A plumber with whom I briefly worked told me this:

“I only want to target people with lots of disposable income with my Google Ads.”

“OK,” I thought. I’ll just go ahead and predict how this campaign will go for you.

Nowhere.

It will go nowhere.

This is the conversation I have in my head whenever I talk to a potential client and they tell me they have above-average pricing so they only want to target people with extra cash to splash.

But I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I can tell you this: it just doesn’t work like that. 

Here’s why.

Wealthy People Aren’t Unicorns That Crap Out Money

People with lots of disposable income aren’t mythical beings that will blow their money on anything because they saw an ad for it.

They still care about their cash flow. Generally, their disposable income comes from sensible and smart financial decisions.

They plan their expenditure and research their purchases just like anyone else.

All that’s different is that price is less likely to be a barrier once they have made up their mind on what they want. But this doesn’t mean they’ll just pay whatever you charge.

Stop thinking their extra cash makes them easy marks. Money still matters to them.

Putting the Care in Careful Spending

Second, people with lots of disposable income will only tend to splurge on things they actually care about.

Good food.

Good wine.

Holidays.

Nice clothes.

Nice cars.

Cryogenic freezing.

A variety of fluffy cross-doodle dogs.

But will they pay extra for a plumber because they offer a “premium” service?

No.

Why? 

Because they don’t give a shit about who fixes their blocked drain. It’s not important to them, and because of that, they aren’t going to pay extra for it.

There Isn’t A ‘Wealthy People Only’ Option In Most Marketing Platforms

OK, this isn’t strictly true. TikTok has the option to target users with Higher Spending Power, and Google Ads has income targeting where you can select various household income brackets (i.e. Top 10%) but does it work?

Not really. Sometimes? Jury’s out.

Do you know what is considered a ‘Top 10%’ income earner in Australia?

$137,000.

At that salary, $32,000 goes to income tax, and rent or mortgages swallow another  $33k to $50k respectively.

So suddenly, our top 10% earner now has somewhere between $55 and $72k left.

That might still sound quite high, but then we’ve got groceries, utility bills, streaming services, phones, vehicle running costs, insurance, public transport, coffee and all the little bits and pieces that drain your finances.

And we haven’t even mentioned the costs of having children yet or the fact that everything is going up in price monthly.

You might think that sounds like a customer problem, but a customer problem that stops people from buying your services? That’s a problem you need to navigate, Business Owner, not the customer.

Particularly when there are other businesses in your market the customer can afford.

Don’t Neglect Tomorrow’s Customers

Attracting the wealthy of today is good, but who’s going to be your future customers? People with the extra cash are your customers now, so all that’s left are people who don’t have the extra cash.

Some of those people will have that cash soon. Ignoring them today means they go somewhere else tomorrow.

If you don’t have a sales pipeline or a way to produce one in the future, you’re in for a hard time as the years pass.

How Can You Attract More Wealthy Customers?

Alright, the moany part is over. You might be thinking “Jeez mate, lighten up. It’s not that unreasonable to ask.”

So let’s talk about what you can do if you have above-average pricing because you consider your product or service a cut above the rest.

Put Some Effort In & Have A Brand

Single-channel marketing is not going to help you unless you accept you’re going to get some very cold leads.

People need more than a 30-character Google Ads headline or a 120-character Meta Ad description to understand why they should pay 50% more for your product.

You need to have a stronger presence than that.

So Should You Run More Ads?

That doesn’t necessarily mean running multiple ad campaigns, but it helps. You should be publishing regularly on every social media network that’s relevant to your business. You should be writing content that aligns with your values. You should be out there engaging with your customers even if they don’t know they are your customers yet.

Just slopping up a Google Ad that sayseuphamizes “we charge more because we’re premium” isn’t going to help.

You should be showing how good you are. People should feel like they know you before they even enquire.

A First-Hand Case Study

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I used a Buyer’s Advocate when we purchased our first home. I didn’t see a single ad for her services, but she posted so much on social media that we felt like we’d known her for years.

Her feed was filled with advice, testimonials, success stories, beautiful houses and equally beautiful people.

And she wasn’t cheap.

But we went ahead with her regardless because our perception of her business was that she was worth every penny. She offered a premium service and we could afford it.

With her help, we bought our first home within a few weeks so our decision was validated. We now tell people about her, and her reputation continues to grow as a result. We became one of her success stories.

People love telling their friends how much they paid for something. It gives them bragging rights. “Look how much I can afford to spend.”

