From Stradivarius to Superyachts: Why Context and Positioning Make All the Difference in Marketing

In 2007, during rush hour, GRAMMY? Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell played classical music on his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C.

He played for 43 minutes.

Only seven people stopped to listen, and 27 people gave money—$32 in total.

Over 1,000 people passed by that morning without stopping to listen to him busking.

Just days earlier, Bell had performed in Boston's Symphony Hall to a packed audience. He receives standing ovations when he performs in concert halls around the world.?

The same violin, same skill, but the value of his expertise and his artistic merit skyrocketed in a different setting.

It serves as a strong reminder that context and positioning matters.

Why does it matter for yachting companies? Because they need to rethink their marketing approach as trends shift. Click-through rates are dropping, artificial intelligence is changing how customers search, and innovation with digital technology is speeding up.

For too long, yachting companies have focused on large numbers and vanity metrics like follower counts. These are easy to measure, but they don’t tell the full story.

In yachting, there’s still a belief that social media success equals high engagement and paying customers. Yachting companies don’t want to wait to get their first 1,000 followers—they want to make an impact fast. But many marketing teams are stuck working on the same old advertising and marketing campaigns, despite promises of amazing, creative projects.

A big problem is that many yachting CEOs rely too much on the data their teams provide. This feeds a vicious cycle in which yachting boardrooms are dominated by vanity metrics. Many yacht marketers maintain their jobs by reporting on the incorrect things, such hits on social media posts about trending topics, because they are the simplest to see and measure.

This must be challenged.

Social media and yacht listing portals should not be seen by yachting companies as just platforms for delivering and spreading content. They have developed into your clients' go-to search tools as they need fast responses.

Search behaviour is changing. According to data from Semrush in December 2024, 70% of ChatGPT searches have “unknown intent”—people aren’t just casually scrolling online; they’re brainstorming, creating content and opportunities for themselves, exploring new ideas, actively researching, and making decisions on their devices in real time, rather than just passively browsing.

If you want to start from the beginning, here's a throwback to Dave McClure’s “Startup Metrics for Pirates” framework. It helps measure a company’s success with five key steps: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue (AARRR! - see the pirate reference!).

1. Acquisition: Attracting users to your site.
2. Activation: Making it easy for users to enjoy their first experience.
3. Retention: Getting users to return to your site.
4. Referral: Encouraging users to refer your products or services to others.
5. Revenue: Turning users into paying customers.

The key is using clear data to support better strategies. Understanding not just "what" is happening but also "why" it’s happening is crucial.

Here are three reasons why yachting companies need to understand context in marketing:

1. Target Specific Audiences: Knowing the context of your customer’s behaviour helps you target the right people. For example, a yacht charter company can create different content and messages for adventure seekers or families.
2. Optimised Decision-Making: When you understand customer behaviour, you can make better decisions about where to spend your marketing budget. Knowing why a yacht is popular or why sales are higher in certain months lets you adjust your budget and strategy to improve results.
3. Enhanced Customer Experience: When you know a customer’s history with your brand, you can offer better, more relevant content, experiences and services. For instance, suggesting yachts based on their past choices, or offering products or services that fit their lifestyle can improve satisfaction and loyalty.

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

A Monaco yacht brokerage claims to get 5,400 qualified leads a year. Impressive, right? After all, enquiries and new sales are the backbone of any yacht brokerage.

But dig deeper:

• They have a team of 12 marketing people, so on average each marketer is responsible for drumming up 450 leads a year, or 37.5 leads per month.

WHAT YOU DON'T SEE BEHIND THE NUMBERS:

Beyond the salaries of their global team of 12 marketing employees, the brokerage is also investing in:

DIGITAL MARKETING

• More than?30 marketing channels?are used to target clients, including YouTube with over 2 million views annually, along with millions of social media engagements.
• Paid yacht listings on their website.
• Paid Google Ad campaigns.

PRINT MARKETING

• Paid advertising and PR with yachting media, high-end magazines and luxury websites.
• Design, production, and print costs for an in-house magazine featuring yachts for charter and sale.

PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEOGRAPHY

• Advertising, production and marketing costs for yacht promotional videos, walk-through tours, and photo shoots on vessels.

BRAND PARTNERSHIPS & EVENTS

• Brand partnerships and a presence at?more than 50 events?annually, including major yacht shows and luxury events.

Despite this, their marketing team is generating just 52,500 website views each per month.

This is far lower than I would expect for a major yacht brokerage with a team of this size, the reach of their communication, marketing and PR, and a stratospheric budget to match.

Where are the tangible results, then, if a marketing team of 12 isn't driving a lot of website traffic in addition to the work of more than 200 international brokers, significant event activations, remarketing and PR campaigns, and the support of other full-time staff members? Are brokers happy with receiving only one or two leads each month?

The way that success is communicated needs to be reconsidered.

Yacht marketers spend endless hours bamboozling C-suite talking about click-through rates, cost per click, cost per impression, PPC, SEO, and customer lifetime value, but let's get right to the point: how many prospects are they actually generating for you, and what is the actual makeup of your qualified sales pipeline??? ?

That’s why I’ve given a real-world example - because no one talks about what lies behind the numbers.

If I was a broker getting one or two legit leads coming my way each month after all that colossal expenditure, I’d be asking questions. ?It’s not moving the needle, it’s a failure?drip-feeding bullshit to brokers. Full stop.

Yacht marketers and yacht marketing agencies often distract with big numbers, glossy websites, and VIP parties drinking with middle management and partners all in the name of 'building brand visibility and industry relationships.'

One thing is for certain - there’ll always be Champagne....

MY TIPS

• The bottom line is simple: Goals and expertise drive smart decisions. "Going viral" is not a goal. If you don’t know your goals, you’ll burn through your budget before seeing results.
• Take a moment to reflect: How much of your website or social media data have you used to make informed decisions, or push revenue-generating activity in the last few months? Focus on the analytics, channels and methods that impact your business.
• Don’t just rely on short-term campaigns—consistent, sustained advertising has a lasting impact on Share of Search and driving growth over time.
• Attention spans are fickle. ??If you're getting swept away with big promises of big numbers then you need to know what sits behind it.??

Whether playing a violin worth millions or selling yachts, context and positioning impacts us.

ABOUT ME

I'm a copywriter and marketing specialist with published articles in 15 countries. I love writing original content that challenges the norm, inspires and connects with audiences. I launched Antibes Yachting in 2020 offering marketing support, PR and business development for yachting companies who are done with being ordinary!

On LinkedIn, I post regularly about Marketing and Communication in the yachting industry.

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