10 Ways to Get High-Roller Customers Spending More With You Trust, consistency, quality and branding are all good ways to court high-end customers.
By Eric Siu
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High-quality customers can be defined in several ways. They may be customers eager for your products or services and predisposed to spend as soon as they find your website. They may be wealthy individuals with disposable income and desire for status who crave what you offer. No matter how you define high quality, these are the customers who arrive at your site, look at your offerings, and say "Yes!" with their shopping carts.
What do high-quality customers want?
The best customers are the right customers. These are the people whose needs align perfectly with the benefits your products offer them.
Such clients want:
- Products that meet or exceed expectations
- Products perfectly aligned to their wants, needs and desires
- Exceptional service at all times
- Prompt responses to inquiries or questions
- The feeling of being "special' to your business
When the perceived value of a product or service overwhelmingly exceeds the price tag, high-quality clients will spend money. Psychological tricks, such as imparting value through uniqueness, as well as focusing on benefits, can help you build sales among these valued customers.
Related: Want to Attract More Loyal Customers? Focus on This Marketing Strategy.
To attract high-end clients, you have to make your business appealing. The following 10 tips will help you attract the high-end clients in droves.
1. Increase your prices.
This sounds crazy to some, but think of it this way; your high-end customers are used to higher prices. Although they may like a bargain as much as the next person, higher prices denote luxury and exclusivity as well as value. Try increasing, rather than decreasing, your prices.
2. Sell the benefits.
A common mistake many business owners make is to sell from the features of a product. Benefits, however, are what sells a product. High-end customers crave products with benefits that perfectly align to their wants, needs, and desires. Articulate the benefits of your products and services clearly throughout all of your advertising. When the benefits of your product align to what high-end clients want, the products practically sell themselves.
3. Leverage the uniqueness factor.
Every product or service has some unique feature that can be leveraged in your marketing campaigns. Country of origin, craftsmanship, packaging... each of these features should be detailed after you've introduced the product through its benefits. High-quality customers seek high quality (read: exclusivity) for themselves, and setting your product apart from the others is key.
Related: Why Customer Engagement Is the Future of Ecommerce
4. Hire carefully.
Everyone from ecommerce call center operators to the salespeople greeting customers in a retail store must exemplify the brand image that high-quality customers want to see. Hire employees carefully, ensuring that they are both articulate and service-minded. High-quality customers will spend more at shops with great service, but to provide such service you need the right people working for you.
5. Reward good clients.
Send handwritten thank-yous to your best clients. Thank customers with cards, gifts and unexpected offers. Reward your best shoppers with incentives to return and shop more.
6. Consider your add-on sales.
High-quality customers will spend more when the add-on sales to their original purchase make sense and make them feel their shopping is complete. Make sure that add-on sales are part of your merchandising.
7. Spend on visual branding.
The visual branding for your company is very important to attract high-quality customers who will spend more money. If your company looks high-end, it will attract high-end customers. A good graphic designer can make your company's image resonate with your high-end customers so that they love the cachet of shopping with you.
8. Focus your marketing with laser-like precision.
If you use traditional direct mail marketing, print or radio advertising, focus with precision on the demographics you are trying to reach. Look for advertising venues that reach the high-end, wealthy customers, such as luxury product magazines or radio stations that reach wealthy zip codes. Use zip-code targeting and census blocks to reach the wealthy at home with direct mail. Think outside of the internet to reach the wealthy, who may already be bombarded with advertisements and general marketing online.
Related: The 3 Biggest Sins of Customer Engagement
9. Convey scarcity or urgency.
Urgency or scarcity always encourages consumers to spend more. If only five of a specific product were made, be sure to state this clearly. Make it obvious that only a select few have what you are selling.
10. Establish trust through consistency.
There's a good reason why many high-end brands are also long-lived brands. Consistency establishes trust. Time is one way to build consistency, with customers returning for the same quality items over and over again. Tiffany, Saks, Hermes and other high-end retailers build upon this theme of consistency and trust. Even if your company is new, you can also boost trust with your brand through consistent marketing, messaging, and product quality.
High-quality customers who will spend more money with your company are out there. It's your job to focus your marketing message, define and refine your product and brand strategy, and make continual improvements over time to achieve your goals. Trust, consistency, quality and branding are all good ways to court high-end customers to your business.
