25 Jul Targeting The UHNW & HNWI With PPC

Over the last year we’ve seen our clients’ needs shift into paid search a lot more, particularly when it comes to getting in front of high net worth individuals, and if nothing else, we’ve learned it isn’t easy to do. The focus for us has been mainly travel, but we’re seeing our real estate clients also showing great results from the right channels. There are nearly 200,000 UHNW individuals spread out across the globe and these numbers are only going to increase over time.

Photo Credit: Royal Bank of Canada

There are many ways to reach this crowd but when it comes to PPC in particular, there’s only a few avenues where you know for sure that you’re hitting your mark. We by no means claim to be experts in the field of PPC, so take what you can from us and if you have comments and suggestions make sure you let us know in the comments below.

Let’s start with my least favorite of them all and then move down the scale of awesomeness, again based on both our recent experiences and our personal opinions:

Facebook Ad Platform

While I don’t doubt there are a lot of high net worth individuals on Facebook, I doubt they’re on there much posting memes and bitching about something or other.

Can you target based on salary and other features that would most likely indicate someone’s affluent? Yes and no.

When it comes to getting your ad in front of an affluent user, you’ll have to define your target user with extreme precision. I would still expect to lose a good amount of money tweaking but that’s quite common with any PPC or media buy, am I right?

The reason I dislike Facebook Ads so much is you cannot target based on salary, although that’s an admittedly sketchy variable as many people lie about it anyways.

While these extra options do help, you must know your audience to a degree at this point and if you don’t, you’re doing something wrong. To help you out even more, you’ll need to dive into your company’s Facebook Page insights as well as your Google Analytics data to help determine audience gender, age, and location.

Our biggest success factor with FB Ads?

It’s all in the interest options, which allow you to hunt down people that are interested in your niche. For example, for watches you can list brands and buzzwords to help narrow down the targets. This – when combined with the right ages and genders – should help bring you the right people.

With that being said, you will also find out pretty quickly if Facebook is even the place you should be targeting UHNW customers. As I mentioned before, these people don’t tend to spend much time on Facebook but they will to check in on family and that leaves you with a window of opportunity, albeit a small one.

LinkedIn Advertising

Photo Credit: Hubspot

Everyone in the business world is familiar with this business social network, however we’ve yet to run across a client that has utilized it for advertising before we stepped in. This is actually quite a shock to me because it is hands-down one of the easiest ways to get your ads in front of UHNW people within minutes.

The reason why it’s so great is because it’s B2B so you’ll find a lot of executives, CEO’s and other higher-ups on the corporate ladder not only being present on here, but active as well. In fact, participating here has led to about 10% of our company’s revenue and that’s without us buying ads… So just imagine what you could accomplish with a little ad spend!

Without a doubt, the best part of LinkedIn is the ability to target groups, which in my opinion are the most valuable aspect of the site. It will take some experimenting to find that sweet spot, but if you can target the right job type, the right groups, and a certain salary level, you should come out a winner.

Also bear in mind that you don’t have to target groups and can run site-wide advertising campaigns focusing on a certain demographic. These to me are quite a bit harder to figure out in terms of ROI but there is profit there, you just have to play the game.

Niche Luxury Networks

Besides wading through the droves of people on the usual social media suspects, we have also helped our clients reach the UHNW individual more easily through a myriad of luxury-focused websites. While media buys generally involve buying banner space at a CPM level, you can usually strike PPC deals with sites that are open to it. Luckily for the luxury industry, there are a few great places where you can buy ads and really get in front of an audience you know is right.

Direct buys from niche websites can also cost a lot more, as they usually require a set time period of advertising as opposed to stopping and starting a PPC campaign on Google. The best part about these following websites and social networks is that they’re all about the business and lifestyle of the luxury industry. While I’ve saved these sites for last, I’d highly recommend throwing your marketing budgets at them because they not only provide the industry with a great resource, but you’re going to get the best possible ROI for your luxury product as well.

The Lux List >>

A Small World – Advertising Info
Best Of All Worlds – Advertising Info
Luxury Daily – Advertising Info
Luxury Society – Advertising Info
Just Luxe – Advertising Info
Luxury Insider – Advertising Info
Luxury Briefing – Advertising Info
Jing Daily – Advertising Info

If you have any sites I missed that fit this list then please drop a link in the comments, or as always you can email me and I’ll put it up.