Ep 88 - High-End Content Strategies

Premium clients want premium experiences. In this episode, Aaron breaks down positioning your brand, service, and message so that high-end buyers see your value and don’t default to cheaper, low-quality alternatives.

Using a story from his own life (and a Ralph Lauren Polo), Aaron shares how to help buyers feel the difference between knockoff and original—and how to translate that feeling into your marketing, messaging, and sales conversations.

You’ll learn:

• How to shift price-sensitive prospects into value-driven buyers
• The psychology behind premium decision-making
• What content to create for government or enterprise clients vs. high-end professionals
• How to ensure your brand looks and feels high-end across every touchpoint

If you want to see how to create high-quality content in 30 minutes a month, head to contentonly.au and watch the free training.

Subscribe and leave a 5-star review if this episode gave you some clarity on attracting better clients.

Transcript

Your customers, your prospects, they want premium. They want quality, which is what you provide. Yet due to scarcity. They may be looking at an inferior provider and they might be settling for the knockoff version, which energetically they're going to have consequences for making that decision. And as we know, sometimes it ends up costing more. If your business is a premium or high-end service provider and you have lower quality competitors that undercut you on price, you're going to want to listen to this conversation. In 2004, when I graduated from high school, I'm showing my age right now, there's a popular show on that everyone watched called the oc, and a lot of wealthy characters were portrayed in this series, and they would often wear these Ralph Lauren Polos. And for a while there that became a status symbol, at least in my eyes, among my demograph. 

If you've ever been to Bali or Thailand, you'll know that you can get knockoff products. Ralph Lauren Polos, one of these classics when you're over there. But when you purchase those products for maybe five or $10, just holding them doesn't feel right. It feels icky. The quality of the material, they don't fit well, you know they're not going to last. There's almost a sense of being a fraud when you put one on and wear it around. And everyone got really good at being able to identify a knockoff from a genuine Ralph Lauren. And naturally, the people that were wearing the imitations, you could call them out, and the ones that had an original were holding the status at that time. Among my generation and I went to Sydney, I must have been 19. And in a David Jones or a Maya, there was this beautiful lime green original Ralph Lauren Polo with a purple stitching for the logo, and it was a perfect fit, and I purchased it full price. 

It might've been a hundred, $120 back then. I can't remember. I just remember the abundance of owning that Ralph Lauren Polo, the energetic frequency I was operating at. When I would wear that out socially, I'd feel amazing about myself, myself worth self value, how I present my confidence, and I compare that next to someone in a knockoff version of the Ralph Lauren Polo. Now, that's possibly what your customers, your prospects are presented in the high stakes game. They're aspiring for. They want premium. They want quality, which is what you provide. Yet due to scarcity. They may be looking at an inferior provider and they might be settling for the knockoff version, which energetically they're going to have consequences for making that decision. And as we know, sometimes it ends up costing more in replacements, in corrective issues in the lack of results or performance. So that story that I just shared about the difference between wearing a knockoff Ralph Lauren and the genuine article and the feeling around the two, you can take them to that place and just share that experience so they can feel it when they're looking at a decision and maybe trying to cut costs or cut corners because of economic reasons. 

And just explain to them the difference. Because that Ralph Lauren Polo went on to last me at least 10 years. I'm guessing I wore it over and over again because the quality was so high. So the return I got on that versus if I had a knockoff polo for five or $10, which might've lasted only a month, two before the fabric and material broke and it faded, that was the trade-off. One was maybe 20 times cheaper, the other one was 20 more expensive. Yet the value, the energetic frequency, and the longevity I got from the genuine original product doesn't even compare to the knockoff. So what can you have up your sleeve when you're dealing with a prospect that's giving you price resistance? What metaphor, what story, what example can you convey and share with them just so they get the difference? And then let's let them lean into that. 

