Trends in the beauty industry move at lightning speed. A new lipstick color or anti-aging serum can be in one minute, out the next. With new products cropping up in the marketplace constantly, it can be daunting for a beauty brand to break through the clutter and noise and know the right way to engage with their consumers. Historically print magazines and word of mouth propagated beauty trends and set the tone for the hottest products to buy. Nowadays though, the internet, social media and our access and connection to influencers has allowed us to consume and discover emerging beauty trends in a whole new way.
According to a recent survey done by Google and Kantar, beauty consumers in the U.S. said that YouTube is their number one digital source for beauty content. At gen.video, we know that shoppers seek out product advice from their favorite beauty gurus and prefer getting this advice from social media influencers over friends and family.
Google’s research also found that beauty consumers in the U.S. are turning to content produced by brands and publishers nearly as much as product review videos from creators. This is great news for brands looking to provide meaningful content to their audience and engage with them – it’s exactly what their audience is looking for!
The challenge is, how can brands successfully connect with consumers? By taking a page out of a beauty creator’s playbook, brands can learn about the type of content that fans respond to and seek. Google’s recent research analyzed all beauty content on YouTube in 2018 and discovered that the content fell into three main buckets: inspiration, education and access.
INSPIRATION, EDUCATION AND ACCESS
During our 2018 campaign with beauty brand, Gliss, we developed a 360 holistic strategy that hit these exact targets and used influencers at every touch point. We leveraged beauty creators on YouTube to not only create meaningful content on their social channels, but also help the brand shape their professional ad campaign content through an influencer photo shoot where assets were used throughout the year on the brand’s social channels.
During our campaign with skincare brand, Exuviance, we leveraged influencer content on the brand’s YouTube and Instagram channels to build up their content library and make their social presence more accessible and engaging for fans drawn to influencer content.
Creating a custom influencer led strategy is a great way for beauty brands to dip their feet into the influencer marketing pool and explore the ways in which influencers can build brand awareness and yield conversion content.
FOLLOW THE CREATORS’ LEAD
Brands that want to create content that resonates with audiences should follow influencers lead and upload content on a regular basis, create content that their audience craves (use trending keywords, descriptions and hashtags), encourage viewers to share, subscribe and offer value to their connectedness and engage with their audience and facilitate dialogue (respond to comments and question on social, pose engaging questions to fans).
Beauty and fashion brands are lucky in that they have an established community of passionate fans seeking their content and products. By learning from the pros (influencers), brands can really up their game and create content that resonates with their audience, builds loyalty and affinity and ultimately inspires them to purchase.