Luxury Beauty and Cosmetics Brand Marketing Strategies to Win Customers Over

The global beauty and personal care industry is worth $511B in 2021 and is estimated to rise up to $716B USD by the end of 2025, annually compounding at the growth rate of 4.75% worldwide.

What’s causing this meteoric growth in the beauty industry? Beauty and cosmetic brands are expanding their marketing through digital channels and thanks to an increasing purchasing power, these brands are alluring a larger customer base willing to pay more for better quality products.

In a digital first age of shopping, online brands are increasingly gaining modern consumers’ attention and becoming cult-favourite amongst younger shoppers. The luxury beauty and cosmetic segment has recently witnessed a meteoric growth and has outpaced its counterparts as more shoppers are now inclined to buy high-end beauty products.

With new D2C players disrupting the market, heritage beauty brands are digitizing themselves in order to cater to the online shoppers’ needs. To keep up In this competitive environment, luxury beauty brands need a new approach to win the modern affluent customer and constantly innovate in order to create meaningful digital experiences for the consumer.

In this blog, we bring you luxury beauty and brand marketing strategies you can adopt to ensure your brand is always ahead of the competitor curve:

Beauty and cosmetics brand marketing strategies that won’t have you constantly battling product pricing

1. Leverage digital storytelling and the power of social media influencers

In this social-media savvy world, digital storytelling is an essential for legacy beauty brands and startups to grab their audience’s attention. Social media plays a vital role in every customer’s online beauty purchase journey as consumers are increasingly spending time searching for information and recommendations. 80% of all luxury sales are driven by emotional triggers from what consumers saw online.

Beauty influencers hold immense power to sway a consumer’s beauty brand choice. Modern consumers, especially millennials and Gen Z, discover new products and brands through online communities.

Affluent beauty shoppers are increasingly using Instagram to shop, with its shoppable features and a seamless integration from the point-of-discovery to the point-of-sale.  As a result, luxury beauty and cosmetic brands have ramped up collaborations with beauty influencers who use beauty vlogging to build opinions around products and brands. They attract massive audiences who are already loyal to these influencers through product review videos and makeup tutorials.

Leverage content snacking for micro-storytelling

With platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube pushing for short reels like videos, shoppers are increasingly  consuming short bursts of content to gain quick insights or discover a new product. Another reason why stories are gaining popularity with beauty buyers is the raw and real nature of the content in the eyes of the followers, making luxury beauty and cosmetic brands look genuine.

A study by Stackla relevaled that 86% of all consumers consider authenticity as a factor while deciding which beauty brand to support. User generated stories bring in a level of authenticity which in turn drives brand affinity among millennials and Gen Z consumers. Luxury beauty and cosmetic brands can tap into this opportunity to win younger audiences.

Your luxury brand should use storytelling  to create intent-rich moments and connect with potential affluent customers. To stand in a sea of content created online, luxury brands must tell authentic byte sized stories to quickly capture attention and leave a lasting impression. One way to do so is through the power of influencers, who create stories to create “how-to” tutorials, “behind-the-scenes”, “unboxing” videos etc.

Build a mobile-first marketing strategy

Luxury beauty and cosmetic buyers are increasingly shifting from desktop to mobile. With consumers spending more time on mobile devices than their laptops/desktop computers (nearly four times), mobile has become their main source of discovering and purchasing luxury beauty products. Use videos, especially created to be consumed on mobile to tell stories.

Create mobile-friendly video content (created with a vertical orientation to be consumed specifically on mobile platforms) on social platforms. Going for live videos is another great way to connect with your audience. Live videos end up bringing 6 times more engagement than non-live videos.

Stories is another recently popular storytelling trend which uses ephemeral content to capture user attention and keep them hooked. Stories are short-lived, generally available for upto 24 hours before disappearing. If used well, this is an effective content marketing strategy to appeal to affluent consumers. Stories also bring in FOMO (fear of missing out), driving an urgency to consume content due to its limited availability, thus increasing audience engagement.

2. Leverage Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to increase discovery

Google shopping will always be the most prominent campaigning and discovery mode for your ecommerce luxury brand. Unlike normal search engines, Google shopping uses targeted data feeds to display target ads to the right audience. This is based on the long list of specifications Google follows to use the right data.

Hence, certain optimization tactics work well to get featured in Google targeted ads. Product title being the most important.

