The global market for skincare products is expected to be worth $155.8 billion by 2021. And as changes in consumer behavior emerge post pandemic, the desire for personal care products, including skincare, is continuing to expand. This makes it the perfect time for brands to take a hard look at their skincare marketing strategies and seize on this opportunity for growth.
To create a successful business within the beauty industry, you need to get serious with your marketing strategy for skincare products. If you want to sell your products online, the competition gets even more fierce. This is where Beauty Business Journal supports entrepreneurs, indie founders, marketers, and sales professionals understand the complexities of todays beauty industry.
But first, there’s that one thing you need to understand if you want to build a successful skincare brand — your customers aren’t interested in your cleanser or exfoliator. What they really want is that radiant glow, and effortlessly beautiful skin. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to promote your skincare business and sell this aspirational goal.
Step 1: Make Technical Improvements To Your Skincare Marketing
Start by making technical SEO improvements on the site. This includes:
– optimizing skincare content for your site and product pages
– adding keywords to the title tags of each page, in addition to a keyword rich header tag on every page.
-Write skincare products descriptions with benefits that match what customers want.
-Create skincare products titles that are keyword rich.
Consider link building to drive traffic to the site also. Utilize guest posting on beauty bloggers websites that are focused on skincare. Create content that educates your customers about the benefits of using skincare products, or what skincare is all about. You can create posts around skincare trends, new releases, lifestyle tips for skincare, skincare myths and skincare hacks.
In skincare marketing, it’s all about the customer experience. Implement A/B testing to improve conversions.
How you handle their queries and complaints online will play a major role in your conversion rates on skincare products.
If there are any technical glitches with your website or app that can lead to negative reviews from customers who have had an unpleasant shopping experience, get them fixed right away.
Step 2: Include Testimonials On Your Skincare Marketing Product Page
Skincare marketing is easier when consumers are aware of the benefits that your product can offer. That’s why you should strive to get testimonials from those who have used your products in order to get the word out.
Some research indicates that sharing testimonials can increase your conversion rate by as much as 270%.
When you are skincare marketing your product, including photos or a video of people who have used it can make a significant difference.
Use those testimonials on your website and ads, post them on your social media accounts. There’s nothing more effective than a happy customer sharing how your face cream helps the skin stay hydrated throughout the day!
Step 3: Identify Your Skincare Marketing Audience
Is your target audience going to be teens looking for skincare products to clear their acne? Is it the millennials after a dewy skin look? Or is it Generation X on the hunt for anti-aging solutions?
The key thing to remember is, when creating a skincare marketing plan, you need to narrow your focus so that your company has one clear message to communicate to your audience.
When you know your audience well, you will have a better understanding of how they think and what content they expect. And, when you market your products online, you will understand how they navigate the internet, the influencers they follow and the content they engage with. Beyond the products you create, monitoring what’s trending on popular blogs and with celebrity influencers ensures that any product is created with your target audience needs and wants in mind.
In the months following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platform Tik Tok surged in popularity as their primarily Gen Z audience began to spend most of their time at home due to coronavirus restrictions. And thanks to huge Gen Z skincare influencers recommending CeraVe products to their audiences, the skincare veteran brand took TikTok by storm.
While the brand’s messaging itself still centers on being the number one skincare brand recommended by dermatologists, they adapted their strategy to include YouTube creators and TikTok influencers, and sometimes even dermatologists who are also content creators in these platforms.
Step 4: Research Your Consumers’ Needs
After you’ve decided on your target market, the next step in developing a skincare product marketing strategy will be research.
These are some key pieces of knowledge to be certain you have about your customers:
- What are their main skincare requirements?
- Are there ingredients that they prefer above other – natural vs synthetic?
- How do they gather information about the products they use most?
Get A List Of Keywords Related To Your Audiences Interest & Feedback
You need to conduct a keyword search to find out which topics people are interested in, and how many searches there are per month. The operative term here is topics – by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.
Creating an effective keyword list takes time, effort, and focus. And while it’s possible to find them yourself, many skincare marketers have found success through tools like KeywordTool.io, SEMrush and Ahrefs.
Step 5: Develop Your Brand’s Skincare Marketing Message
When you know your target audience, you can create a message that is relatable to them.
Your skincare marketing message needs to communicate the following:
– what is it that your company makes or does
– who uses them, and how they use them
– benefits of using these products both in terms of skincare outcomes as well as lifestyle changes (for example body confidence)
Ten years ago, as Eric Bandholz was gearing up to launch Beardbrand, facial hair was considered at odds with a professional image. Something for lumberjacks and survival hobbyists.
Initially, Bandholz didn’t sell a product or even a brand. As with the archetypes that Harry’s exploited, he sold a story, one of inclusivity and the celebration of difference. Harry’s captured imaginations as an underdog, Beardbrand created a beacon to an entire demographic of underdogs and said “We have a place for you.”
Modern marketing is as much about visibility and effective communication as it is about the quality of your products and the narrative behind them. It matters more to be immediate, in terms of audience interaction, than it does to be the best.
Step 6: Use Content Marketing For Your Skincare Brand
Use skincare marketing as a way to produce great content that addresses your target audience’s concerns. A study from Facebook found that 46% of make-up consumers aged 18-34 and 36% of facial skin care consumers in the same age bracket have discovered new products online.
