Forbes recently valued Gucci at $12.9 billion and it is the most expensive brand on the planet. With a brand value that high, marketing strategy is more important than ever before. The luxury brand is well-known for its pricey bags and famous yellow canvas bags, which are staple pieces of the brand’s collection. Yet, even these costly bags are considered luxury purchases, which prove the brand’s popularity.
The online marketing strategy for Gucci can be broken down into four key areas, which I will cover in this article.
1. SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of tweaking website content and metadata to get higher rankings in search results for relevant keywords. With over 500 million searches every month, Google is arguably the biggest search engine in the world. Getting your website to appear on the first page of Google search results is a sure way to gain plenty of attention.
The SEO strategy for Gucci’s website is fairly simple. Given its luxury status, the brand tends to focus on creating extremely high-quality content. The brand’s SEO team looks to dominate relevant keywords in organic searches while ensuring content is fresh and of good quality. To do this, the SEO team works with a content strategist to come up with a content schedule, which they then prioritize and create content around.
Last year, Gucci’s SEO strategy was fairly straightforward. The brand’s biggest success came from its retail site, gucci.com. The site saw over 4.6 billion visits and 11.3 million mobile sessions, which was a 23% increase year-on-year.
One of the biggest contributing factors to this increase was SEO. In the fourth quarter of 2018, over 90% of the site’s visits came from organic searches, which is great news for the brand.
2. PPC
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is when you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad (e.g. Google Adwords). A lot of brands use PPC advertising because it’s easy to set up and requires little to no technology knowledge to perform.
When a person clicks on your ad, they typically see an image or a short description of your product or service along with a link to your website. PPC is a cost-effective way to gain online credibility and drive traffic to your website.
There is a lot of competition in the PPC world, where prices can vary from $0 to $100+ per day. However, PPC can be a useful tool for niche brands and smaller businesses, where it’s difficult to get your website to rank organically for relevant keywords.
3. Social Media
Social media is a global phenomenon, with over 3 billion active monthly users, which is a number that is constantly increasing. The most popular social media platforms are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which is not a surprise, given that most people use these platforms to share content with their friends and followers.
It’s no secret that social media platforms can be used to connect with potential customers, which is why many brands and companies take advantage of these platforms. A lot of brands use social media to get their content out there to as many people as possible, which can lead to increased exposure and credibility.
The social media strategy for Gucci is very similar to its SEO strategy. The brand focuses on creating compelling content and curating interesting content from various sources. The brand also uses relevant hashtags and adds its own comments to relevant posts, to attract consumers to their content.
Unlike its SEO and PPC counterparts, the social media strategy for Gucci is more of an all-encompassing umbrella term, which includes content creation, curation, and engagement. The brand’s biggest success on social media came in 2017, when it opened an official Twitter account and started using it to share news, promote sales, and announce new collections and product launches. As a result, its following on the platform grew by 84%, from 9.3 million to 16.5 million.
4. Email Marketing
Last but not least, we have email marketing. With around 300 million business emails being sent every day, it’s obvious that not all of them are going to be perfectly suitable for every brand. For instance, if you sell shoes, you probably don’t want to use email marketing to promote your accessories collection, as they may not be interested in receiving information about your sneakers.
That being said, there are plenty of cases where email marketing works like a charm. If you’re looking to promote your business’ upcoming events or sales, sending out an email with a special offer is a great way to gain credibility and make a sale.
Given the surge in popularity of email marketing, it would be a missed opportunity not to use this channel. The email marketing strategy for Gucci is fairly straightforward as well. The brand uses the platform to communicate important news and promos, as well as to stay in touch with its customers. One of the biggest challenges for the brand is ensuring that it doesn’t become spammy.
To do this, the team looks to implement anti-spam measures, such as verifying email addresses and implementing GDPR compliance. The brand also implements a triage process to determine which emails should be promoted and which should be discarded. This process weeds out the unwanted messages while maintaining a high deliverability rate. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Gucci saw a 36% decrease in spam, while the number of delivered messages increased by 12%.
The above four points make up the complete online marketing strategy for Gucci. These strategies are fairly standard for luxury brands, but they can be applied to any business or brand looking to gain a stronghold in the online world. With each strategy, the goal is to increase awareness and attract more potential customers to the brand or business.