Paid search campaigns become more competitive by the day, especially for luxury brands. With high-costing CPCs and bidding wars on brand keywords, you’ll need a strong competitive luxury brand paid search campaign to stay ahead of the competition.
Paid search is essential in any luxury brand marketing campaign. But what makes luxury brand marketing different from other brands? According to WealthEngine, luxury lifestyle brand marketing is when a high-end brand forms relationships and strong emotional connections with consumers based on shared values and interests. Instead of promoting a vacation as just a vacation, you would frame this trip as an exclusive experience of a lifetime. Using paid search, luxury brands can highlight this difference to consumers who are already searching for the product or service offered.
Luxury Brand Industry Growth
The Neil Patel site states that the global luxury goods market will increase from $285.1 billion in 2020 to $388 billion in 2025, with an estimated 8% of all luxury sales being made online. Not only is a good portion of sales expected to be made online, but it is estimated that 80% of purchases made in-store are influenced by digital efforts, such as paid search and paid social. With such a large percentage of luxury good sales being made either online or coming from digital efforts, it is essential a luxury lifestyle brand includes digital marketing in their strategy.
High CPCs of Converting Keywords
Due to the competitive nature of luxury brand paid search, high-converting keywords tend to be expensive. The cost per click (CPC) of keywords vary heavily from industry to industry and can change based on your campaign’s targeting. The higher the CPC, the less budget you have to work with. Choosing the right bidding strategy, and determining which keywords are worth the CPC and which ones aren’t, can help your luxury brand PPC campaign succeed.
Brand Term Bidding Wars
In addition to spending time and energy on relevant terms, you need to ensure your brand terms are protected. Luxury brand PPC campaigns don’t always need to bid on their own brand terms, but there are scenarios where it is essential. Competitors bidding on your brand terms can appear to consumers searching for you. Sometimes they can even appear above you or instead of you. This can be confusing to consumers who click on the first link they see, especially if the products and services offered are the same or very similar. If you begin to bid on your brand keywords, you may end up in a brand term bidding war. This competitive bidding method in luxury brand paid search can increase your CPCs, causing either you or your competitor to stop due to cost.
Focus on Ad Copy and Assets
When writing ad copy, your limited to only 30 characters per headline and 90 characters per description. This can make it hard to stand out. However, improving your ad copy is a cost-free way of improving performance, and staying above competitors. The quality of your ads affects your ad rank, which determines where you appear in a search result. This is a good place to start to get an edge over your competition.
Another solution to improving the look and feel of your luxury brand PPC ads is using ad assets (previously known as ad extensions). Assets such as sitelinks and structured snippets offer more opportunities within your ad for your customers to click on. Ad assets also allow you more characters to convince consumers to click on your ad.
Using a Negative Keyword List
Negative keywords can be especially helpful in lowing your CPC’s, giving you more budget to spend on competitive bidding. Luxury brand PPC campaigns benefit from negative keywords by removing a portion of users searching for something you offer, but at a lower price point. If your luxury lifestyle brand offers high-end residential units for purchase, putting negative words such as “cheap”, “rental”, and “sale” can deter people who wouldn’t buy your product from clicking on your ad. This saves you money, and time sorting through irrelevant leads.
Reviewing Competitor Reports
Reviewing the auction insights for your keywords can help pinpoint the keywords your competitors are bidding on. This report can guide you on decisions such as what keywords should have a higher Max CPC and which ads need to improve ad rank. This also can give insight onto new competitors entering into your paid search campaign space.
Luxury brand paid search is competitive, but with the right tools, and dedicated time, it can be an effective marketing strategy. Automation is making it easier and more accessible for brands to use paid search, but finding the right balance between automation and manual optimization is key to a strong ROAS. Mascola Group is a dedicated digital ad agency with experience marketing luxury lifestyle brands. Contact us today to get started.