How to Target High Net Worth Buyers
In this episode of the Art Business Morning Show, Patrick delves into the complexities of targeting high net worth buyers for artists and photographers. He differentiates between common misconceptions and the real effort required, debunking the notion of easy shortcuts. Patrick emphasizes the importance of consistent marketing efforts and provides practical advice on positioning artworks in high-end settings and including high-priced items in one's inventory to appeal to affluent buyers. He also discusses leveraging ecosystems similar to commercial real estate and interior design to indirectly connect with high net worth individuals. The episode concludes with a call to focus on consistent, year-round marketing to achieve the best ROI.
Podcast Transcribe
Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Morning Show, we're gonna be talking about how to target high net worth buyers, specifically how most people think this happens, how it really happens, and what you can do right now to get better at it. Get my theme music going. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, welcome to another edition of Art Business Mornings.
That show 's gonna put you on a path to a six-figure a year plus, Art Business. And you know, as we sit here and think about that aspirational goal, I have to imagine that targeting high net worth buyers is something that's probably on everybody's mind. And on this one, I'm happy to say that the feedback loop is in full effect.
Feedback loop, what are you talking about, Willis? You take questions from artists and photographers all week long at the Art Business Workshops, as I do. You get the same question or variants thereof week in, week out. You know, you've determined this is a question that a lot of folks have. So why not address it on the Art Business Morning Show? And that's the feedback loop, Arnold, and if quoting different strokes does not date me, I don't know what will, I used to love that show. So let's get into it. And you know, what if I actually told you, okay, that not only is it possible to attract high net worth individuals, it's actually easy. And what if I told you it took 20 years of marketing in the trenches to figure this out? I have the hack of all hacks.
And what if I told you not only am I going to teach you how to do this, but I'm going to provide a step-by-step tactical guide that you can put into place right now, by which I mean as soon as you're done listening to this show. Do I have your attention then? I'm gonna show you how to attract high net worth buyers, fantastic.
You know what that reminds me of? That whole scenario when I was in grade school and somebody was running for student council and, you know, they said they were gonna put coke in the drinking fountains, never happened, never happened, never got coke in the drinking fountains. Or, you know, that other time when "The ShamWow Guy" got me on an infomercial order, right? And, you know, I thought that thing was gonna be able to soak up my entire swimming pool.
What a scam, couldn't even do the spa. You know, it was never gonna do the whole pool. Or that time Bernie Madoff told me to invest in my recently widowed mother's nest egg in his proven investment system, right? Like if it sounds too good to be true, i.e., that it is easy to attract high net worth individuals and buyers, then it probably is, it probably is.
And that's certainly the case here. There is no easy way to do this, okay? But I'm gonna unpack this and talk about a number of different ways. Like, look, the reality is, is that, and I've been saying this on the Art Business Morning Shows or workshops or whatever, I'm running our business.
And I made Sunday our business workshops. If everybody's trying to do something, okay, it is difficult to do that, right? Are there that many people competing for these high net worth individuals' attention that it's not gonna be an easy thing to do. So, you know, you sort of need to know that going into it, you know, aside from the 99 cent stores just about every business on the planet wants to attract high net worth individuals. So, you know, the degree of difficulty in doing that obviously is gonna go up and, you know,
it's not just every artist or photographer that's trying to do this. It's just about every business, period. If there is an easy way to do it, everyone would be doing it. There is no easy way to do this. There never has been an easy way to do this. More often than not when I get asked this question, and again it's on a weekly basis, and there's a whole bunch of different ways that I get asked.
I get asked all the time. I just want to attract high net worth individuals, right? And every time I hear it, whether it's, I wanna attract high net worth individuals, I only sell originals, it's charged at $20,000. I need the high ticket art buyers or how do I attract interior designers? I just want to get the interior designers, or how do I find the people that buy art for hotels? Or how do I find the art publishers? All variants of the same question.
And I have a buddy that is, you know, he's doing marriage counseling right now. We were talking about it the other day. And, you know, I asked what he's learning. And he told me what he's learning, is that when his wife tells him she's angry at him about something, the first thing he has to do is find out what she is actually angry about rather than what she is saying she is angry about.
It's never the first thing. It is never the first thing. And I found that to be a really poignant reminder that I'm going to put to use in my own life. It's never the first thing in three ways. So number one, somebody comes under the word shots and says, how do I attract high net worth individuals? My price point starts at $3,500 and goes up from there.
So my work really only appeals to that. That's the first thing. That's what they think they're asking me. What they're really asking me is, "Hey, Patrick, I want the gallery model to work for me on my terms. Namely, the high net worth buyers come to me, like they did when I was in the gallery, and instead of a 50-50 split, I'm gonna go ahead and keep all of that.
