How to market beauty products on social media

Social media marketing is intrinsic to selling in any sector.

With consumers spending a third of their waking hours on mobile apps, and 70% of that time on social, photo and video apps, brands who want to reach them need a sharp social media marketing strategy.

But with fierce competition for consumers’ attention, how can brands stand out?

Let’s take a look at marketing for social media and the ways beauty businesses can use it to elevate engagement and drive sales.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing involves creating content for social media platforms to market products.

From Twitter to Tiktok, it’s a way to reach customers on the channels they spend most time on, establish credibility and build an online community of fans.

But it’s not just about increasing brand awareness. Shopping directly via social media has rocketed in popularity and new features such as shopping livestreams are making social shopping easier than ever before.

In fact, the global social commerce industry is currently valued at $492 billion and expected to grow to $1.2 trillion by 2025 - growing three times as fast as traditional ecommerce. It’s younger audiences who are behind this boom: Gen Z and Millennial social media users are predicted to account for 62% of global social commerce spend by 2025.

Brands who want to engage such demographics and maintain relevance need to prioritise social media marketing.

Benefits of social media marketing for beauty products

Social media marketing brings a range of benefits for brands in the beauty industry.

As mentioned above, social commerce is a way to drive sales and make the shopping experience even more seamless for customers. And it’s a way to interact with digital-native generations: research has found that 20% of Gen Z spends more than 5 hours every day on TikTok.

If brands can embed themselves into the consciousness of Gen Z and Gen Alpha and establish long-term consumer relationships, they’ll reap the rewards when these growing generations gain more spending power.

There’s also a special interaction between social media and beauty. Photo and video-based platforms are ideal media to showcase the visual effects of skincare and cosmetics. For products where texture, pigmentation and finish are part of overall value, being able to demonstrate a product - such as through influencer campaigns - is of big benefit to brands.

Furthermore, such social content gives beauty brands the opportunity to have their own viral moments, and mirror the viral success of Maybelline’s Sky High mascara or Clinique’s Black Honey Almost Lipstick. Although chasing viral success at all costs isn’t a good strategy, social media gives brands the chance to find online fame for their products, which can reflect favourably on the rest of their brand.

Additionally, monitoring the way different consumers interact with social content gives brands insight into the way the industry is evolving and customer expectations are shifting. This ability to spot trends early on, through social media, gives them the upper hand in shaping business strategies that fulfil changing consumer needs.

Successful beauty brand social media strategies

The benefits of social media marketing are clear but what should brands consider when thinking about how to market beauty products on social media?

The first step involves defining clear, specific goals that you want to achieve via social media. Is it reaching a new demographic or increasing brand awareness among a specific target group? Is it launching a new product or changing your brand perception? Each marketing campaign will have a different objective and this will determine the course of action you take for that campaign.

Then brands should investigate the social media marketing tools that could help them achieve their objectives. Evolving marketing tactics and innovation like influencer campaigns and virtual and augmented reality technology are helping beauty brands win engagement and drive sales.

For instance, a joint venture from Perfect Corp and Snapchat now allows users to try on and purchase makeup via Snapchat; last year The Estée Lauder Companies became their first brand partner.

But this isn’t the only role tech can play in strengthening beauty brands’ social strategies. Brands of every size should be looking to technology to improve their marketing personalisation - tailoring content to consumers to increase ROI and build more meaningful relationships. Consumers who are shown social content that appeals to their interests and offers solutions to their problems will be much more likely to consider purchasing a product.

Not only this, consumers are growing tired of the generic. According to a report published last year by McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions and 76% say they get frustrated if they don’t.

Furthermore, beauty brands who want a successful social media strategy should be carefully monitoring and assessing their campaigns as they run. Launching campaigns on different platforms and conducting A/B testing allows marketing managers to put theory into practice and really see what content and approach works best for their audiences. This is crucial in refining strategies going forward and increasing the efficacy and ROI of campaigns.

How to improve your social media marketing with the right tools

There are many elements involved in successful social media marketing. But working with the right tools makes this challenge much less daunting.

For example, at Odore we’ve built sophisticated data collection and curation tools into our offering. This not only allows brands and agencies to better understand consumers, it enables them to segment data for hyper-targeted campaigns and provide the highly personalised interactions customers want to see.

Our integrations with CRM platforms and social media, among others, also allow brands to launch multi-channel campaigns whilst centralising information to avoid work silos and the resulting inefficiency and mistakes. And our all-in-one drag and drop builder means brands can take control of their creative without having to work out what to code.

The Odore platform also includes automated A/B testing, allowing beauty businesses to deliver high-performing campaigns, every time.

It’s features like these that allow brands to embrace innovations in beauty marketing without having to source additional talent themselves.

‍