Businesses have an endless array of marketing tools and strategies to choose from, whether it’s digital, broadcast, radio, outdoor, social, OTT, or lifestyle marketing. Getting in front of your audience to develop a relationship full of rich touchpoints and interactions requires your business to know which strategies are the right ones. You’ll also need to understand how to combine them into a complete marketing mix to help ensure the success of your overall strategy.
In this article, we'll explore lifestyle marketing, which is a type of marketing that showcases your products and services as an essential part of your audience's ideal lifestyle. Instead of direct or aggressive promotional messages, you associate your products with lifestyle goals and elements your audience already values.
Aligning your offerings with your target market's aspirations as a way of life develops a stronger customer bond and increases lifetime sales. Patagonia, for example, is an environmentally-focused lifestyle brand that developed a loyal customer base through its commitment to green initiatives and Earth-friendly production practices. Every year, they donate a portion of revenue to environmental causes and further their commitment to sustainability by only using recycled, “Fair Trade” certified, or organic materials in production. They live their claims so far as to use solar energy to run their company headquarters.
Will lifestyle marketing work for you the way it did for Patagonia? Should you even be considering it as a tool to promote your business? Here are four signs that lifestyle marketing is the right fit for you.
Sign #1: You Offer Convenience to Your Customers
Lifestyle marketing strategies focus on making your product or service an essential component of your target market’s current or aspirational lifestyle. If your company solves significant pain points that stand between your ideal customers and their ideal life, you may already have a lifestyle product.
All you need to do is emphasize the solutions your brand offers to pave their way to personal success. You can emphasize obstacles your target market is already aware of and is hoping to solve. Even better, focus your marketing campaigns on offering a convenient solution to obstacles your audience hasn't considered.
For example, LaCroix has evolved its brand from a soda replacement to a lifestyle product. They offer a healthier alternative to sugary drinks, and, in the culture market dominated by Coca-Cola and Pepsi, they offer a cultural replacement for soda. People who love LaCroix aren't making sacrifices for their health — they've made the switch to a drink that's just as trendy. While that’s a broad level example, your business could offer convenience on a much smaller scale. Your product that offers extra convenience to working mothers adheres to a lifestyle just as much.
Sign #2: Your Product Has Dramatic Results
Products with lifestyle branding don't have to dominate their consumers' lives, but they do have to substantially impact the facet of your audience's life that they belong in. Dramatically visible results are an excellent way to emphasize your products’ transformative effect on a buyer's lifestyle. YouTube ads, local television commercials, and other visual campaigns are excellent choices for your lifestyle marketing campaigns.
Showcasing your product on lifestyle TV show segments allows you to personally show how to use your products and teach about the personal history of your brand. Your audience gets to see themselves using the product, gaining a clear understanding of how to use it and how it helps them.
Sign #3: Versatility Is a Key Component of Your Product
Single-function devices have their place, but it's hard to turn them into a lifestyle product or use them to turn your company into a lifestyle brand. Instead, find ways to showcase your product in multiple contexts that won't contradict each other or water down the clearcut solvency your product offers.
HelloFresh does this by showing how their convenient meal solutions solve problems for every single one of the customer personas:
- Busy parents that don't rely on takeout? The recipes are quick and easy to fix.
- Fitness fans? They offer healthy options with protein-rich meals.
- Environmental advocates? They use environmentally sustainable packaging.
- Foodies? Their recipe library is constantly changing.
Even though their services are the same for each of their target markets, the solutions they emphasize are different and precisely attuned to each market’s desires so they can be what they want to be. Each frame of their ads also dramatically shows the process, the result, and their spokesperson’s lifestyle. As they and other meal prepping services grow, they can continue to attune their lifestyle branding to different customer personas, like elderly customers with dietary restrictions, busy college graduates, and everyone in between.
No matter what product you offer, show the ideal representation of your target market using it. That is far more personalized and persuasive than trying to explain all the benefits at once. You can also strategically use shorter messages to reach specific niches, ensure they fully understand how your product meets their unique needs, convert them, and analyze the results.
Lifestyle marketing often boosts your ROI on your marketing budget precisely because it communicates specific benefits clearly. Choosing effective platforms also impacts your brand’s effectiveness. Digital channels work well at getting your name out, whereas working with a TV station further boosts your ROI through increased commercial reach or sponsored TV segments.
Sign #4: You Want to Creatively Share Some Tips
If your product is versatile, then there are multiple ways to use it and benefit from it. That opens up your campaigns to focus on educational lifestyle marketing. Helping your audience understand how to use the product clears up any confusion they have that prevents them from buying it.
Lifestyle marketing achieves this by having relatable spokespeople show how they use the product or service. It's friendly and non-demanding, while still giving the audience insight. Whether you have a demonstration video, an influencer review that includes a demo, a sponsored show segment, or a list of tips you've collected from real customers, you can build engagement. Esusu Financial took on the difficult task of demoing financial software. They developed a video that made the product approachable and convenient, which is essential for any lifestyle brand.
Engage Your Audience With These and Other Effective Lifestyle Marketing Strategies
Lifestyle marketing invites your audience to use your products to achieve their ideal lifestyle or personal goals. Working with a media partner can help you achieve this goal by making the process less intimidating.
