In the first part of this article series, we took the first four steps towards achieving your destiny.
I introduce four elements of creating a premium brand that will transform the way you work and live. They are:
- Build your brand around what you’re best at.
- Use gating to make your offers exclusive and desirable.
- Focus on the transformations and outcomes you can achieve for your clients.
- Expand your client’s vision of what’s possible for them.
I dig deeper into each of these elements in the first part of this article.
Finished?
Great!
Now, it’s time to look at the final four elements of a premium brand. Combine these with the four I’ve already introduced and your audacious goals will become your reality.
Let’s start with…
Element #5 – Understand Your Elite Buyers
This is where you start thinking about who your ideal client is. The key is to envision who’s at the highest end of your market.
What does the top 1% of your potential client base look like?
These are the people that your brand will appeal to, which means you’ve got to get into their heads.
Visualize that person. Understand what drives them and what their dreams look like. Hone in on their deepest desires so you can see exactly what they need from a transformative experience.
Research where they hang out and what motivates them. Dig into the values that they hold dear in their hearts so you see if they align with your own.
Then, expand the vision of what’s possible for that client in your own mind. When you know what they can achieve, it’s so much easier to communicate the transformation to them.
That transformation is the key to your premium brand.
You’re offering a white-glove service, just as you would with a luxury brand. But at the premium level, you’re working with clients who want to achieve something specific. They come to you because you’re the best in the world at getting people to that transformation.
So, take a moment to dream about your ideal client.
Who would you love to serve more than anybody else in the world?
What resonates with that person?
What do they desire so deeply that they’re willing to invest heavily for it?
Create that image in your head and you’ll know what your elite buyers look like.
Element #6 – Disrupt the Paradigm
Most of the people I work with who are at the premium end of the market are disruptors of their space.
What does that mean?
They take an existing paradigm and they shift it. Instead of creating something brand new, they take ideas that are already out there and get creative with them.
That creative shifting moves people to a new and exciting Maverick idea.
It’s this concept of the Maverick that’s so important in the premium space.
At this level, you’re not copying what everybody else does.
You’re a pioneer.
You’re a trendsetter.
You’re putting a completely new spin on a concept that your market already understands. And it’s that disruption that will make you stand out from the crowd.
Becoming the Maverick aligns incredibly well with the element of being the best in the world. You position your brand as number one because you’re shifting the paradigm. You’re doing things differently.
Now, it’s important to note that not every one of my clients takes this approach.
Some are the best in the world because they offer the highest level of delivery.
Others reach that point because they have the highest authority in their space.
Both of those approaches can work just as well as shifting the paradigm. But more often than not, it’s the Maverick of your brand that people buy into.
You don’t necessarily have to be the highest authority in your space, at least at first. If you’re doing what you do in a way that nobody else has done it before, you have a crucial element of premium branding in place.
Element #7 – Focus on Your Level of Service
There’s a balance to strike when it comes to your level of service in a premium brand.
On one hand, the service has to be utilitarian. That means it’s focused on achieving an extraordinary outcome for your client, as I discussed in the first part of this series.
On the other, you still need to offer white-glove service to your clients.
This is incredibly important.
At the premium level, you’re not only looking to achieve the best outcome for your clients. You’re also looking to achieve that outcome in the most extraordinary way.
You need to surprise and delight your clients.
In the first part of this article, I highlighted Mercedes as a great example of a premium brand. They have the utilitarian side of what they do honed to perfection.
When you see their marketing literature, you see the outcome.
Mercedes communicates the benefits of their product and the transformation it achieves perfectly.
But they haven’t forgotten about the white-glove service aspect.
You’ll see this if you ever go into a Mercedes showroom.
There’s an aesthetic that separates these showrooms from your bog-standard manufacturer’s. A Mercedes showroom makes you feel a certain way, like you’re setting foot into an exclusive club.
And the service?
There are no desperate car salesmen in a Mercedes showroom. Everybody you speak to focuses only on creating the transformation that the customer already knows they want. And once the sale gets made, Mercedes continues the white-glove treatment with stellar aftercare.
That visit to the showroom cements the euphoria of the Mercedes experience. It makes the customer feel like they’ve made a great decision in aligning themselves with this brand.
When you’re working on your level of service, don’t just rest on the utilitarian side of things.
People will pay a lot of money for a great outcome…
But they’ll pay even more for an exquisite service that sits alongside the outcome!
Element #8 – Understand the Difference Between Premium and Ultra-Premium
Should you create a premium or an ultra-premium brand?
To the untrained eye, these may seem like interchangeable terms for the same thing. However, there is a difference between the two.
But here’s the tricky part…
I can’t give you a checkbox that shows you what makes premium and ultra-premium so different.
I know that’s frustrating to people who are logical thinkers. However, my experience of working with clients at all levels has helped me to zero in on one key difference…
Authority.
There will come a point where you make a shift from premium to ultra-premium. And that time usually comes when you’ve built a certain level of authority in your market.
Tony Robbins is an excellent example of this.
He started at the premium level. He always worked with some of the most extraordinary people on the planet to help them with their mindset and money.
The key was that he held his value in that premium area.
Time and time again, Tony proved that he delivered the goods. And somewhere along the way, his model shifted to the ultra-premium sector.
Today, he’s one of the leading coaches in the world. If you think about coaches and consultants, his is one of the first names to come up.
He’s still working with high-rolling entrepreneurs…
He’s still helping elite athletes and celebrities…
It’s just that now, he’s doing it with a level of authority that he didn’t have when he first started.
Is there a moment in time when Tony Robbins realized that he’d built such powerful authority?
Probably not!
There’s likely no exact moment he can pinpoint where he made the transition from premium to ultra-premium. It was likely an intuitive realization that he was now working at a higher level than before.
So, my best answer here is that you will just know when it’s time to make the change.
You’ll know you’ve capped out at the premium level. You will see it’s time to reduce how much time you spend with private clients.
You’ll just feel ready to elevate because you’ll have a level of authority that wasn’t there when you started.
It’s Time to Ascend
And with that, you have all eight elements of creating a premium brand. Now, it’s your turn. You know what it takes to do it so it’s now time to take action.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
You probably will stumble along the way.
But you now have all of the tools to build an amazing premium brand. You understand the elements. You have big dreams of growing bigger and bigger. And you have a brilliance that nobody else in your market can match.
It’s time for that brilliance to radiate out into the world.
Be brave.
Be extraordinary.
Be the best in the world at what you do.
And if you’d like to partner with somebody who can help you get to the premium level faster, Iconic Influencers is here.
