Luxury brands are increasingly using visual social networks like Instagram and Pinterest to market their products and brands. The document discusses strategies for luxury brands on these platforms. It finds that Instagram generally performs better than Pinterest for luxury brands. To succeed, brands need compelling visual content that shows products in an aspirational lifestyle context. They must also establish goals and metrics like follower growth, engagement, and hashtag strategy to measure the impact of their visual marketing efforts.

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The Ultimate Guide To
Marketing for Luxury Brands
&

2. 2
The Landscape, and Why
Visual Networks are Great
for Luxury Brands
Your Visual Content Strategy:
What’s Working For Luxury
Brands and What Isn’t
Establishing, Measuring and
Achieving Your Goals on the
Visual Web
2
3
1
What’s in This Guide

3. 3
The Landscape,
and Why Visual
Networks are Great
for Luxury Brands
1

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Instagram and Pinterest are tailor-made for
luxury brands. Both networks are inspirational
and aspirational by nature, and this makes them
a perfect fit for luxury brands whose products
are inherently beautiful and desirable.
Aston Martin’s Pinterest
strategy includes boards
for all of their current line
of cars, as well as legacy
models such as their
legendary DB5, shown
here. As a result, their
content has high levels of
engagement, and more
than 180,000 followers

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It should come as no surprise that many
premier luxury brands are taking advantage
of these platforms to further their success; in
fact, a recent study revealed that 93% of them
are active on Instagram. This makes sense, as
our research indicates that for luxury brands,
Instagram is dominant. By way of example, let’s
compare the Instagram and Pinterest audiences
Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry.
These are three of the top luxury labels on
Instagram, but they are illustrative of the broader
trend. Another example is luxury automobiles;
as we mentioned before, Aston Martin is killing
it on Pinterest. They have nearly 200,000
followers, which is far more than they have on
Instagram. However, they are the exception
that proves the rule. BMW and Audi each have
more than a million followers on Instagram, but
Pinterest is a much different story. BMW doesn’t
even have a profile, while Audi’s two official
accounts (one international, one for the U.S.A)
combined don’t break 2,000 followers. So why
there such a discrepancy between Pinterest and
Instagram for luxury brands? It comes down
to three things: brand behavior, products, and
platform specific user behavior.
Louis
Vuitton
Gucci
Burberry
2,754,347 53,951
2,304,259 32, 216
1,911,229 94,090
Instagram
Audience
Pinterest
Audience

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Aimee Lauricella
Marketing and PR Manager @Joe’s Jeans
“People love to have a visual connection with a brand, and
Instagram is the best platform for that. It performs better for
us because people can relate to all of the images we post,
since they always tell a mini story. Plus Instagram is the
most mobile friendly social platform, so we are always in the
palm of their hands; just look at fashion girls and bloggers
hanging out, they are always on their phones. At times,
because of the way Pins are delivered in a news feed, it’s
hard to express a message through Pinterest.”

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Pinterest is a network based on discovery,
and our data shows that people who Pin new
products they discover have a high level of
purchase intent. People generally browse
Pinterest to do something, whether that’s finding
a new recipe or shopping for their next pair of
shoes. This makes Pinterest an extraordinarily
powerful ecommerce engine, and luxury brands
who do sell products online, such as Burberry,
typically perform better on the platform
than those who don’t. The bottom line is that
Pinterest and Instagram both offer rich potential
for luxury brands. These visual networks are the
perfect place for 21st century window shopping,
and the perfect place to create aspirational,
inspirational and emotional desire in a new
generation of consumers.
Whether your brand is focused on Instagram
or Pinterest, it’s critical that your content is both
audience and platform appropriate. If not, it can
easily be overlooked or fade into background
noise. So let’s examine what’s working for
luxury brands on these networks from a
content perspective.
Burberry has been in business for more than 150 years,
and their glossy, stylish imagery is perfect for Pinterest

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Between gorgeous product shots, travel pictures and on the street photos,
Joe’s Jeans ensures their Instagram feed is always luxurious and never boring