Then the decision they make. It's their consequence to live with. But if you can't take them to that energetic space where they can understand a field of difference, you're probably going to lose more deals than you're going to win because the price is a sensitive point for a lot of people in the current economic climate. Now, how does this translate into your content and overall marketing strategy? Considerations when you're creating content or marketing to the high-end client segment in your industry is first of all, addressing their concerns, their problems, and moving towards their desires. So when you create a piece of content, whether it's a video or written post, step back and go, if I'm looking at this as my ideal client, is that going to get my attention and get me to tune in because they're going to have very different quality of problems that they want solved with speed, exclusivity, and status. 

Then someone that's at the lower end of the market. And I'll share an example from a very high end provider that applied to work with us on Monday this week, and their clients in the mining sector. So Rio Tinto, P-H-P-A-S-X, listed companies and government sectors, we're talking multimillion dollar tenders a lot on the line, and you need to check a lot of boxes when decision makers in those businesses, in those government departments are looking at you as a possible business to award those projects. And I said in the conversation, we have a client that has similar targets in terms of their end projects that they want to work on at government level. They've already worked with the likes of RE 18 TOE and PHP, and that company is real confidence that we currently do content for. The way we approach that is very different to what we would approach a local advisory business that's end clients or professionals, mom and dad's or homeowners, even if they're in the premium end of the market because everything has to be polished. 

It has to be a representation of what government departments and these very high level organisations that want to take on when they're awarding contracts. It almost has to be a runoff of how they present. So we do a lot lower frequency content, often posting around once a week, but very polished, very produced, and very tailored towards appealing to that government sector. So there's less humanization, conversational charm put into the writing style, and it's a lot more formal. And you can go check out Rail confidence to see examples of what I'm talking about with that. And we're showing scope and capability the size of their team, previous projects that they've worked on. So they look appealing to get awarded these types of projects. And if you're in that position where you're trying to get to government level or a SX listed companies, you're going to have to present in a way that's going to appeal to them, and you can go model and mirror who's winning these contracts right now, how do they position and present that content online? 

And that can give you a great example of how you can structure and put your content together to put yourself in the running to potentially win some of this work. Now, we step back, I'm assuming not a lot of the audience are at that level in their business, but I want to share that because that's the ultra high-end multimillion dollar contracts. If you are a high-end provider, multi-thousand dollar clients at a time in terms of what you provide, then it can be simple things like having polished content in terms of really crisp video footage that you might do direct to an iPhone. You might have a ring light and make sure it's premium in the way that it comes across, and then just do really sharp on-brand captions with no emojis. So it's premium feel the whole way through. And that can be a classic way to present premium content if you're a premium provider. 

However, if you are more fun, more approachable, that's when you might introduce some of those other layers. But in the back of your mind, you want to go, how's someone going to perceive my brand or image that I want to do business with? If they're viewing this content, if they're viewing this visual, if they're watching this video and the more premium vibe that you can make along with still hitting those human factors where there's trust transference, you're still presenting beautifully, showcasing yourself in those videos, but it appears outwardly crisp in presentation and the branding looks great, then that's when you're going to tick a few unconscious boxes. When they're watching that and they're going, this is a professional organisation, and I can see just by looking at them that they're going to be premium, and I value quality. I value myself. I want the best, I want the status, which is why I would reach out and transact with them and also position yourself. 

So it's not a surprise when you get to the payment conversation and what the investment is to come and work with you. So I just wanted to share a few ideas today. If you are a premium high-end service provider that you can help, one, help people feel the impact of going with cheap and compromising on what they want, quality and their worth, and feeling what it's like versus that amazing feeling of abundance of purchasing, paying full price and getting exactly what you want, like I did with the Ralph Lauren, and then how that can translate into the way that you produce your content and show up online. Maybe if you want to see how to create 30 days content in 30 minutes and make it ultra high quality, you can head over to content only au and watch a training there. If you've got any questions, post 'em in the comments below. If it's your first time watching the show, hit that subscribe button and leave a five star review so you can help other people discover the show as well.