Luxury agency, VERB Brands, saw a 36% boost in high quality leads with the right quality research.

“We've always been a data-driven agency, but GWI elevates our business offering."

Full-service luxury creative and performance agency VERB Brands’ focus is all about reaching and engaging the affluent and high net worth consumer. 

Working with the likes of Mr Porter, Agent Provocateur and Natura Bisse, they do everything from digital strategy to social media, to website design and development.

With such iconic heavyweights in the world of luxury to serve, the agency is always looking to get ahead in reaching the affluent consumer - and that’s where original consumer insight comes in.

“As an agency, we’re always looking to understand our clients’ audiences better and fulfil their goals and KPIs; commercially, but also on a luxury brand level,” says Sarah Keeble, New Business and Marketing Director at VERB .

“Our team is extremely experienced in marketing to this consumer, and we have first-class tech to support us, but we wanted to take this a step further.

We needed unique, in-depth insights to truly understand the affluent consumer.”

While the team is successful in their market, they wanted to dive deeper into the affluent consumer, and understand what was making them tick.

The Challenge

Getting insight into a complex and private audience.

After a series of successful industry events, and with COVID putting a halt on face-to-face networking and events, one of the biggest challenges for VERB from a new business and marketing point of view was continuing to share valuable and unique insight for the luxury sector.

“With the pandemic, we were unable to launch marketing events and to meet other leaders in the industry who would look to the agency for help.

We had to pivot how we drove value for our own brands, and prospective brands we were speaking to.”

The affluent consumer group is notoriously tricky to reach. They value privacy, and finding specific data about this group is challenging. VERB looked to third-party data platforms to ensure they were reaching them right.

“In the past we'd looked at existing research that was readily available online, or bought reports that gave us access to insights around the affluent consumer, but a lot of the time it’s outdated or not targeted enough."

To really take advantage of the opportunity, they needed original insight their clients couldn't see.

The action

Using tailored research to get the right answers.

To achieve their goals, VERB partnered with GWI to commission a custom research study, surveying 1,000+ affluent consumers across genders and age groups in the UK and the U.S.

When the findings were analyzed, one statistic stood out to the team right away:

51% of affluent consumers don’t follow luxury brands on social media.

Clutching an insight that both surprised and intrigued them, the team started to break it down:

• Why do so many affluent consumers not follow these brands?
• What are the key differences between those who follow them and those who don’t?
• What are the opportunities for luxury brands to engage non-followers?

“We wanted to understand the differences in how followers and non-followers are finding or buying luxury brands, essentially, along with their general attitudes toward luxury brands.”

The team knew this data presented a great opportunity.

The custom report led to the production of VERB’s’s State of Luxe report, which also had a special feature from TikTok.

The report breaks affluent consumers into three tribes:

• The digitally disconnected
• The traditional luxury consumers
• The luxury advocate

It then tracks these subsets across behaviors and attitudes to signpost crucial touchpoints and opportunities. From the report: “These archetypes vary in their digital engagement with luxury brands, as well as how they value luxury.”

Throughout, the team was able to highlight the answers so many luxury brands were asking for:

• What types of affluent consumers exist right now?
• What do they expect from luxury brands
• How do they prefer to research and buy luxury brands?

The resulting campaign promised to highlight their different motivations and methods.

The result

Boosting leads with data-led reports.

The final report was published on the VERB  website as a free download – and to say it had an impact would be an understatement.

Here's what it led to:

• 36% boost in inbound leads
• 221% growth in inbound leads versus the previous year
• 53% increase in website traffic
• 27% email list growth

“The goal for this research was to better understand affluent consumer attitudes towards luxury, and how they're buying luxury, so we could add value to our clients and prospective clients we were speaking to” says Sarah.

The research proved a success, positioning VERB Brands as the go-to agency to reach affluent and high net-worth consumers.

With an insight-led approach that focuses on the right audience and market, this case study proves you can achieve better if you are looking to market your business or brand with insight and expertise.

VERB has since signed up to our core research platform to continue to generate deep insights for their clients’ digital strategies.

“We've always been a data-driven agency, but GWI elevates our business offering, providing additional insight for our client strategies.” 

VERB proves even agencies at the top of their game can generate more leads with an insight-led approach that focuses squarely on the right audience.