Launching a beauty product can feel like the best thing in the world, but then shortly you realise that you’re lost in a sea of competitors who all have very similar products. Cutting your prices is a risky business as it’s a surefire way to devalue your brand overnight.
So, what do you do?
Digital marketing is the way of the future, and has been used by all of the world’s leading brands for some time. This means that you can easily learn from their successes (and failures) so that you set off in the right direction from day one.
Taking Your Offering Social
Social media is the new king of advertising when it comes to getting your products in front of the people that you want to sell them to. Of course TV adverts are still alive and well, but they just don’t have the reach and engagement of social media ads.
Launching a social media campaign is composed of two key parts. Firstly, you need to build a following that allows you to connect with as many of your target audience as possible. The secret to doing this is to post far more than just ads after ads. Add value with your posts and people will be far more amenable when you do post an ad. It’s all about balance when it comes to the nature of your content.
The second thing you need to do, is to get specific with whom you follow. It’s all well and good having millions of followers, but if 99% of them are bots and people with no interest in your product, then they’re not going to help you all that much.
Constantly Airbrushing Images
The trend for makeup-free selfies has been around for a couple of years, and at the time of writing it shows no signs of going away any time soon. This tells you all you need to know about how the next generation view the role of their makeup. The days when it was something a woman simply couldn’t go outside without are quickly becoming a distant memory. Now makeup is there to enhance the natural beauty that every woman has.
For this reason, and this reason alone, it’s vital to move well away from the old practice of airbrushing images. People spend more time than ever looking at visual content on their phones, and they’ve become very good at spotting artificially enhanced images. They’re a major turnoff, and they don’t inspire that much confidence in the quality of your end product.
Partnering Up with an Influencer
There’s more to social media than posting images and coming up with a couple of memorable hashtags. Today, social media promotion and digital marketing are the domain of influencers. Just as celebrity endorsements on TV ads used to guarantee a spike in sales, the right influencer will take you to the next level online.
The platform that this approach works best with is undoubtedly Instagram because of its emphasis on visual content. Sounds straightforward, but the best influencers come at a price. Rather than simply throwing money at the wall and seeing who you can attract, the best approach is to draw up a shortlist of people that reflect your brand’s core values. It’s so important to find the right fit, because you want the influencer to help enhance your brand and get across what it means. Rather than simply causing your followers to spike for a couple of days.
Ask questions, ask for suggestions, and take a look at their body of work. What have they promoted before, and have they teamed up with anything that could harm your product in any way, or throw doubt on your core values?
Providing a Personal Experience Every Step of the Way
There’s perhaps nothing more important than showing your customers that you are part of the changing face of beauty. When it comes to the way you want to look, and how you want to enhance your natural beauty, the one-size-fits-all approach of the past simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
This means that if you want to be able to market yourself online to as many people as possible, you need to provide a vision that will enable people to buy into what you’re selling. You need to give them an idea of what they can look like with your products, and you don’t do that with images of size-zero models who all look the same. You can take the example of Auralia, and the way they have organized their website for some ideas.
Embrace individuality, different cultures, and diversity in your content. This will allow you to show the masses that you have something for everyone, but most importantly that you have something everyone can shape in their own image. Get the balance right, and you’ll be able to take your digital marketing efforts to new heights.
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