5 keys to marketing to the very wealthy

Marketing is an invaluable tool when it comes to your business. Marketing is obviously the way you present yourself to the world, sell your product, and stay current. If your marketing suffers, you suffer, too. Marketing can be your greatest ally; or it can be your greatest enemy.
When you're trying to market something you usually have a general approach overall; that is, a general way of exposing your products and ideas to the culture at large. But you've always got to remember that there are cultures within cultures. There are, for example, different racial cultures within an overall culture. Even something as simple as a preference for a certain kind of music can constitute a separate culture. And every good marketer knows that you've got to approach all these cultures uniquely. Obvious, you say? True enough. What's not so obvious is that economically there are different cultures, too. The poor form a culture, the middle class form a culture, the rich form a culture. We don't think of this as much because we're a progressive society and don't think of folks in terms of their "class" anymore. But, when it comes to money, classes definitely still exist.
Today we want to consider the rich. The rich form a definite culture. The rich, as they say, are different. Let's look at five keys to marketing to the very wealthy.

Marketing to the very wealthy, key number one. So, we've established the fact that there are different cultures within culture and that when it comes to marketing to each culture one needs to adopt a unique approach. How would one market to the very wealthy? The very wealthy come from all sorts of backgrounds, a wide array of races and cultures. You've got to come up with an approach that will target the very wealthy in general yet also appeal specifically to the cultures within that general culture. You've got your work cut out for you, then! But this is the first thing to keep in mind: you're dealing with multiple cultures within one culture.

Marketing to the very wealthy, key number two. The rich may be different from the rest of us, but their tastes when in entertainment, art, etc., are usually similar to ours. That is, you've got highbrow and lowbrow tastes in the poor and middle classes, and you've got highbrow and lowbrow tastes in the richer classes. Hip-hop, for example, is just as popular for the rich as it is for the poor. And classical music has is admirers among the poor as much as it does among the rich. This might seem like a relatively simple thing to keep in mind, but you'd be surprised. Some people assume that just because Mr. X can afford to buy a Picasso, he must love Picasso as well. That isn't the case. Mr. X can certainly afford to buy a Picasso, but maybe his favorite art comes in between the pages of a comic book. When it comes to marketing to the very wealthy, this is a key thing to keep in mind.

Marketing to the very wealthy, key number three. Now we're going to do a complete turnaround. In key two we learned that the rich have the same tastes as the not-rich. And that's true, up to a certain point. But after that point the tastes of the rich tend to differ a little from yours or mine. The reason is simple-they can afford those tastes and we can't. Boats, caviar, mansions, fancy cars, expensive jewelry and clothes-the rich tend to favor some of things, but only because they can. But it's important to keep it in mind nevertheless. The rich are used to a certain lavishness of lifestyle, and you've got to be able to go right from mainstream tastes to lavish tastes when developing a marketing plan for the very rich.

Marketing to the very wealthy, key number four. If you want to know what the rich want, you've got to become familiar with the places the rich go, the places they choose to live in, and so forth. You've got to become (in a sense) rich yourself. You've got to try to think like they would. This is a basic key to any successful marketing approach, but it's easy to forget when you're dealing with the rich, because in all likelihood we're never going to live as they do. But still a marketer must familiarize herself with that lifestyle until she sleeps and breathes it-that is, if she wants to market successfully to it.

Marketing to the very wealthy, key number five. This key comes directly out of key four. Key number five to marketing to the very wealthy is: advertise where the very wealthy are likely to shop. This means magazines, television programs, stores, and so on. There are entire magazines devoted to buying yachts and to expensive hobbies such as raising and riding horses. There are television channels that specifically target the very wealthy. Get to know all these outlets. Remember, you might be selling something that's relatively inexpensive, but if it's a good product it'll sell no matter where it's placed. It doesn't have to cost as much as a yacht to be placed in a yachting magazine, in other words. Also, keep in mind that the very wealthy want to save money like everybody else. Sometimes the very wealthy are the biggest tightwads around. They don't want to spend an extra penny if they don't have to. Don't assume that the fact that they have money automatically means they want to spend it in an irresponsible way.