"Moreover, I'm gonna retain the customer information so I can market to them in the future. And lastly, as I'm asking you this question, I just do want you to know that I'm willing to do absolutely zero in terms of actual marketing to make that happen." You know, I see that week in, week out.
They're asking me how to do it, but really what they're saying is, yeah, I don't wanna do anything or any marketing work whatsoever, but that's what I want. Right, aspirationally. That's number one. Number two, it's never the first thing that they ask, okay. "Hey Patrick, I only do originals and they start at $10,000 per.
"Clearly, I need to attract high net worth individuals." "Moreover Patrick, I heard that guy from question one, and I absolutely do wanna do the work, the marketing, I'm willing to do the marketing. Tell me how to do it." What they're really asking is, I want to attract high net worth individuals, and I'm willing to do some marketing, but really what I'm looking for is a shortcut.
Yes, I'll do some marketing to get these folks but it's not going to be anything near the regular, consistent, diligent, quotidian marketing, but it's actually gonna take to get their attention. So, you know, if you give me some texts to post on Facebook, I'll do that once a month and I'm happy to change the link in my bio.
Okay, thanks, bye. You know, it's yes I want these high net worth buyers but I'm not gonna do the work to get them. The third person that asks me this question though, they're honest and they're like, "I know this is gonna be hard. I'm willing to do the work. How can I do it, Patrick?" And so let me address this.
And let me talk about some hacks, yes, there's always gonna be hacks. I'll take it out of the art world for a second, and then let me drop my insights. I don't know if everyone's going to like this but let me drop my insights. The easiest way to target high net worth buyers is by not targeting them at all.
Is by not targeting them at all. Let's start with the hacks though, and I'll explain. Early on, in Facebook advertising days, the hack of all hacks, and this was like before it was readily available to be able to target by income bracket on Facebook. You know what you would do? You would target all of your ads for people that liked Whole Foods, the market.
Why? Because no poor people are going to Whole Foods. You know, we were talking about high socioeconomic status. So that was an early on hack. This still works today actually if you want to try. Another one, only target people that have iOS devices. Okay, the average yearly income for an iOS device user is significantly higher than an Android device user.
So you could do that. The problem is, everybody's trying to do that. So, there's always little hacks like that you can do it. The two examples there I gave you were both for Facebook ads. But you can insert a wonderful name of whatever hack that anyone's come up with, that is the ideal way to attempt to get the shortcut to just get to the high-income folks.
Let me take it out for a second. And I want to
put it into commercial real estate. Okay, 'cause it'll give us a good frame of reference. I have a buddy that is big in the commercial real estate. They make a lot of money. This guy is absolutely killing it. And, he is attempting to find and target with his business people that own businesses, that want tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of square feet.
But he's also attempting to target the building owners, such that wanna lease their stakes, or want to sell their stakes. And, what is the easiest way to target those folks in his world? Be relentless and call them all the time. Many of these guys are still operating off a Rolodex. Like it's an old world club, an old boys club and girls club to some extent.
And he does that, and his contact rate is very low, but that's his game. He's dialing all the time, being persistent, sending a mail, trying to get their attention. And, it's a really ineffective way to get their attention. Any modern marketing then you might try. So has he tried posting on the social networks and running ads on the social networks? Yeah, he has, but it's ineffective.
Why? It turns out these types of business owners, high net worth individuals, just a different industry. They're not answering his phone calls and emails, and they're also not on the social networks, not at all. And yet he has been marketing with blog posts and social posts and the corresponding ads for years.
He's actually doing it anyway. Why? I think when he started, at first it was, I'm gonna try new things, I'm in a high margin business, I can afford to invest in this little aspect and see what happens. But guess what he's learned over the years? His world, commercial real estate, is no different than the art and photography world or sculpture world or whatever you're gonna do, all of these worlds have layers, right? There's an ecosystem component to them.
And at the top, and his, let's stay on his for a second, are the building owners and the business owners. But below them, are an entire army of folks that service their businesses. They're the property managers, and the lenders, and the title guys, and a myriad of others that do business with these folks.
And guess what? Many of those folks are on social media. Many of those folks see his ads. And as it turns out, many of those folks already have the ear of the actual business owner that he's been incessantly calling, cold calling and mailing. And so by getting his ads in front of these people that are a little bit lower on the rung, but in the ecosystem of the actual people he's trying to target, he is significantly increasing.
His contact rate, these people are answering the phone, they at least know he exists. And so he's finding out that it's proving to be an extremely valuable technique and tactic for him such that he can get in front of all the lenders, he can get in front of all those title people, in front of all the local agents and leasing agents, property managers, and the rest.
