5 strategies for marketing a beauty & cosmetics business
Samir Kamnani
·May 9, 2024
If you’re launching an ecommerce brand in the beauty industry, you’re jumping into a huge market that’s still ripe for growth: In the US, the beauty industry is a nearly $100 billion market, and more than 20% of those sales come from ecommerce shops.
What’s more, customers are always experimenting to find their new favorite products. One recent study of beauty product consumers found that 26% to 50% of the products they purchased over the last year were items they’d never tried before.
Want to get on their radar and turn your products into essentials? Try these marketing strategies to help you build your brand fast:
Create an impactful brand story
For shoppers, it’s important to know what’s compelling about your brand. Create content including web pages and videos that spotlight what goes into your products and why, directed at your target market.
As one example of a simple but great “about us” page, look at Buttah, a line of shea butter skincare products founded by TV host Dorion Renaud. The page clearly lays out why the company was founded (to solve complexion problems for men and women with melanin-rich skin), and graphically spotlights key features: clinical validation, natural ingredients, cruelty-free testing, and Black-owned. From there, shoppers can take a quiz to receive their personalized skincare recommendations from the Buttah product line, giving them a clear CTA to lead them towards making a purchase.
Make sustainability a priority
Environmentalism is key to many modern beauty & cosmetics trends. When choosing a beauty brand, shoppers aren’t simply looking for products that make them look good — they want products that are good for them, and for the earth around them. Sixty-four percent of shoppers said that sustainability was important to them when selecting beauty products, a study from the Global Cosmetics Industry found.
To make sure you’re connecting with these customers, make sure you’re not greenwashing: If your brand is embracing sustainability, it’s important that it’s represented through your entire supply chain. Prioritize using natural, sustainable ingredients in your products and packaging, and source recyclable packaging materials for shipping. And when shoppers send back products, it’s important to do your part to keep them out of landfills: Using Loop, you can set up Workflows for eco-friendly return options, including routing returns to recycling facilities, donation centers, or resellers, ensuring that the materials don’t go to waste even if the product can’t be resold.
Promote your products through social media and UGC
When you’re in the beauty industry, customers don’t just want to read about your products — they want to see how they work. To build an effective marketing strategy, it’s crucial to focus on highly visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where you’ll be able to share photos and videos of your products in action.
Shoppers want to hear from people like them, too. In addition to your own branded content, encourage fans to share their own looks and results using your products, whether by posting a review on your website or by using your branded hashtag on social media. By showcasing real-world examples of your products at work, you’ll be able to generate social proof that other potential customers can trust: 55% of consumers trust UGC content over other types of marketing.
Spotlighting UGC that demonstrates how different products look on different people can also help customers feel more confident in their purchase, which may prevent them from bracketing (buying multiple products with the intention of only keeping one).
Partner with content creators and brands that reach your target audience
To build your beauty brand’s reputation fast, it can help to tap into opportunities with partners that are already reaching your target market.
Influencer marketing is one way to build brand awareness: Identify several beauty and cosmetics industry influencers whose demographics share a similar target audience to yours, and reach out to them about a review or sponsorship opportunity. Getting them to spotlight your products to their social media platforms can help you generate thousands of new followers.
Collaborating with other brands in similar spaces — say, a haircare line, if you sell cosmetics — can also help you introduce your brand to new potential customers. By setting up co-marketing opportunities, both of your beauty brands will be able to benefit from exposure to one another’s audiences.
It’s also worth reaching out to subscription box services, which offer curated boxes of sample size beauty products to their subscribers for discounted products. Although you may be selling your products below your traditional retail pricing, you’ll gain exposure to many new customers with a passion for beauty products — and may be introducing them to their new favorite product.
Use your returns policy as a marketing strategy
When it comes to beauty products and cosmetics, it’s often hard for shoppers to tell how they feel about a product until they try it out — so help them feel confident in their decision to try something new by offering a generous, risk-free returns policy. More than two-thirds of customers check an ecommerce store’s return policy before making a purchase, and you’re likely to win over many more new customers when you can reassure them that you guarantee customer satisfaction.
Using Loop’s automated workflows, you can give your customers access to a self-service platform where they can initiate return requests for any reason — even if they simply didn’t like the product. By offering an Instant Exchange, you can encourage brand loyalty by making it easy for them to choose a different product that they might like better, such as swapping one lip color for another. The new product will be shipped to them instantly, and you can choose to let them keep the original product for free if it’s already been opened, eliminating the expense of reverse logistics.
You’ll also get access to Returns Insights, letting you know the reasons shoppers wanted to return certain items. These insights can be used to provide more accurate product descriptions, and alert you to manufacturer errors — both of which can help you to lower your future return rates and ensure that you’re delivering a great customer experience.
Loop offers a variety of return options, including a POS system for offline returns, ensuring that in-store returns seamlessly integrate with your ecommerce platform. Offering in-store returns can help you get foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar stores, giving customers another chance to check out your other beauty products in an in-person environment.
By pairing a generous returns policy with an automated solution like Loop to manage it, you’ll be able to draw in new customers and deliver a superior post-purchase experience that helps you build long-term brand loyalty.
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