TTG Luxury Travel Summit: 'Don't undervalue LinkedIn and Pinterest as marketing channels'

A panel of marketeers at the TTG Luxury Summit highlighted that while Facebook is still by far the biggest player, other platforms can offer longer-lasting exposure and better quality connections.

Jon Bezalel, digital strategist at marketing agency Accord, suggested LinkedIn can work well to reach a discerning audience.

“Because people regularly update their professional profile on LinkedIn the data is robust,” he argued. “To target high-net worth individuals you can target by job title and company name and get quite granular with it.”

Anthony Rawlins, founder of digital specialist Digital Visitor, acknowledged that a “Facebook-first approach” still makes sense, even for luxury brands, but highlighted the value of Pinterest when it’s used well.

“Pinterest has a very high click-through rate and a high rate of purchase,” he said, adding that the “half-life” of content on Pinterest is far longer than many other platforms. “With Pinterest, 50% of the views come over a 128-day period so it makes a longer impact. It’s hard to encourage brands to create great quality content that is only viewed over a few hours, minutes or even seconds, on other platforms.”

Facebook’s dominance is likely to wane over the next six years as well, experts warned.

“If 50% of the global luxury consumer market are going to be millennials by 2025, consider which platforms they will be on,” said Rawlins. “I’m still a millennial, just about, and I barely use Facebook any more. Facebook is getting boring for those that have been using it since the beginning.”

Bezalel highlighted how generalist booking sites like Booking.com now outperform luxury hotel brands in Google search, and how companies not normally associated with luxury – including Love Holidays and Tui – are spending heavily around the search-term “luxury” with Google.

“It’s a wake-up call for luxury brands,” he said. “You need to be distinctive to survive when these big players are muscling in.”