Your product title should contain as much information as possible within the 150 character limit. Moreover, it should follow a structure for consistency. Typical structures include:

• Brand + Product Type + Color + Material
• Style + Color + Product Type + Brand
• Brand + Size (length, width, height) + Product Type + Color
• Product Type + Size + Color + Feature + Brand

Think about how you can incorporate potential non-brand search keywords into your product description. And remember: the order of words matters! Google places more weightage on words placed at the beginning of the title than those towards the end.

3. Grow organically through Search Engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is undoubtedly the most essential online marketing strategy for luxury beauty and cosmetic brands to grow organically. A good SEO strategy when combined with paid marketing efforts can help your luxury brand score high in customer attraction and retention and skyrocket your growth.

Here’s how SEO can be useful for luxury beauty brands:

• Builds credibility: Whenever someone searches for a product, if your content pops up in their search results, they are more likely to explore it than a paid advertisement. Build your brand’s credibility by leveraging content marketing. Create useful blog content to help them discover your product.
• Increases organic traffic: SEO helps your brand’s visibility across all browsers and ensures people discover you organically when they search for a product.
• Improves conversion rate: When shoppers discover you organically, there is an increased chance of purchase than when they discover you through ads as the intent is much higher.

4. Leverage the power of user reviews to build positive brand perception

User Testimonials are one of the most powerful tools for increasing conversions. In fact, highlighting the experiences of other users with your product can increase your conversion rate by as much as 270%. In the luxury beauty and cosmetic segment, product reviews and testimonials primarily drive a buyer’s purchasing decisions.

Therefore, beauty brands should amplify positive feedback from users from comments to build a positive brand sentiment on social media. If you happen on any negative reviews, quickly respond to them or resolve them. It takes roughly 40 positive reviews to undo the damage done by one negative review.

Leading beauty and cosmetics brands dedicate resources to address consumer concerns in a proactive manner. This helps them keep negative reviews at bay and also turn unhappy experiences into an opportunity.

5. Harness the power of visual content on channels like YouTube

According to a Statista study, beauty and style videos are the most consumed videos by female audiences on Youtube. From skincare tutorials, cosmetic hauls to makeup tutorials, the platform has garnered millions of fanbase and is convincing for new buyers to make a purchase.

With individual vloggers driving 97% of all beauty videos, luxury beauty and cosmetic brands capitalize on this space to leverage the power of influencer marketing.

Youtube content succeeds on one simple formula: create immersive tutorials that build excitement around that product to ultimately sell it. Content like creating a particular makeup look using some products often nudges viewers to purchase those products. As a result, Youtube not only brings affordable awareness but also leads to profitable conversions.

6. Sync marketing and on-site efforts with conversion optimization

Conversion rate is driven by the combination of digital marketing efforts within your sales funnels to end up in a purchase. This includes driving visitors from ads to the design experience they get when they land on your site.

Therefore, it becomes paramount to optimize your onsite experience to acquire new customers and improve your conversion rate. Use email capture, reviews, customer reviews and other user-generated content, subscriptions and in-cart or post purchase upsells as part of your buyer’s journey. Moreover, provide shoppers with excellent site speed and an optimized mobile platform for a seamless online experience.

Pro tip: Make sure your messaging in marketing campaigns and advertisements is consistent with what you display on the website.

7. Email marketing for better customer retention

Email marketing is one of the best ways to build better customer retention. Every luxury beauty and cosmetic brand’s goal is to convert first time buyers into repeat customers. Bringing them onto an email journey is the key to improving your LTV and maximize your revenue as it gives you a 1:1 channel to communicate with them.

Creating an email journey is simple: Get buyers to subscribe to your email list and keep them on an email journey with a healthy mix of educational and engagement content with occasional sharing of sales content.

For past purchase makers, drive their email journey through loyalty or subscription programs to build a community around your brand and nudge them to make further purchases. For first time visitors who are yet to make a purchase, create welcome and post-purchase flows to ensure you stand out as a brand through your messaging and provide value to the customer at any stage of their customer journey.

8. Provide a frictionless user experience

One of the biggest determinants of brand success is its ability to provide a frictionless user experience. Consumers value a seamless e-Commerce experience and being able to land on the product of their choice in minimum steps possible.

Offering such an experience, making sure that all product information and customer reviews are easily accessible and personalizing the customer’s online experience is a must for beauty brands striving to win their customers online.

