FEATURED ON THIS EPISODE:

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT VITA AND CONNECT WITH HER ON INSTAGRAM AND LINKEDIN

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THE EPISODE:

WHY RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IS ESSENTIAL TO ATTRACTING AND KEEPING HIGH-END CLIENTS

HOW TO APPROACH NETWORKING TO TRADES THAT POSITIONS YOU AS A VALUED COLLABORATOR

HOW TO CLARIFY YOUR VALUES AND ALIGN YOUR MARKETING TO ATTRACT YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS

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If you’ve been wanting to break into the luxury market, or even if you already are there, today’s episode is for you!

Today, I am sharing a conversation with my friend, Vitalia (Vita) Vygovska. Vita grew her business from grass-roots marketing strategies that all of us can employ immediately in our business, and no one knows the luxury market like Vita.

Vitalia (Vita) Vygovska is the founder and CEO of Vitalia Inc., a distinguished custom luxury window treatment atelier serving AD-featured designers, renowned architects, and leading hospitality groups. Through meticulous attention to detail and signature turnkey approach, Vitalia Inc consistently delivers magazine-worthy results, while helping clients realize 20% margin gains.  Vitalia Inc.’s skills have been deployed on award winning projects, including Palm Beach estates, Philadelphia & NYC Penthouses, ocean-front villas, and boutique hospitality gems.

Vita is truly a marketing expert. One of the things that struck me from talking with her was her perspective on luxury.

 It’s a different marketing tactic and experience when you’re going for that 1% or even .5% clientele. 

We as designers didn’t necessarily come from that background, so how do we present ourselves? 

Vita’s company only markets to designers, and typically work with and service the top 5% of interior designers in the country. 

“Not only do we engage with them on the window treatment aspects of the jobs but often times the principal designer and I, we get to have these great conversations and one of my favorite questions to ask is, how do they get their customers, how they come across those individuals and what do they do for marketing?” says Vita

Vita says the answers differ, and often it’s aroun how long those designers have been in business. Of course the longer they have been in business, there’s a lot more referrals. Interestingly enough some of the newer designers also say it’s all basedo n referrals. “I gently probe as to what kind of referral base they’ve been able to establish in 2, 3, even 5 years.” she says.

“When you haven’t been in business for a long time waiting for your pipeline to get filled in based on referrals is a pretty passive way of growing the business – unless you are really really intentional about and nurturing your referral base.” say Vita

No matter how long you’ve been in business, nurturing those referrals and fostering those relationships in our world is one of the most important things you can do. That an be a quick conversatio over zoom to an in depth conversation over coffee, and even more so to a lunch that can then translate to more of a kind of social/business/ everything rolled into one ball over dinner, and so on.

It is all rooted in the fact that you are trying to be of value to that prospect or customer. Even if it’s just a connection in the industry if it is of value to one of you, that is the foundation of the relationship marketing that Vita does. 

This kind of marketing is a long game. I go into these meetings with, say a realtor, not knowing if it will ever be fruitful or not, and not caring. You can’t think that one meeting with a realtor will produce a project. You constantly want to be marketing so that one of those will eventually hit. 

The ones you are talking to today could be the ones filling your pipeline six months from now. 

The problem is that without the marketing, you don’t have your pipeline filled and you don’t have the work, so you may or not be in business. So it has to be part of the entire process; you have to leave enough room in your schedule to be doing that outreach and research so that you can be building these relationships.

I will say, as far as construction, you’re not going to get a contractor to meet you for coffee – maybe occasionally, but you have to know your audience.

Vita shares a story about how she is now working with a very high profile designer whom she spent years drip marketing towards. The designer finally agreed to see Vita’s presentation because her window treatment specialist was retiring. And so many designers tend to do that – find their people, their team, and stick with them.

This is great up until a certain time, and that time is either retirement, or a health event, or some sort of family event that puts people out of the business, even if just temporarily, or that resource is no longer operating or performing up to your standard.

So, where this lesson comes in here is that our clients are in the exact same position. What I mean by that is, for interior designers, our clients are architects, builders, custom builders, and general contractors, and they need you. They need your support. You’re a collaborator, a partner and so they need your services. If they are also in the same boat of not looking for those alternative resources, and their designer is not doing a great job anymore, retiring, having something come up, you have to be marketing to them. 

There are various ways of building a relationship with someone, even if that relationship is not so face-to-face, but you start to build small incremental bridges towards that person. 

“So if we know we aren’t so great about replacing those vendors who have been great to us,  why not use that same methodology and know that our clients are not so great at it either?” says Vita

 How many touchpoints does it take?

Some say 20, some say 14, who knows?? But Vita says when she sends emails to prospective designers, she usually ends them with “When the time feels right, we’re here for you.” This could be a closure sentence for anybody out there. 

Relationship marketing

The true depth of relationship marketing comes from where can you deliver value to your prospect. And that value can come in many different ways. Now your services, ofcourse, are the ultimate value. But before a builder or any other prospect can see what that value is, there are certainly opportunities to test drive the waters and let them see that you have a lot more than that ultimate expertise that you have. You can also be a connector. As a designer you know a rolodex of people and trades. This is where the dialogue begins, and you can really listen for what that person is looking for, what they need, what their pain points are, and where can you fill his gaps. That is a value as well. 

This is something you can begin to look into for each and every trade. What you can offer to a realtor is different than a builder, which is different from an architect and so on. You can’t have one line that is going to land with them all. 

And you don’t always have to reach out asking for work, or even make it work-related. Create a genuine relationship so it doesn’t feel transactional. 

Market to your ideal client

“It’s incredibly important to have a profile of that target market/ideal client/avatar in your head and definitely written somewhere, and know that that target prospect has to be aligned with your values. In order for that to happen, you first need to be crystal clear on what your values are.” Says Vita

It doesn’t matter whether you are in window treatments, decorating, managing construction projects, or all of the above; once you get into that luxury market, I hope you see that a lot of the skills you need to hone are based on the relationships you’ve built along the way. Not only how ot find them, but how to establish and nurture those relationships, not just what it can produce immediately, but going for the long-term relationship knowing that something good will come out of it.