Put in some effort to make your brand aspirational.

Deliver Tangible Value

This is a tricky one if you’re working in a service where everyone largely does the same thing. If you’re a plumber and your main competitor is another plumber, there’s a very strong chance that you go about your jobs in a very similar way.

You drive the same sort of car. You turn up in overalls made from the same material. You probably arrive at similar times. You’ll use similar tools, similar parts, and similar techniques to solve your clients’ problems.

So where do you go about charging 50% extra for your service? What do you do differently?

If you can’t answer that question, you might want to revise your offering.

Be Where Your Market Is

Stop thinking about your business like a business owner and start thinking about it as a customer.

Ask yourself “Does my increased pricing solve a pain point for the customer in a better way than my competitors?”

And I don’t just mean grumble about it for a minute and move on with your day.

Really think about it. 

Because if your customer doesn’t care about the reasons you charge more, then you’re out of touch from your audience.

You’re at risk of closing yourself off from a larger market based on the assumption that you understand what matters to your customer base.

Do The Hard Yards

No one launched a luxury brand quickly.

Apart from these guys, but they achieved it by lying. A lot.

If you’re fresh into the business world, you need to be focused on taking money from anyone that’ll give it to you.

I don’t mean sell yourself short, but having some sort of consistent revenue coming in when you’re just setting out is better than having an occasional smattering of larger payments.

As you start getting stable income (and positive reviews), you can gradually increase your prices, particularly if you are the sort of business where people might use you only once, or very occasionally.

But you have to build credibility and your finances first.

Climb the ladder, just like everyone else.

Appreciate Lifetime Value

If you’re in a business where your customers are likely to come back again, the amount of money you make through that ongoing relationship will produce an ever-increasing return on investment on your acquisition costs.

They might only buy one t-shirt from you now, nut next time, they come back and buy three t-shirts. Four, maybe. Maybe a pair of pants as well.

Theoretically, How Would You Target Wealthier Clientele?

So, let’s say you meet the criteria.

You’ve done the hard yards. You’re posting on social media. You’re running more than one marketing channel. Your price is higher than your competitors and you’ve got the reputation to back it up. How do you target the wealthy?

As we’ve discussed earlier, there are options to do this in Google Ads and TikTok, but they aren’t bulletproof.

What you’ve got left is

1. Targeting the lifestyle and behaviours of your audience;
2. Demographics;
3. Placements;
4. Ensuring the market perception of your brand is aspirational;

Lifestyle & Behaviours

Think luxury travel. Business and first-class flights. Investing. Business & political news readers. Luxury shoppers. Frequently eats out. Premium car brands. Electric vehicles. Regularly flies overseas. Private education.

You can also think of luxurious brands that your audience might like as well.

Demographics

You can then go into demographics. It’s less likely that 18-25 year olds are going to have buckets of disposable income. Not that it can’t happen, but statistically speaking, there’s more wealth among older generations. 

Just remember that some of those 18-35 will become your customers of tomorrow. You can’t ignore them forever.

On its own, this targeting isn’t perfect, but as you run campaigns this way you start to build up something in marketing we like to call a Persona. You can use that to guide you to the right audiences in the long run.

Placements

This is a more literal interpretation of “Be Where Your Customers Are” in the sense that you are literally putting ads on the content they are consuming.

If your customers are reading The Financial Times, put ads there.

If they spend a lot of time playing golf, put ads on golf-related content.

Brand Perception

In 2004’s Beyond The Sea, Bobby Darin is able to jump start his fading career when he realises that people believe what they can see. If he looked like the real deal, people would believe he was the real deal.

That’s important to remember.

You can’t just tell people you are premium or prestigious.

You need to show them.

Everything you do needs to demonstrate who and what you are.

That can get expensive, but if people perceive you as a luxurious and prestigious brand, they are more likely to be agreeable to with your pricing.

Be Where The Customers Are

It all comes down to understanding where your business fits in your customers’ lives. Just because you know where you want to be doesn’t mean you’re already there, and it certainly doesn’t mean your customer is there, cash in hand and ready to go, either.

Know what sets you apart, and put in some effort to portraying your brand persona.

Get a good website, not something you knocked together on Wix in a couple of hours.

Put effort into how your brand portrays itself online.

Work hard enough to get good reviews and a better reputation in your industry.

Will it take a lot of your time?

Absolutely.

Will it be easy?

No.

But nothing worth having comes easy now, does it?