For ease of discovery, offer multiple filtering options by price, skin color, category, skin type and bestsellers to help customers make a purchasing choice. Help consumers compare products easily to reduce choice paralysis. Simply put, make online shopping for your luxury beauty and cosmetics products as seamless as it would be a physical store.

We call it conversion-focused eCommerce web design. To know more, contact us here.

PS. Cleaner the better! No matter how driven you are to add customized elements to your website. Take a look at Gucci; they keep the site design clean and use high quality images to do the talking!

9. Build a Community around your luxury beauty brand

Imagine having customers that continue to engage with you beyond your products. Or becoming your brand advocates. Building a community for your beauty and cosmetic brand can hugely affect your conversions and retention rates. The most successful brands have a loyal brand community to back them.

Take for instance the beauty giant Sephora, whose brand community does most of its content marketing. Their Beauty Insider Community has cultivated a following of over 4 million users who create content like videos and blog posts and market their products for them. Their loyal customers post videos of their makeup looks, unboxing videos and product reviews as well. Sephora also engages its community through exclusive events for loyal customers and regular discussions on a variety of topics like beauty issues.

10. Create an air of exclusivity

When it comes to marketing high-end luxury products, ‘exclusivity’ is a must. Luxury shoppers love to feel like they’re buying something high on value that’s not affordable by the general masses.

When shoppers perceive a product as exclusive, exquisite and expensive, the brand becomes a luxury brand for them. These values make the brand stay relevant and in high demand in the eyes of high-end shoppers. Take away exclusivity and the brand loses its appeal.

Top Luxury beauty and cosmetic brand marketing campaigns

1. FENTY BY RIHANNA

Fenty Beauty is a luxury cosmetics brand launched by Rihanna. The brand garnered huge popularity owing to its business strategy that revolved around the mission “Beauty for all.” The brand launched products catering to a broad inclusiveness across skin tones and gender. This catapulted Fenty Beauty’s popularity and sales due to its diverse representation and product offerings. Fenty’s marketing ensured they put out the message that the brand creates for customer needs that caters to all segments.

2. KYLIE COSMETICS

Kylie Jenner launched her brand Kylie Cosmetics at the age of 19. Jenner leveraged the power of her social media following, which contained millions of followers to create a strong reach for the brand even before it was launched.

Long before the brand was launched, Kylie was sharing content with her social audience through makeup youtube videos or regularly sharing skincare and makeup routines. She positioned herself as a leading voice for Kylie Cosmetics. Consequently, the products sold out within a few minutes as soon as they were launched.

3. L’OREAL PARIS

L’oreal has been dominating the beauty market for many decades and has witnessed rising cosmetics sales worldwide. How did an old brand like L’oreal manage to remain competitive even today?

That’s because L’oreal continuously strives to adapt to changing consumer tastes. Their motto is to always move forward. And they do so by integrating pioneering new technologies like AR, VR, and AI with their platform to bolster product discovery and elevate user experience. Its new AR tool Modiface allowing users to try on makeup virtually before deciding to purchase became an instant hit with shoppers.

4. GLOSSIER

Glossier owes its success to being a “people-powered beauty ecosystem.” The company’s success can be owed to the 5 Cs: Consumers, Conversations, Content, Co-Creation and Community.

Glossier has been very successful in building a loyal customer base that exhibits a fierce dedication to this brand. It has also followed a content-first ideology where they share highly useful content to their followers via their Into the Gloss blog. Glossier also ensures that it engages its readers and followers through its two-way communication. Combine all of this and Glossier has built a true community, also acting as its brand advocates.

5. DIOR

Dior’s marketing strategies are focused on social engagement and content. Dior’s social media content is distributed over multiple social media accounts, each account catering to a specific demographic.

The brand has two Instagram accounts: Dior official for its main consumers and Dior Homme specifically to cater to a male audience. This lets them create personalized content for each segment, making their ideal customer feel more valued.

Dior’s success can also be attributed to its influencer marketing and celebrity collaborations, all the while launching limited edition products to maintain an air of exclusivity.

To Conclude

We hope the ideas highlighted in this blog can help you harness the full power of marketing for your luxury beauty and cosmetic brand. Our next blog is going to discuss in detail the strategies used by successful luxury beauty and cosmetic brands to dominate the luxury beauty market. Subscribe to our blog to get an update when the blog is live!

If you’re not sure where to begin, reach out to us for guidance in building an eCommerce marketing strategy that’ll work for you.

Our eCommerce luxury brand marketing experts are working with global brands to help them reach their ideal customers.