So he's effectively targeting high net worth individuals by going after the people that are lower in the ecosystem. And I think that's a profound lesson. There's a lot we can take away from that. Let's pivot from real estate to interior designers, right? "Patrick, I wanna target the interior designers.
" I get that. I get that question all the time, all the time. And really, just essentially a variant of the high net worth buyer question. And I think like the real estate example, there are a bunch of people, the interior designers are essentially no different than in the commercial real estate. They're in the ecosystem of the high net worth individuals.
They know all these folks, they're already having conversations with them. They're already decorating their houses. So how do you target them? And it's easy. I say, and I give this advice on a regular basis. And I go back to my earlier example of example person one and person two, that say they wanna do this, but really what they're saying is, they want an easy way to do it and they don't wanna do the hard work that's involved.
And so I give this advice out all the time, and I don't think anyone ever takes it. Certainly no one's come back to me and taken it. You wanna target the interior designers? Fine, no problem. Let's go where they hang out. They're in two places, they hang out on a website, social network called Houzz, and they are also on Instagram.
So what I want you to do, is very easy. Anyone can grab this and do this now. If you want to start targeting those (indistinct) the interior designers, getting in there, using that as a stepping stone to high net worth individuals go on to Houzz, go on to Instagram, and contact between 500 and 1000 of them, every single solitary week.
Every single solitary week, contact that many of them. Send the Instagram DMs, send the messages on Houzz, call their offices, snail mail them, send them cold emails. That's what it would take. That's what it would take to actually effectively target interior designers. And a whole lot of them are not gonna respond.
Some will, some will be fits, some will not be fits, but this is a volume game. The only way that you would potentially win this game, is the sheer number of people that you're contacting and the sheer number of conversations that you're having. And some are gonna go okay, and some are gonna be terrible, and some are gonna be a three-year sales cycle, and some will potentially buy your art.
Right. But, whenever people ask me how to do that and I give that advice, and they start nodding their heads a little bit, they're actually totally deflated, right? Because everyone's just looking for the shortcut, the effective hack to get it done. And the reality is, it's just there's not one in marketing.
You have to do the consistent work. You want to go after the interior designers, there you go. I just gave you the playbook, it's genius. It's easy. You know exactly where they're hanging out, you know exactly how you can get into their inbox, there's not a lot of competition, and it's just a volume game.
Ready, set, go. Right. But you know, again, you have to do it consistently. And if I was an artist or I was a photographer whether I was starting out or picking up steam, would I do this for my own business, right? Like what I'm advocating here. And I would not, wouldn't do it. I would not do it. And you're like, wait a minute.
You just gave us a whole strategy and the whole tactic, why wouldn't you do it, Patrick? I don't understand. You're telling me to go do this. And I'll tell you why. With every marketing effort, with every marketing endeavor, you constantly have to be asking yourself the question of ROI. We have a finite amount of time, you have a finite amount of energy that you're gonna be to invest in anything.
So you have to look and say, okay, over here, I could just target the interior designers. I'm gonna go at it for a year. I'm gonna send 5,000 interior designers until I've blanketed the entire United States, North America, and while I've added some Europe, and I'll see how it goes. You have to balance that with what other alternative marketing ways you can market out there and ask yourself what's gonna provide the higher ROI.
And, you know, in my opinion, okay, in my opinion, doing that, going after the interior designers like that, it's not gonna be the highest ROI. So I can't even, and I'm sticking to it. Moreover, I've had the opportunity of seeing a number of folks that are selling art, photography art, storefronts customers, some of them going on five years now.
And over the course of the years, I've heard about tremendous sales to high net worth individuals, everything from yes interior designers, to massive celebrities. I've got a buddy that has been sending me the little Instagram DMs of an exchange he's having right now at the world famous actor, every single solitary person listening to this would instantaneously know the name.
I'm not gonna drop it. But he's gonna likely get that sale over the line. And guess what? He didn't do it by targeting actors. He did not do it by targeting actors. So that's sort of my spiel. And I gotta get my props so I can do my bell-curve analysis. And this gets me to the bell-curve analysis.
And if you're listening to the podcast after the fact, you'll have to just imagine a bell curve. But, let me explain the bell curve situation. Okay. Everyone's attention. Everyone's. Mine, yours, my commercial real estate buddy, their followers, the people that are following you on Instagram, on Facebook, on Pinterest, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Snapchat, and TikTok, wherever, on your email list that are coming to your website, everyone's followers fall into a bell curve.
