Do you want to connect with your audience on a deeper level? Lifestyle branding offers a different angle that focuses your marketing even more on the overarching desires of specific groups. This approach brings new leads to you, keeps customers coming back and gives you more brand stability.
Keep reading to find out how lifestyle branding could work for you and how to refine your current approach.
What is Lifestyle Branding?
Choosing your brand identity comes down to the products you offer and the people you want to target. Branding establishes your company’s aesthetics, values, voice, products and services. Lifestyle branding takes this one step further by establishing a way of life promoted by the brand.
Rather than stopping with just the product, lifestyle branding connects the company to a whole lifestyle. Over time, this lifestyle gets attached to your brand and products. So, when the target audience wants that lifestyle, they turn to your brand or products.
Selling a way of life is a powerful way to inspire your audience. When done correctly, your lifestyle branding will align with your brand culture and aesthetic in a way that feels completely natural. The full strategy will also include content creation, work with influencers and getting on the right platforms to help grow brand awareness within this lifestyle vein. The goal will be to get most people (especially those in your target audience) to consider your brand synonymous with the lifestyle.
Is Lifestyle Branding Right for You?
Not only does this strategy sell products, but it also sets you up with a loyal group of customers who see themselves pursuing the lifestyle you offer. When you understand your target audience, you can be a part of their daily lives and keep them watching for your newest releases.
Examples of powerful lifestyle brands include Apple, Starbucks, Target, Jeep, IKEA, RedBull, Ralph Lauren, Nike, Vans and Whole Foods. These brands have tapped into their audiences’ desires and produced the ideal imagery, messaging, voice and story that makes their brand a way of life.
Even brands focused on deals and saving money (Costco, TJ Maxx, Amazon, etc.) can establish a lifestyle brand that appeals to the frugal shopper. Lifestyle branding is really for any company in any industry. This blog will dive into how to refine your approach in order to sell the lifestyle and not just the product.
How to Refine Your Lifestyle Branding
Even if you didn’t know what lifestyle branding was, you probably have already done certain aspects of it. Most companies are focused on authentic connections with customers, so they are already trying to show off their company culture. But, with a focus on lifestyle branding, you can take this approach to the next level.
Here is how you can refine your approach to achieve lifestyle branding.
Build From Your Culture
You aren’t trying to fit your brand into the target audience’s world; rather, you are trying to bring them into yours. Therefore, you need to create a brand that is desirable and offers something the audience doesn’t already have. To do this, you have to have your own approach and thought leadership to solve issues facing your audience.
The best way to start your lifestyle branding is to pinpoint your current culture. What is exemplary in your current process, and what isn’t? Take the very best parts and start to identify what your company brings to the table. Start looking at how you can stand out from the crowd and where you can perpetuate the vibes, shared interests and perspectives of your top audiences.
Use Your Top Customers
Make sure you don’t let your best customers down in the shift. Identifying your best customers is the best way to make sure you are incorporating them into your approach.
If you’ve correctly established your buyer personas, you can work on establishing a lifestyle that appeals to them and fulfills their needs. Some of the top feelings your customers might be lacking and drawn to include:
- Time
- Luxury
- Freedom
- Confidence
- Beauty
- Nature
- Health
- Happiness
- Power
- Connection
- Fulfillment
- Independence
These are all examples of feelings that don’t come with a single product—they come with a lifestyle. You can use marketing to create a connection between using your brand to live a lifestyle that achieves those desired feelings.
Don’t Let Lifestyle Slot You into One Audience
You will probably have a slightly different approach for each product once you get going. Not every single one of your products is designed for the same audience. Some products are designed to appeal to audiences other products aren’t meant for. Toms, for example, is focused on selling shoes to educated, socially active young adults, yet they also target earth-conscious families with their robust line of children’s shoes.
Always be looking for an audience that isn’t really being targeted by anyone else in the industry. If you can find a way to address that crowd while staying true to your style and overarching message, then you will have an untapped target audience to help you create a stronger following.
Choose a Cause
You aren’t trying to virtue-signal or prove yourself here; choosing a worthy cause solidifies your values and shows you are committed to your ideals.
Identify something that provides a long-term value to your target market. Lifestyle branding is about a lot more than just the messaging—your company has to live out its values. Examples of causes that could align with your brand include:
- Sustainability
- Fairtrade
- Humanitarianism
- Environmental protection
- National hunger rates
- Scholarships
- Homelessness
- Worldwide poverty
- Child abuse
- Domestic abuse
- Neighborhood violence
- Substance abuse and addiction
Tell a Story
Above all, you need to tell a consistent story with your marketing. To truly sell a lifestyle brand, this story needs to permeate into every piece of content, spanning every platform and include the actions of every company rep.
Do you need help telling your story and creating your lifestyle branding? Talk to Vinci today. Whether you are just getting started or want to refine your lifestyle marketing, we can help.
