Dream Agility Blog

Pay Per Click For High Net Worth Individuals & The Top 1 Per Cent 

In certain luxury or high net worth sectors, Pay Per Click (PPC) strategies can be as much about building the audience of prospects ready for when they buy as it is about targeting them at the moment of truth, such as when they or their assistant begins researching a new yacht with a view to purchase. A different PPC strategy is therefore required because the deal values that are involved are often so high that the cost per lead is almost irrelevant, providing that sales are actually being made as a result of those leads. The OPPORTUNITY COST of missing an order is the real risk to the luxury level advertiser. 

High Net Worths Spend Big Offline, Not Online – Your Offline Tracking Must Be On Point To Avoid Missing Out On Big Orders

Whilst High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) do buy online, they may not differ greatly to the average consumer. 

HOWEVER, When They Really Spend Big Money, Their Transactions Are Almost Exclusively Offline. The Experience is Everything or as the saying goes “7 Stars or No Stars! Customisation and attention to detail are vital. 

Build A Moat To Completely Dominate Your Existing Competition & Prevent New Entrants From Getting Going 

This has severe implications for your Pay Per Click objectives and their measurement. Once a transaction goes offline, are you really going to measure success based on a cost per lead? Advertisers attempting to sell boats starting at £100k are unlikely to worry about the cost per lead unless they have no idea as to whether their Google Ad, Bing Ad, Facebook Ad, etc accounts are just wallpaper. Many luxury sectors have incredibly cheap pay per click ads because the advertisers don’t track offline. This represents a huge opportunity for many advertisers operating in the luxury sector to identify the real value of their campaigns and can dominate the top positions as they are completely confident of the value being driven. 

The 90 Day Cookie Window Must Be Overcome

High Net Worth Individuals take their time to complete transactions. They are savvy, confident, and intelligent. Advertisers looking to supply to them need strategies or technologies to track beyond the initial 90 Day Cookie Limit imposed by Google Ads where any sale made will not be accepted for upload by the Google Ads API. Yachts or super cars rarely get bought inside of 90 days from the beginning of the research. Dream Agility’s technology captures all the data early and can utilise it even after the 90 day limit imposed by Google Ads. 

Wealth Targeting By Country Is Limited & Trumped By Zip Codes In Any Case

Google Ads offers wealth based targeting categories in a limited range of countries. Data also suggests that the highest wealth individuals within Google’s targeting options only make up around 1.8% of all clicks. However, Zip or Postal Code targeting based on known wealth data sets allows far greater granularity and any bids set at this level in any case overwrite Google’s wealth based targeting in the few countries that it remains available. 

Layering Audiences based On Interests

A few poor people have a great phone. Almost all rich people have a great phone. Only rich people like Yacht brand pages and specialist private charter plane or luxury travel pages. Certain luxury brands appeal to everyone due to their fame but this makes them a poor targeting method of the rich. Valentino operate two brands of bags due to a long running legal dispute, with one version retailing in the 000s and the other often retailing at about £80 in the UK. Clearly many consumers don’t know the difference. We would caution using this audience to target High Net Worth Individuals along with brands who have launched mass market derivatives as a proxy of wealth. 

We can layer audiences from all these different sectors that only the truly rich would know about to ensure that Pay Per Click targeting is genuinely being shown only to the richest of the rich.