Okay? And the bell curve starts down here with the lower income folks. They're not likely ever going to buy anything from you. They don't have the money
to buy anything from you. If they did, it would be inexpensive. And then you have lower middle-class, middle-class, upper middle-class, and then you have the upper-class of which, the high net worth people are in there.
And, everyone's followers are going to have some makeup, some distribution to those folks. Okay. And you know they're going to fall somewhere on that curve. So everyone's tendency is like, why do I want to attract? Or why do I even have these lower income types? Or, the lower middle class or even middle-class, they're not ever going to be able to afford, they're not high net worth individuals.
But the reality is, is that they're no different. Okay. Then the people that are servicing the real estate ecosystem, like who are you trying to attract? The building owners and the business owners? Well guess what? Your follower account is no different than all those lenders and the property managers and the title people.
And who else would I have in my example, I can remember. But the whole point is, is your entire bell curve, can produce for you. Yes, there's the few high net worth individuals that are gonna buy things. There's your bread and butter, upper and middle-class. But all the rest of those folks they know the high net worth individuals.
They have the high net worth individuals' ears, whatever the crazy random connection of who it is, maybe it's their uncle or their best friend from high school or whatever it might be. They worked with this person, they know. And so they have an incredibly effective role to play in your overall marketing strategy.
And so we don't worry about the fact that some are going to be on this side of the bell curve, and some on this and everywhere else. We just understand that. And we stay focused on our marketing. Staying at it all year long. And instead of trying to just target one little part of the bell curve, we just want to lift that entire bell curve up. With more attention, you capture more people, you have more of a social following, you're driving more traffic to your website, and the bell curve will just take care of it.
So when I look at the ROI from what's possible about just going after the high net worth individuals versus my Instagram reconnecting, when you stream everything, so everything goes wrong. So when you come to terms with this, when you understand this, when you see all the wins that end up coming, they feel like serendipity when it happens, right? Like you get that high net worth sale.
And then you go and you ask that person, say, "Hey, how'd you hear about me?" And it is always some weird, crazy, you could have never explained it or designed it, serendipitous, feeling situation. I use somebody posted in Small Wins, which is our Facebook group. And, I said this at the workshops a couple of times, but she was an interior designer.
They came in, and did a huge buy, like $35,000 worth, a whole bunch of pieces. And she tracked down how that sale actually took place, how it went down. And her response was, the interior designer's daughter had been following on Instagram for quite some period of time and told her mom. And whether it's that example, or whether it's the example of my buddy, who's now talking to this actor, what I find, and what I see time and time again, is that by focusing on your correct and consistent marketing,
understanding that there's gonna be bell curve distribution of lower, middle, and upper-class high net worth, it just focusing on that in marketing consistently, the residue of that execution, the by-product of that execution of doing that, is when the serendipity happens. It's when the serendipity happens.
Entirely too many people sit there and get in their mind, how am I gonna focus on just attracting these types of people, these types of people, these types of people, rather than just working consistently on their marketing. And, again, you can call me opinionated, but I've got a lot of data on this now.
And the easier way to go about it is by not attempting to target them at all. Just taking care of your marketing, doing so consistently all year long. I know that's (indistinct). We all want a shortcut, but I've just never seen the shortcuts working. And even if they do, the ROI is not going to be as high.
If you don't worry about it, and you just focus on that consistent marketing. So if you are a glass half empty person, I'm sorry, there is no shortcut, there's no easy route. If you're a glass half full, one less thing to worry about. One less thing to worry about. You don't have to attack the high net worth individuals and the interior designers, and any of the rest of it.
So that being said, there are some things that you can do to increase your chances of attracting the high net worth individuals. Two very easy takeaways that you can focus on. That you can implement and put into practice in your business that will not cost you a whole lot. That will make you appeal to these types of buyers a little bit easier.
And the two things that I wanna cover are positioning and price points. Positioning and price points. And on the positioning side of things, there's a fantastic meme. We'll go out for a second on this but, how many of you guys are aware of what a Peloton is? The Peloton workout bike, and how many of you have seen a commercial? Okay.
And the commercials are so effective at this, that it's actually become a meme. An internet meme, where people are making fun of Peloton, because they're so good at this. But what they do, is they always show some beautiful person, surprise, surprise, working out on the bike, surprise, surprise, in an extremely nice house.
It is either uber modern, uber luxurious, it's 64 floors up with a view of the river. It has incredible furnishings in it. And again like you can Google Peloton meme, and you'll see that like they're made fun of how ridiculously high net worth all of these houses that Peloton looks at. But it's extremely effective, because it becomes so aspirational.