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Your Visual
Content Strategy:
What’s Working
For Luxury Brands
and What Isn’t
2

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Aimee Lauricella
Marketing and PR Manager @Joe’s Jeans
“The challenge is showcasing the quality and comfort of our
products while telling the full story behind them. You can’t
feel or try them on, so we have to relay through images why
they’re worth every penny, and worth a repin or ‘double tap.’
Our strategy is to create an aspirational lifestyle in 75% of our
Pins and posts, to give our product an environment to be seen
in by our followers. We want our followers to relate to our brand
and want to be an advocate for the Joe’s lifestyle, which is why
we feature so many fashion influencers wearing our brand.”

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Visual networks, and especially Instagram, are
vehicles for forming emotional bonds between
you and your audience. Luxury brands especially
have a huge leg up in this regard, as their
products are designed to connect with people’s
passions. But how you show your products is as
critical to success as what you show.
“Part of any highend brand is managing the
customer’s experience. Luxury products aren’t
sold or valued simply on their technical quality,
they’re sold on exclusivity and their ‘specialness,’
so brands go to huge lengths to ensure that
every part of your interaction with their products
in their stores is incredible. But that creates the
big question of how to replicate that experience
online,” said Jason Edelman, who has led
merchandising and commerce efforts for brands
including Restoration Hardware, Frontgate, and
WilliamsSonoma. The answer is that it doesn’t
have to be the same. Online audiences don’t
expect the same experience as walking into a
store, but if you can capture even some of your
brand’s distinct, exclusive ‘feel’ and culture on
Pinterest or Instagram, you can spread that
experience around to a much broader audience.
“In the end, luxury brands fulfill
wants, not needs. A Omega watch
that costs thousands of dollars
doesn’t really keep any better
time than a $15 Casio; but that’s
not the point. That’s not why you
buy these kinds of things. You buy
them because you want them,
because LOTS of people want
them, because they’re beautiful,
cool, and desirable. So when
you’re marketing these products,
you have to create that desire,
that WANT.” ­—Jason Edelman

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Liselotte Kirkelund
Digital Marketing Manager @ Vero Moda
“For us, Instagram is a bit more spontaneous
and fun, but we still put a lot of thought into
every picture. We like to show a bit more
of the “Vero Moda” world, such as photos
from around the world, pictures of our staff
traveling, shots from fashion shows and a lot
of behind the scene content. At the same
time, we want to showcase our products,
but in a different, unique and appealing
way. Which is why we feature so many
fashion influencers wearing our brand.”

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“On Instagram, we try to build a story around our products and how they fit into the
bigger picture of our brand. Even though it’s great for inspiration and fashion products,
we try to keep a mix of 60% product focus and 40% “atmosphere pictures’ that contain
behind the scenes shots like food, hairstyles, stylists, models getting ready, and our
employees having fun. I think customers love to get a glimpse of the life behind our
brand. It gives us a personal touch, and puts on eye-level with the customer.”
—Liselotte Kirkelund, Digital Marketing Manager @Vero Moda
As a luxury brand, your
products are the gold standard
that people strive for and
desire, and your visual content
should reflect this. This means
going beyond simply presenting
your catalog online; you should
invest in visual storytelling that
communicates the vision of
your brand and showcases an
idealized world of elegance,
quality, class and style.
Vero Moda’s Instagram profile is
a great example of luxury visual
content done right. The brand’s
highly engaging posts regularly
generate thousands of likes,
and each post is created with
a story in mind to capture the
imagination and passion of the
brand’s followers.

