Why small brands are falling behind in the race for personalisation

In today’s competitive beauty landscape, personalisation is paramount.

We’ve spoken before about the benefits of personalised marketing: enabling brands to build a more meaningful relationship with consumers by showing they understand their unique needs, and maximising marketing ROI by getting the right products into the right hands.

As such, personalised marketing and customisation tools are instrumental in helping brands of all sizes grow a loyal following, reach new consumers and establish their brand in the digital age.

But in the race for personalisation, smaller brands are falling behind. Let’s take a look at why this is a problem, the barriers to adoption and how they can be overcome.

The importance of personalisation for smaller brands

You can’t win every race, but personalisation isn’t one smaller brands can afford to lose.

In the crowded beauty world, newer businesses have to work extremely hard to win attention from decades-old, established competitors and generate buzz around their own name.

And personalised marketing can help them do this. Consumers have now come to expect personalised interactions with brands: according to McKinsey’s Next in Personalisation 2021 Report, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions and 76% say they get frustrated if they don’t.

If smaller brands can meet this need, where bigger businesses may fail, they’ll be able to attract and retain consumers looking for a closer brand connection, and even draw them away from more established brands.

But personalisation means more than creating positive brand feeling, it has other applications too. Customisation is a crucial part of a successful, targeted product sampling campaign that helps smaller companies win over customers who may otherwise be reticent to try a new brand.

By removing the financial risk of purchasing a full-size product, tapping into behavioural instincts, and allowing consumers to experience a product for themselves, smaller brands can attract new customers who may have scrolled past their brand online or looked past it on a store’s shelves.

The data insights brands can gain from such sampling campaigns are also essential for beauty businesses. Follow-up sample surveys, as well as other personalised marketing tools (such as online questionnaires), generate critical insights about consumer behaviours and preferences. These learnings can be used to shape everything from product development to packaging and marketing, so brands can make sure they’re working to meet real consumer needs, not assumed ones.

Zero party data like this is especially important for smaller brands, who don’t have the resources to conduct separate extensive, expensive consumer research to inform their product strategy.

Barriers to adoption

We’ve seen the vast benefits personalisation can bring to smaller brands. But many are still yet to embrace customisation tools, so why is this the case?

Well, there are a number of barriers that can stand in the way for smaller businesses. A key barrier is lack of finance and resources: small brands simply don’t have the capacity and budget to build personalised, front-end experiences on the fly. And many may not even feel able to invest in specific personalisation tools if they’re trying to keep expenditure to a minimum.

Another problem for smaller brands is lack of knowledge, particularly around data protection laws which are central to personalisation strategies and crucial to get right.

Smaller brands are unlikely to have dedicated data and legal teams who can help here, and fear of making mistakes can therefore put them off.

Closing the gap

The good news is these barriers can be overcome. Smaller brands don’t have to be blocked from creating personalised consumer experiences because they don’t have the same budget as bigger brands.

Personalisation doesn’t have to be the preserve of bigger brands. With the right tools, smaller businesses can pick up the pace in the personalisation race.