Marketing a Luxury Brand in Toronto

A Lesson Forged by 50 Years of Experience

With over a decade of online marketing, I’ve worked with brands which differentiate themselves in all different ways. While I enjoy cranking out hundreds of inexpensive leads for a low-cost focus, the most interesting, stressful, and rewarding work has come from marketing a luxury brand like Georgian Custom Renovations.

Georgian is a luxury home renovations and new home builder that has been sharing it’s expertise in the greater Toronto area for over 50 years. They’ve established a reputation for luxury and have stayed true to that focus, avoiding the trap of changing your offering to appease all who inquire about your services. This approach however does not always jive with traditional online marketing tactics.

The Online Marketers Dilemma

When optimizing for SEO there’s a huge incentive from Google to put your primary keywords in prominent places at the top of the page. This was something I repeatedly asked for but was always denied.

With PPC online advertising, often the most cost-effective lead generation efforts come from a low-cost incentive i.e. ‘special offer’ or ‘free ____’. That was what I proposed instinctually from years of past success, yet Georgian again insisted we not go that route and stay true to the luxury focus without cheapening the brand.

Georgian’s Approach to Marketing a Luxury Brand Works

At first I pulling my hair out. How could I rank a site without doing this? Yet in spite of that setback, over time SEO improved and through optimization and testing their online ads became a lead generation machine for exactly the type of client they wanted. In the end, I’m very glad Georgian took the stance they did.

Online marketers are so often we’re driven by the incentive to generate results immediately to appease customers and that’s a shame. In marketing, as in life, I have found that pushing for short term gains/gratification is often at the expense of true long-term success. When marketing a luxury brand, it’s not about dropping your cost per lead by 25%, it’s about finding the ideal client who appreciates what you do and increases your revenue as a result.