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According to our research, the images that
generally create the most engagement for
luxury retail brands are pictures of products, as
opposed to ambience pictures of models, exotic
travel locations etc., and this holds true for both
Pinterest and Instagram. This might sound like
it runs contrary to conventional thinking, which
would dictate that lifestyle photographs would
perform better on Instagram, while product
shots would perform better on Pinterest.
The thing is, for luxury brands, product images
are lifestyle images, as their Instagram and
Pinterest profiles should paint a picture of a life
lived for the finer things. As an integral part of
that lifestyle, luxury product pictures become
“destinations” unto themselves, and in many
cases the best performing images showcase
these brands’ products in beautiful surroundings,
rather than as standalone “hero shots.”
Gucci’s top performing content on Pinterest is generally product shots, but they showcase
their products in beautiful and creative ways. Piqora’s platform can help you track which of
your content is performing best on Pinterest and Instagram

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Burberry’s Pinterest content is heavily product focused, but displays these products in creative,
distinctive and glamorous environments
Of course, Instagram and Pinterest are separate and
distinct networks, and brands need to specifically
adapt their content strategies to maximize success.
Burberry, for example, is a leader among luxury
brands on both Pinterest and Instagram. Their
boards are filled with a rich mix of products,
celebrities, and pictures of London, but the vast
majority of their top performing Pins are more
traditional product shots.
Typically, Burberry showcases their products on
Pinterest in glamorous settings such as fashion
shows or against rich, beautiful backgrounds, and
nearly every Pin links back to their ecommerce
store. On Instagram, however, their strategy is
different. They still show product shots, but they
do so in a more dynamic, natural, and human
centric way, which is exactly how Instagram
audiences like their content. By adopting
platform specific creative strategies, Burberry
has succeeded in creating an exclusive, luxurious
online experience around their products.
Burberry perfectly illustrates the advantage
of avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to
visual content. Each platform is unique and
requires specific strategies, but for luxury
brands in particular it’s important to provide
variety in your content. Although product
images deliver the most engagement, diversity
of content is key to creating a rich user
experience on visual networks.

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Burberry follows Instagram best practices and makes their
images more human centric and natural on that platform

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“Instagram has to have a more organic feel.
We use it as a behind the scenes approach
or something to aspire too, such as a fashion
influencer look,” said Lauricella. “Pinterest on
the other hand is more product based, so we
strategize the best way to showcase product and
have it easily accessible to our followers, without
losing the aspirational images as a ‘background’
to our featured product.”
You should experiment with different types of
content to find out what works best for you,
and iterate from there. Our Fashion Marketer’s
Guide to Instagram has more great information
on content specific to fashion brands, while our
Guide to Visual Content Strategy contains data
that brands in any vertical can use to create high
performing visual strategies for both Pinterest
and Instagram.
Regardless which visual network you decide to
focus on, establishing goals and objectives for
these platforms, and a concrete plan to measure
and achieve them, is crucial.
Stuart Weitzman does a great job of showcasing their products in natural, beautiful environments
that Instagrammers love; occasionally throwing in a cute dog doesn’t hurt either

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Luxury Visual Content
• Generally, showing luxury products “in the wild” i.e on the street, in a fashion
show, or in a beautiful outdoor setting is more effective on Instagram, and these
types of images generate the most engagement
• For inspiration on photo creative, keep an eye on what other popular brands in
your category are doing and take that into consideration for your own content.
Pay attention to lighting, angles, stages and setting; if it’s working for them, it’ll
probably work for you
• If your brand is focused on Pinterest, tailor your image descriptions and primary
keywords to match Pinterest’s own categories; the most repinnable descriptions
are about 200 characters long
• Our research indicates the best time for luxury brands to post to Instagram is
early in the morning before normal working hours, or later at night. If you want
to enhance the visibility of your content, you have to take into consideration
your audience’s schedules and behaviors, and Piqora can help analyze and
optimize your engagement with your followers
• Experiment with different forms of multimedia (video and images) to see what
your audiences love. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to success

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Establishing,
Measuring and
Achieving Your
Goals on the
Visual Web
3

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“Luxury brands play by different rules
than their mainstream cousins. The traffic
and engagement metrics that work for
most brands won’t necessarily move the
needle in the luxury market, so high end
brands should find the key metrics that
matter to them and develop a content
strategy that works for those goals.”
Nick Mueller
Sr. Marketing Manager @Piqora

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For any brand, it’s essential to approach Pinterest and
Instagram with a plan. This is especially true for luxury
brands; high profile companies spend more time in
the spotlight than most, and people will naturally be
discussing and posting about your products. This can
be a great thing, but it’s essential to engage with and
participate in these conversations in the right way.
Posting or Pinning just for the sake of having a presence
is a surefire way to be disappointed by the results. In
addition to a solid content strategy, you’ll need a clearly
defined and established set of goals, and metrics to
compare these to in order to track performance and
make adjustments as needed.
So let’s break down the Key Performance Indicators
that luxury brands look at.

