and provide examples of efforts by others that have both failed and succeeded.
We’ll start by providing a brief overview of the history of digital marketing—or lack thereof—to the high net worth. Why was it widely believed that digital marketing to the high net worth was either largely pointless or, worse, even damaging to the marketer? How much truth was there to those perceptions?
Then we’ll look at why the landscape started to change and when. How much did the development of new approaches open the gates to digital strategies to reaching the high net worth, and how much did a greater understanding of who the affluent are and what their digital habits are drive marketers toward greater experimentation? I’ll provide some early examples of campaigns and techniques specifically targeted at high net worth individuals.
Of course, I’ll talk about the experience of Worth magazine in the digital world. In print, we have a readership with a minimum liquid net worth of $5 million, with 60 percent of our readers possessing a liquid net worth over $10 million—a fantastic audience for brands trying to reach those consumers. But there were challenges to replicating that audience in the digital world. I’ll go over what they were, and how we’ve addressed them. And I’ll also discuss the techniques that some of our partners have used—and draw conclusions about what seems to be working.
Key Takeaways:
* After initial reluctance and skepticism about the viability of reaching high net worth individuals through digital strategies, brands and companies have come around to both the necessity and the possibility of doing so.
* But the strategies to reaching these consumers cannot be the same as strategies aimed at a broader audience, and failure to recognize that could mean not only wasted marketing efforts but damage to the brands which try them.
* In the digital world, conventional wisdom holds that more is always better—more hits, more impressions, more visitors. But in targeting the high net worth, not only is more, not better—sometimes, it’s worse.
