In the lead up to Christmas, beauty brands have been targeting consumers that want to ‘get the look’ for Christmas online, through festive and engaging image-led creative campaigns.

In the first 14 days of December, over 119,000 posts on Christmas beauty tips and make-up selfies were uploaded on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Engagement levels peaked at over 18,000 posts per day, with conversation driven largely by beauty bloggers and vloggers as well as savvy brands around dedicated hashtags for beauty and make-up.

We’ve analysed what’s been driving these conversations and have compiled our top four tips for beauty brand marketers using social:

Optimise your look

The most engaging posts were images focused on playful and festive campaigns tied to new products. For example, Covergirl received engagement for its Star Wars make up gift collection ahead of the film release. The make-up brand is promoting its new range of products on social media, driving conversation from male and female audiences about the Star Wars trend.

In addition, The Body Shop engaged bloggers in conversation by hosting an event launching their Christmas Collection. Campaign hashtags and images of the new festive products were shared by influencers, who were able to promote the collection on the brand’s behalf.

The real-time nature of social media apps allows brands to be reactive and optimise their campaigns. As Christmas approaches, it will be crucial for brands to understand which ads consumers are most likely to click on and drive further action, in order to optimise the best performing creative.

Delve into keywords

Publishers generating online engagement on beauty were Elle UK, who promoted a lipstick giveaway through an ‘advent calendar’ competition post, as well as Stylist who often share photos from behind the scenes on fashion shoots. Although they are all magazine publishers with strong beauty editorial, they are using social media to promote their content further and reach new audiences through popular hashtags and keywords like #beauty and #makeup.

Brands must understand the publishers and the content that their customers are responding to. For example, the keywords highlighted for Christmas for beauty brands were:

  • Gift (2760 mentions)
  • #bbloggers (2927 mentions)
  • Win (1604 mentions)
  • Giveaway (972 mentions)

The fact that ‘#bbloggers’ features alongside ‘win’ and ‘giveaway’ suggests the influence of the blogger community on shoppers and highlights the response to competitions and giveaways. Beauty brands can facilitate this through publishers to offer their products to new audiences and then start building relationships where loyalty can be fostered.

Use data to beautify campaign targeting

Build more meaningful relationships with customers by targeting based on preferences and interests, rather than meaningless demographics. Instagram provides brands with a wealth of data that goes beyond location and likes to include actions that more accurately inform intent, such as purchase behaviour and device usage. Beauty brands can use this insight to deliver relevant messages to their audience. Why not reward a loyal customer who has posted that they’d like your product for Christmas with a personalised offer for it? Or retarget those that have abandoned a product on your site on their social shopping journey to ensure a conversion for example?

Increase conversion on the mobile channel

Last year, Facebook reported that more than 399 million of its users access the social network only from their mobile device. Social media is quickly becoming mobile-first so marketers must realise that they cannot use an ad created for desktop for their social campaign. Brands must make their advertising mobile responsive and native display ads should follow the natural flow of social applications.

Advertising on social media gives beauty brands access to a huge and diverse audience and its visual nature is perfect for festive and colourful products. With Twitter testing a feature to show advertisements to people who read tweets without logging in and Instagram adding 30-second video ads to its features, social is certainly the advertising channel to watch in 2016.

 

By Rakhee Jogia, director of display at Rakuten Marketing Europe. 

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