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On Instagram
A successful Instagram strategy is driven by on-
platform engagement. Brands can systematize
and amplify engagement by monitoring the
following KPIs.
1) New Follower Growth
An expanding follower base indicates growth
in your brand presence and influence. It also
indicates that your content strategy is effective,
appealing, and engaging. Pay attention to large
spikes in follower growth, as they can indicate
that certain images are particularly effective, so
you can learn from those images and iterate off
of best practices.
Look for systematic growth
over time in addition to daily
spikes, which can be the result
of specific campaigns or highly
engaging posts
“Our success metrics for Instagram are
followers gained and number of likes
and comments. They really go hand
in hand, since you want to build your
follower base, but have to provide the
engaging content to grow that fan
base. We focus on these because you
really have to have the right balance
in order to thrive on the network.”
Aimee Lauricella,
Marketing and PR Manager @Joe’s Jeans

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Comments don’t just reflect engagement, they also provide the perfect
opportunity to talk directly with your fans and foster positive relationships,
just like Joe’s Jeans did here with @modernensemble
2) Comments and Likes
Comment counts reflect your brand’s ability to
inspire your audience, while likes provide insight
into your audience’s engagement level. While
simply looking at these numbers is important,
you should also take a close look at what your
audiences are saying in the comments.
Comments shouldn’t be one sided; this is a
fantastic opportunity to engage with your fans,
and build valuable relationships with brand
advocates, and Piqora’s Instagram Conversation
Manager can help you manage these
conversations on a broad scale.

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Gucci did a good job here by adding a
brand hashtag and a “manufactured”
hashtag (#Gucci, #Cruise2015) but
they missed an opportunity to expand
their content’s reach by adding 3-5
“community” hashtags
3) Hashtag Strategy and Brand Mentions
Word of mouth is a marketing force of nature,
especially for luxury goods (if you need proof
of that fact, simply look at how much buzz goes
around the release of a new iPhone). And with
more than 200M registered users, Instagram
is a major conversation hub where people
are actively having conversations about your
products. These conversations are built around
hashtags, but a lot of high end brands struggle
with maximizing the potential of a good hashtag
strategy. Chanel, for example, generates the
most hashtags of any luxury brand, despite not
having an official Instagram profile. And they
aren’t alone; our research shows that 73% of
brands don’t follow best hashtag practices. By
opting out, these brands are missing a massive
opportunity to engage in, and more importantly
lead these conversations.
So how can you best harness hashtags? For
starters, add seven hashtags to each of your
posts; doing so can lead to 23% more likes. A
good mix would be one brand hashtag, one
that your brand creates, and 3-5 “community”
hashtags. Just beware that adding more than
seven hashtags leads to a dramatic downturn
in the number of likes, as people can view that
as spam.

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Piqora’s dashboard allows you to track hashtag metrics such as Unique Users,
Potential Impressions, Photos Posted to Hashtags, Likes, and Comments
You definitely want to know how your brand is
fitting into these conversations, and engage in
them whenever possible. There are two ways to
monitor brand mentions:
A) You can track how Instagram users are
tagging your brand in ongoing, natural
conversations. Pay attention to the tone of these
conversations, and apply these analyses into
your own Instagram strategy.
B) Analyze the conversations around hashtags
related to your brand, whether these are official
hashtags or those that are tangentially related.
Download our Instagram Hashtag Report for
more information.

