What is Lifestyle Marketing?
Lifestyle marketing is a marketing method in which the product or service is positioned to possess all ideals, aspirations, and aesthetics that their target audience identifies with. In this marketing technique, brands are marketed to resonate with the lifestyle of their audience.
The brands work on a deep understanding of their target audience’s lifestyle, aspirations, and wants. It helps you reach a wider audience, gives more information to your target audience, and allows you to have greater levels of creativity while marketing. This type of marketing technique is used because it provides significant advantages to the business.
Several popular brands have successfully integrated lifestyle marketing into their businesses, and it has done wonders for their growth. These include brands like Nike, Apple, Red Bull, GAP, Benneton, and a lot more. These retailers offer a distinct and recognized set of values to consumers.
Why Choose Lifestyle Marketing?
Lifestyle marketing is successful because it places a consumer’s values and goals at the center of the brand, providing them with an intellectual framework for why your product exists. Its content and context go beyond simple product promotion to represent your brand’s target customers’ lifestyle. As such, it succeeds in activating and uniting communities.
In a way, you can call lifestyle marketing a win-win phenomenon for the company and the customers. It provides the audience with what they want, and the company gets to enjoy the added profits.
For instance, without mentioning the numbers, Apple presented MAC under the light of “No virus PC” and was able to attract its audience. They registered the superiority as PC viruses were something that windows struggled with at the time. This campaign by Apple resulted in a 42% hike in their sales.
How to create a lifestyle brand?
In today’s cut-throat competition, having a brand name, logo, and basic marketing personas doesn’t make your product stand out anymore. To flourish in today’s market, you need a brand that operates off a much more ‘human-driven methodology.
One of the distinctions between a lifestyle brand and a non-lifestyle brand is that a lifestyle brand is successful in activating and uniting communities. They market the product as a part of one’s life or as a way of life.
Before you select a marketing strategy for your product, you need to follow through these steps:
Define your market
Going into the market without enough research is like jumping into a well with no bottom. That’s why the first step in lifestyle marketing is to have a deep understanding of your market.
It covers the basic demographic information and knowledge about your target audience’s habits, likes & dislikes, skills, hobbies, etc.
Know the information sources of the target audience
To know your audience even better, you need to identify the sources from where your audience gets their information.
Are they more inclined towards social media? Do they get entertained by watching TV shows or movies? Which websites do they visit most often?
Now you know where to find them and what their preferences are in terms of media consumption.
Brand positioning
When you have identified your target audience’s interests, values, and aspirations, you can then begin to shape the brand positioning.
Defining the brand positioning means creating a narrative around what makes your brand special. As part of this narrative, it is imperative for brands to find their unique “selling proposition” or USP, something that distinguishes them from their competitors.
Marketing channel
Now that you have defined your target audience and know their preferences, it is time to decide where you will be marketing your product.
Market yourself on popular social media websites or through TV ads? Or maybe an email campaign can get more people interested in what you are offering. All this depends on the specific needs of your target audience.
Information flow and public feedback
With your marketing channel and target audience decided, all that remains is to go out there and introduce your products and services. Create interactive content and communicate to the audience with the selected channel.
The most important aspect of this step is to monitor the flow of information and the reaction of the concerned audience. Doing this will provide valuable insights into what the audience expects from you regarding future improvements or innovations.
Tips for creating an effective lifestyle brand
With these steps complete, you will carve out a place for your brand within the market. This is not an easy task, but lifestyle marketing can definitely help you achieve it. And if done right, this could also provide you with the platform to go global.
Brand story
In lifestyle marketing, a brand story will play a pivotal role in helping you connect with your customers. The narrative of your brand should be relatable to the audience. But don’t fabricate it with what the audience wants to hear. Be authentic with your story and the idea that the product represents.
Define the lifestyle you want to sell
Based on your market research, define the lifestyle that you want to sell. This will help you in finding out what interests your audience and what their aspirations are. Your products & services should be able to tap into this psyche of your target consumers.
Create authentic content and engage with your audience
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and create the right content that will resonate with them. Your content should reflect the motive of your brand and give the audience a reason to stick to it.
People have this desire to express things that relate to their lifestyle. And you need to be there to validate their self-expression concerning your brand. So, engaging with your audience is essential in lifestyle marketing.
Build a community around your brand
Back your promises & claims with your product and make efforts to create a community with your brand at the center. It will improve brand recognition and save you from being just another player in the market. The community will be a great medium of word-of-mouth as well.