Basically, Marketing is about introducing products and services to an audience, for the purpose of creating awareness. Lifestyle Marketing, however, takes this a few steps further. Lifestyle Marketing involves the research and analysis of specific lifestyle categories that go beyond the typical demographic description such as Activities – what we do, to create an audience profile that will result in heightened awareness of products and services that are of value to you.
Is it any shallower than Product or Brand Marketing? depends on your perspective. We believe the truth is, Lifestyle Marketing utilizes a wholly emotional-driven approach, making it one of the most effective disciplines of marketing because it paints a more human portrait of the targeted audience.
As a Lifestyle Marketer, I often get asked to style, stage, or decorate clients’ homes. Everyone knows, interior styling can play a key role in how comfortable you are in your home.
Since we all live different lifestyles, naturally the atmosphere in our homes would be different and unique to the interests and activities of your family.
The challenge faced by many homeowners, is creating a space that satisfies both the emotional and rational needs of their life and reflects their personal style.
In this blog, I’m going to share with you an example of what we do as a Lifestyle Marketer to engage our audience with a property. It may be their existing home or a property they are seeking out. Each has its own lifestyle marketing “tool†that best serves the purpose of the property: This may be Interior Design or Real Estate Staging. Although the methodology is largely the same, the scope of each job can be vastly different.
Some families are what we call Mobile Families. Frequently away from the home due to work commitments. For Families like these their time at home is extra precious. Spending time enjoying their environment with low maintenance is important in their life.
Other Families are what we call Serene Stay-At-Homes. For these families, the home is its largest root. They are the home that all the extended family come to. As they grow, many furniture items are grandfathered or inherited, frequent and large gatherings come with strategic furniture moves to accommodate. For this family life a dedicated space or assigned real estate for activities is important.
So how do you style each of these family homes to provide a comfortable atmosphere that reflects their individual tastes, opinions, and interests?
We always begin with the Soul of the home – the people who live there and spend time there. Then we add our Keep It Soulful and Simple strategic lifestyle marketing approach, which we’ve coined as the K.I.S.S. strategy and apply it to each component of the home.
Soulful is about the people, their emotional likes, and dislikes. It is through this engagement that we determine the overall direction for the look & feel of the interior space. In product marketing terms this is equivalent to the features and benefits.
Simple is about the power of the people. The power to do more of what does matter and less of what doesn’t matter. Here we incorporate time-saving attributes through furniture, fabric, and finishes.
Of course no interior design goal is complete without a challenge right!?
From the perspective of Lifestyle Marketing, the creative challenge comes in the form of fluidity. The fluidity of our emotions as we move through life, guide and inform our tastes and this is reflected in our homes, the stage upon which most of the drama in our lives takes place.
You better believe this can impact the style of interiors!
A Serene Stay At Home family, likely choose neutral shades for wall color as children develop their own tastes for the look & feel of their room. Mobile families may likely appreciate versatile, low maintenance lighting options to set the mood and, are easy to clean.
Honoring these factors, we begin with this end in mind. Alternatively, based on analysis and real estate sales objectives, we can apply the same strategy when Staging a home, however design and style details would be kept broader within the tastes and targeted audience lifestyle category. For us, this is how we bring depth and meaning to the creation of interior spaces. We hope that the details we include stir up emotion and become the openings through which our client experience the potential of their soul entering into life.