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On Pinterest
Luxury brands that sell online can obviously
use Pinterest to drive ecommerce metrics, and
should harness the platform’s massive potential
to promote their products, turbocharge referral
traffic, increase average order value, and
drive sales. However as we mentioned before,
many luxury brands don’t sell their products
online, making direct ROI measurement on the
platform difficult.
Even if your brand doesn’t engage in ecommerce,
Pinterest can still be a powerful tool for inspiration
around and discovery of your products and
services, and building relationships with your
audience. Marketers who understand this will
focus on creating and sharing content that makes
it easier for their fans to take action on Pinterest,
and a great way to measure engagement is to look
at repins and repins-per-pin.
Piqora’s platform delivers reports that show your precise revenue & ROI from Pinterest. See the
Pins that led to transactions on your site, the value of those orders, the average revenue per Pin,
and the average revenue per purchase

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Piqora’s platform helps you measure engagementand make
specific, actionable decisions on your Pinterest content
“With Pinterest, we focus more on the site traffic to our
ecommerce site and our followers, because these allow
us to see what our fans want and what works for them.
We ultimately want to give our followers exactly what
they are looking for, so it’s a one stop shop.”
Aimee Lauricella,
Marketing and PR Manager @Joe’s Jeans

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A Word on Promotions
Often, luxury brands shy away from
running social media promotions, but
they can be massively beneficial. They
can be powerful audience building
tools, and are an excellent way to
migrate your existing followers over
from other platforms like Twitter and
Facebook. Pinterest promotions are
a great way to drive engagement on
your Pins, traffic to your Pinterest
profile or website, and identify brand
advocates and influencers, while
photo contests provide a fast track
to increasing brand visibility on
Instagram. Instagram is teeming with
original, highly creative usergenerated
content, so photo contests are also
a phenomenal way for brands to
source UGC from their fans. For more
information, check out our indepth
guides to Pinterest Promotions and
Instagram Photo Contests.
Joe’s Jeans #JustaPerfectDay contest
generated massive engagement and
thousands of new followers

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Measuring Success on
the Visual Web
• Evaluate Instagram comments from a qualitative as well as a quantitative
perspective; they can be great feedback on how your content is resonating
with your audience
• On Instagram, look for variance in ‘likes’ between your posts to see what your
followers are and aren’t responding to
• Engagement is an indicator of intent on Pinterest, so tracking the content that
people are interacting with most and iterating off of those learnings is a fast
track to success
• Piqora’s analytics platform can help you identify industry wide trends and
interpret how well your content is performing, both individually and compared
to the other brands in your vertical

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Wrapping Up: Why Luxury Brands Are Flocking to the
Visual Web, and Why You Should Too
If this guide hasn’t already convinced you of
the opportunities on Pinterest and Instagram,
here’s a few stats that might. The audiences on
these platforms are a luxury marketer’s dream
demographic. Pinterest users, for example, are
predominantly young, wealthy females who
spend a lot of money on the platform, and
nearly 30 percent of them make more than
$100,000 a year. And according to a report from
L2, Instagram generates 15x more engagement
for luxury brands than Facebook.
Even if they aren’t officially active on these
networks, luxury brand’s content is already all
over them (if you wonder why, just consider that
more than 90% of Pins originate from a website,
not a Pinterest profile.) Omega, for example,
don’t currently have a Pinterest profile, and yet a
quick search reveals thousands of Pins dedicated
to their watches.
“A lot of luxury labels don’t invest in Pinterest
and Instagram for the same reasons they don’t
sell their products online; they can’t control
people’s experience,” said Edelman. “But
here’s the bottom line: it is going to happen.
Eventually, if these brands want to stay
relevant and viable, they’ll have to adopt
these platforms, so my advice is to get in
now, get in early, and do it right.”
Every day, millions of people interact with
luxury content on visual networks, and for
brands can tap into these conversations
and provide their customers with real,
valuable content, Instagram and Pinterest
to can be game changers. The information
discussed here is just a small portion
of the resources available from
Piqora, so to learn more go
to www.piqora.com and
request a demo,
we’d love to
help you!

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Visit piqora.com to get a demo
and learn more