Glossier owes much of its early success to the organic content marketing strategy that founder Emily Weiss cultivated at the start. She launched her blog, Into the Gloss, which consisted of interviews with various women who discussed their skincare routines and favourite products. This built a steady and significant audience over time.
It was a content first approach that made Glossier what it is today.
Glossier continues to share content on the “Into the Gloss” blog, Facebook (just shy of 374,000 followers), Twitter (nearing 108,000), YouTube (151,000), and Instagram (2.7 million Glossier fans).
Glossier-produced content features a mix of beauty how-to’s and product recommendations, answering to specific beauty problems. Ample user-generated-content validates and authenticates the company’s products and posts. This content then leads to community conversations.
There are endless skincare-related questions consumers think about daily. Google has plenty of helpful information for people who want to find out more about beauty-related concerns.
Smart beauty brands know that answering buyer questions successfully is often the difference between gaining a new loyal customer or losing them to the competition.
In a previous article we looked at how Allure has built online authority, achieved millions of monthly visits in organic traffic and drives sales for their business by answering the awkward skincare related questions people are afraid to ask.
Step 7: Build Your Social Media Presence to Support Your Product
When it comes to skincare marketing, social media is your best friend.
Social media platforms are an essential tool for skincare marketers because they give you a way to reach out and connect with people on the other side of the screen. They create an opportunity for you to share tips, announce new products, start conversations on issues that are important to your brand and invite your followers to engage.
The same Facebook study we mentioned previously, found that 49% of facial skin care shoppers aged 18-34 and 53% of make-up shoppers in the same age bracket say they’re likely to make a purchase based on a social media post.
The most popular platforms for marketing a skincare brand are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.
Additionally, these social networks offer direct access to customer feedback in real-time as well as a variety of customer data.
Step 8: Build a Community of Brand Skincare Advocates
Skincare brands need a way to communicate their brand values and assimilate them with consumer values. They need to create environments in which they can learn from consumers, and simultaneously provide product education.
Beauty Pie and Glossier are two example of brands that have built Facebook communities in the tens of thousands. Glossier’s group is public, meaning that any Facebook user can see the posts in it, whether they’re a member of the group or not. But Beauty Pie’s group is private, so only group members can view posts or see who’s in the group. It’s well worth it when a group works. Around 75% of Beauty Pie’s group members are active on a weekly basis, which means the brand’s product discussions move fast and enable the brand to act quickly on up-to-date responses from real customers.
Building a community around a beauty brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes consistent work to keep it going, and a willingness to adapt to consumer needs. But the brands that do this well will benefit from a consumer base who feel emotionally invested in the product philosophy; and who will share their personal experiences to shape product development, as the beauty industry continues to adapt to a consumer-lead market.
Featured Resource
- Baking in social brief.
- Writing for people. Not search engine.
- Handling objections before they happen
Step 9: Work With Influencers
A skincare brand should tap into influencers to promote their products.
These influencers can come in a variety of forms, from skincare experts like dermatologists and estheticians to social media celebrities with large skincare followings. Their authority can come from a higher social status, knowledge of a specific topic or niche or their relationship/popularity with the audience.
The strategy for working with influencers will depend on the brand’s values and how they want their message communicated.
Micro-influencers, for instance, usually have a highly-engaged following in a specific niche. Often, their content tends to be more authentic and looks trustworthy. Plus, it’s much cheaper, so you can afford it even when your starting out building your skincare brand.
TikTok has also emerged as a go-to platform for skincare gurus, dubbed “skinfluencers“.
The rise of skincare influencers creating content on social media platforms like Tiktok, means dermatologists are no longer their first go-to when it comes to skincare. They now get their recommendations from skincare influencers, more relatable because they are closer in age and know what it feels like to be in their shoes. This shift has led to otherwise unassuming brands like CeraVe, as we mentioned previously, becoming popular enough to sell out their entire supplies.
There are many free tools that you can use to find influencers who share the same interests as your beauty brand. You should start by running a quick Google search. Experienced marketers often use platforms like Launchmetrics or influence.co for more detailed results.
Once you’ve shortlisted the best micro-influencers for your skin care marketing strategy, contact them. Find out which of your products they’re most interested in, send them those items, and ask for a review or testimonial in return.
Generating positive influencer marketing ROI (return on investment) remains top of mind for many marketers. According to research from Mediakix 89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
Step 10: Build Strategic Skincare Marketing Partnerships
A skincare brand should build partnerships with other brands that complement its own skincare line, and vice versa. Strategic partnerships are created through in-depth research and on-going relationship building.
For instance, a skincare company might want to team up with an established beauty retailer or cosmetics manufacturer in order to increase the reach of their product on shelves or online stores.
In the wake of the beauty industry’s mass migration to digital at the start of the pandemic, more brands are now turning their attention to partnerships with popular tech companies as a means to drive sales and build their narrative. In 2020 L’Oréal released eight brand Lenses for brand gamification on Snapchat.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the best skincare marketing tactics, and there’s more out there! So keep looking for sustainable ways to increase awareness for your beauty product or service and always look at what others are doing.
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