And so we can apply the same game for how we display our art, art photography, whether you do it physically, or whether you do it via Photoshop, we have one customer that is extremely good at this. He makes sure that his art is photography in his case. His photography is only displayed, every photo he displays in super high-end houses, super high-end homes.
Now obviously, he's making those sales so it's a little bit easier, but if you don't have any of those around you, you've got Photoshop. You can do it that way. And you know, a lot of people do this already but positioning your art in very high-end locations, very high-end locales, are never a bad idea.
If you're staying in a really nice hotel for the weekend, look, wrap up a couple of pieces, put it on the furniture (indistinct) and take it up to the room and take some photos. There's lots of creative ways to do this but I'm not saying you have to do it all the time but in terms of positioning, it can be very helpful.
A lot of people ignore this, and don't take this into account at all. So contemplate positioning. It's something very easy you can do. You can do it with Photoshop, or you stay at a nice hotel room. You can get the dolly and bring in some pieces, hang them on the wall, shoot them, take them down, and get out of there.
If you are selling to a high net worth individual or somebody that has a nice house, you have a friend that has a nice house, then just go in there and get some shots of your stuff hanging on the wall in very nice houses and make sure you display that prominently on the website, on your social media marketing.
So easy way to do it with Photoshop, Photoshop them. The next one, is price points. And I can do a whole episode on price points. I need to do a whole episode on price points. But when we think of price points, this will work for you on two different levels. The first one is you need to have some really, really expensive things in your store.
Do you? Most people don't. Most people don't. If you're selling, let's just say your originals for a thousand, your prints start at 500 and your paper prints start at $45. Or you've got merch starting at $25. You've got the zero to a thousand covered, right? But I want something in the store that's like 25,000, I want something in the store that's 20,000, 15,000.
And number one, you put that in there, because the high net worth individual will likely just buy, right? It doesn't happen all the time, it doesn't happen every day, but sometimes they will just buy it. And it's one of those things where if you don't have it in the store, how are they ever gonna buy it? They're not.
And how easy is it to put one ridiculous thing
in there, okay? One ridiculously high price, or even a couple of ridiculously high-priced items and see what happens, what do you have to lose? Absolutely nothing. That's number one, number two, envision a car dealership, a nice car dealership, Mercedes-Benz let's say.
And you know, if you look at a car dealership, there's that big glass box in the center of the lot and the property or the back of the lot of the property where they've got the G-Wagon AMG 550 SLR, you know, or, you know, the McLaren whatever SLR, like the highest end Mercedes there are, period, right? And this is a variant of the same thing, when you have the high thing in the store, because one, the extremely high net worth individuals, they're like, that's the car for me, that's the car that I wanna go and get.
But there's also a phenomenon called pricing crank and what those cars inside that window signify. The ones that us normal people are like, I could never afford that $250,000 car, but what it does, because there's that $250,000 car and $175,000 G-Wagon and whatever else that they have in there. You know, the beautiful AMG SL 550 or whatever it is they do now, it's 550.
It makes you feel better about the C-class that you lease for $450 a month outside, it's called price anchoring, it's a phenomenon that will work in your store as well. So one, it caters to the high net worth individuals, and then also it makes people that are purchasing your other items feel better.
Psychologically, we latch onto the fact that whoa, those are some really expensive items, so that, you know, I'm gonna go and get this cheaper one and I'm gonna feel a little bit better about it. You know, it's going to speak to my frugality and that I'm getting a good deal, not wasting money.
So phenomenal technique, two easy ways that you can do it and nobody ever does it. Nobody ever does it. And how easy is that to do those two things, you can do very, very easily. So, if you wanna try and target high net worth buyers, or the interior designers, or the people that buy art for hotels, or the art publishers, they're all the same.
There will always be a few hacks and somebody telling you some great trick but those things are ephemeral and they will stop working in very short order. The best way to do it in my mind, in my position, the highest ROI to do it is just focusing on your marketing and doing it consistently all year long. I know, I'm sorry there's no shortcuts, but that's how it works.
So knowing that, stay focused on the basics, just keep marketing. On that note, thanks for listening, watching, and as always have a great day.
All right YouTube, thanks for watching my segment on how to target the high net worth individuals, the whales, right? The whales. If you're enjoying the content, join what we're putting out there.
Highly encourage you to subscribe. There's a button down here and a bell down here, if you wanna get notifications, you'll be able to join any of the live streams in process, leave comments, interact, which would be awesome. But big picture, what did you think of my premise on how you actually market high net worth individuals? Have you tried marketing directly to them? Any level of success? Or do you agree with my premise and you just have to work on your marketing collectively? Leave me a comment below,
I wanna hear, and I'm gonna respond to all of them. Thanks, have a great day. (soft music).