Tips for Selling to the Affluent

Hi everyone,

As part of my regular research and learning time that I spend each week, I've been reading Dan Kennedy's 'No BS guide to marketing to the Affluent' and decided to turn some of my notes from it (and from other research that I've done) into a blog post as I thought many of you may find my notes useful.

It isn't specifically to do with just internet marketing, it's to do with marketing products or services to the affluent in general.

Enjoy...

==== Who are considered as 'The Affluent'? ====

Using the figure of household income of $100,000 usd or above as a sign of affluence, according to Wikipedia 15.7% of the USA is considered as affluent.

Further studies in the USA reveal that 50% of affluent people are self employed, while the other 50% achieve their wealth through inheritance, divorce, and well paid highly specialized professions.


==== What do they buy? ====

Affluent customers see the value in investing back into their business. If you can offer them a product that will increase their businesses leads, conversion rates, average $ per customer, and/or increase the number of repeat customers that a business gets, then they will take your offer very seriously.

Affluent customers also spend large amounts of money on luxuries, indulgences, collectors items, unique experiences, their children, status enhancers, stock, gold, silver, real estate, assets, upgrading their home or holiday home (kitchen's often $100k+ etc). These purchases often give them the "I deserve this" feeling, and the status that comes with their purchase feels like a sense of accomplishment (e.g. owning a Ferrari, a holiday home, or being a member of an elite inner circle membership).


==== Why will they want to buy through YOU? ====

Whether you yourself are affluent or not, you need to present yourself and whatever products or services that you are selling, as elite.

As far as you personally are concerned, make sure that every point of contact that you have with the potential customer is professional, courteous and leaves them feeling confident that you understand them and their desires.

If you can't afford to have a fancy office, then get a nice suit and come out to meet them in person. If you are selling online then there is no reason why you can't have a very professional looking website, particularly one that contains a big promise about your product or service, and multiple elements of proof that you can provide what you say you can.

Proof can come in the form of offering a free report, for instance a real estate agent might offer a report on 17 great ways to increase the price your property sells for. Proof can come in the form of testimonials, particularly from people that your potential customer admires or sees as similar to themselves. It can come in many other forms, such as screenshots of you being featured in a major magazine article, or on the news, a review from a celebrity, or even a product demonstration.

Just remember, product demonstrations often backfire, if you do do a product demonstration, make sure you do it in a way that makes your potential customers say "wow", otherwise you are better off sticking to the other elements of proof that will have this effect.

The best proof of all is if you have been referred to them by a friend of theirs. This will happen if you deliver a high quality product or service, and make it a fantastic experience.

Just another tip for selling services via a website (e.g. website design, salesletter writing, seo services, etc). One thing that works really well if you are looking for affluent clients, make your potential customers fill out an application form on your website in order to apply to be your customer.

This weeds out less serious clients, while also adding to that sense of accomplishment on the part of your client when they do finally secure your services.

When selling to an affluent customer price isn't the major factor, it's the quality and excellence of your product or service.

You need to make sure that owning your product or joining your service means something. Somehow it should give them a sense of status, whereby owning your product feels like an accomplishment in of itself.

A lot of affluent customers purchase through one vendor over another as a way of showing themselves respect. Affluent people love feeling like they deserve this for all their hard work.

Also, just getting back to pricing for a moment, if you price higher, you can afford to invest more in your product or service, meaning a greater experience for your customer.

Often affluent people want a job done properly, not cheaply, so price isn't the factor that sways them, it's their belief in your ability to do the job well and also any positive feelings such as status, or allowing themselves to indulge that comes as a result of being your customer.

I also found it interesting that more people wanted to join Kennedy's Inner Circle Membership, than when it was called a subscription. People want to be members, and in particular, part of an inner circle, a lot more than they want to be a 'subscriber' - I might have to look at that wording, or similar, for some of my membership sites :)

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I hope you enjoyed this blog post guys, it's basically a tidied up version of a bunch of notes that I took while doing some research yesterday.

As always, comments below are most welcomed.

All the best!

Mark Ling