Luxury goods are synonymous with exclusivity and opulence. People want what they can’t have, but what’s truly better is having goods and using services that you feel only a select amount of people get. It makes consumers feel special and it gives them a something that not many other people get to experience. For this reason, people are happy to pay higher prices for certain goods, and this can easily translate into higher affiliate sales.
Many people don’t associate affiliate marketing with luxury in any way, shape, or form. Affiliate marketing has gotten a reputation of being cheap goods that people promote on their sites simply to make a couple extra bucks. For some affiliate marketers, this is the case—they’ve set up their site simply with dreams of getting rich quick, so they don’t really care about the content they’re putting out.
Putting that aside, affiliate marketing is an honest way to make money. The most successful affiliate marketers don’t simply promote their links; instead, they also produce valuable content to interest their readers. Additionally, they recognize the hard work that it takes to put into affiliate marketing before significant cash will come in.
Which is why it only makes sense that affiliate marketers are turning to luxury goods and services to promote. The higher cost of these items not only means more in sales overall, but also that you elevate the quality of your business, too. From an outsider’s perspective, you will seem like a premium business when you promote premium products.
Affiliate Sales And Luxury Mean No Coupon Codes
A big part of affiliate sales is promoting discounts or coupon codes, but unfortunately this is really not something that fits with luxury brands. A sale or discount lessens the interpreted quality of whatever it is you’re promoting. If you’re wanting to appeal to a more luxury crowd and are going to try to promote more expensive items, then you’ll want to remove those from your affiliate marketing strategy. Instead of coupon codes, consider high quality images or videos instead of text posts.
Model Your Ads After High-End Brands
Just because you’re focusing on luxury doesn’t mean that ads are out, too. Think about it: sites like Nordstrom and Burberry incorporate ads on their sites. But they do it in a particular way. Any old ad won’t do; instead, ads need to follow a certain aesthetic and clearly fit with their brand.
In your case, the ads need to follow suit with your business. If it feels out of place it probably is, so find ways to improve the ads on your site to speak to a more elegant style. This might mean choosing images without text or going with a certain color palette for all of the ads you feature.
Brand Yourself
Selling luxury items certainly sounds nice, but it also requires you to look like a luxury business. If you don’t have much experience with branding, then consider hiring a professional to brand your site, your blog, or whatever work you do to support your affiliate marketing business. It’s definitely a monetary investment, but considering the fact that you have the potential to earn more from sales, it is certainly worthwhile.
Have your designer help you create logos, choose a color palette, font, and layout for your site or newsletter. Try to capture the essence of the niche type of products and services you’re focusing on in order to increase your sales.
Produce Great Content
Just because you have the chance to make more on every sale doesn’t mean you need to go crazy promoting things. You still need to make an effort by publishing posts on your blog, sending out email campaigns, and updating your social media platforms with useful information.
Affiliate marketers fail miserably when they focus only on selling and not on helping their readers. It seems counterintuitive, but when your only goal is sales very few people will be excited about what you have to say. They’ll be able to sense that all you want to do is push them to buy things, and that’s not a very good feeling at all. Readers will be happy to take your recommendations—but you have to make them trust you, too.
If you’re wanting to create things that will speak to a luxury audience, then learn by example. Take a look at the copy for sophisticated brands, examine their social media accounts, and use their photos for inspiration.
Don’t Dabble
It can be hard to make the switch to being a luxury affiliate site, but you either are or you aren’t. If you decide you want to get your feet wet first and try throwing out a few higher-priced items on your site, you’ll most likely not make many sales, if any at all. After all, appealing to clients who want high-end goods means you’re targeting an entirely different sector of the market!
So decide if you do or don’t want your affiliate marketing business to be luxury. And if you decide that yes, it’s for you, then you need to go into it wholeheartedly. While you do stand to make quite a bit of money from sales, you must also sit down and make sure that your business speaks to the type of client you’re aiming to reach. You truly must make a change throughout your entire business, from your site and blog to your newsletters to your social media accounts.
