Whilst launching a brand to market traditionally involved launching into retail, times have changed. Whether you’re an emerging or an established brand, e-commerce is important to your success, it’s plays a vital role in your omni-channel retail strategy. Many a start-up brand has started by launching via e-commerce first, then followed this by launching into bricks and mortar. And there are a lot advantages to be had by doing so.
Launching online and then transitioning into bricks and mortar, requires you to carefully consider your social media and online marketing strategy, enabling you to make a seamless transition from purely an online retailer into a multi-channel retailer. Considerations include:
SEO – Google gets over 100 billion searches a month. Whether you implement relevant content, or simply focus on SEO keywords, this is an important consideration influencing how easy it is for your customers to find you online.
Email Marketing – Easy to customize and relatively inexpensive to implement, email marketing is one of the best ways to directly connect with your customer in a regular, non-intrusive manner.
Social Media Marketing – The social media platforms you use need to have a unique and interactive strategy with relevant content geared up to serve your specific audience – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube videos. By actively engaging with users on social media, you can build an authentic relationship with your customers.
Content Marketing – From webinars and podcasts to eBooks, white papers, videos, blogs and guides – there are many ways to create unique and relevant content that your audience will find useful and that positions you as ‘The Expert’. By providing valuable information to your customers, you can reassure them that you have the right solution to solve their problems.
Paid Advertising – Paid media allows you to create relevant and actionable ads that target potential customers through your online campaigns. Thanks to geolocation you can now create a customized approach to your advertising that is less intrusive and more relevant to your audience.
Referral Programs – By leveraging the power of your current customer base and brand partners you can drive relevant and valuable traffic to your online site. Think about relevant ‘brand partners’ who you have something in common with and who could complement what you offer.
A strong social media presence is more important than ever, especially for up and coming niche beauty brands. Whilst bricks and mortar still play an important role, retailers are very much aware that people shop online before going into the store.
Brands who excel in social media have already built up a loyal following that they can activate once they have secured retail listings to drive footfall into stores. Having traction and engagement on social media and with beauty press will make your brand more desirable when you pitch your brand to buyers.
Instagram is central to promoting beauty online, consumers are known to visit Instagram for beauty inspiration and ‘how to’ techniques for applying trends across the beauty industry. As a form of visually bringing a brand to life Instagram is a great way to display new trends across the industry and to create a sense of urgency to buy.
Story telling is an equally important consideration to building your beauty brand online. Connect regularly with your audience via your blog, everybody loves a good story. As a source of inspiration, a few good strands for your blog could include:
The Visionary Story
Be authentic about telling consumers who you are and how you started out. What is your unique take on your positioning and why do you stand by this? What benefits do your products offer to consumers? What drove your ideas and the inspiration behind your brand, how did you decide to launch your brand, what were the challenges and what did you celebrate as success? How did you go about choosing your design and your packaging?
The Behind the Scenes Story
Outside the realm of your business, allow people some insight into your life, this makes you more interesting and relatable. Your stories don’t always have to relate to your products, you can tell a story about ‘behind the scenes’.
The Why Story
If you are running a promotion or event, you could share the story behind your promotion. Is it an anniversary? Are the proceeds going to a special cause? By sharing this you are being inclusive, encouraging your customers to buy from you.
The Where and How Story
Where did something come from or how was something created? Have you sourced ingredients from a specific region of the world? Do you only work with suppliers in a certain market? Do you use a particular technique to create one of your products? Include videos, webinars, make it interesting.
Happy Customer Story – Case Studies and Testimonials
Include case studies and testimonials in your blog. People want to hear from real people about real events. They want to learn about how other people have overcome the challenges they are currently facing and how you can help them to overcome this too.
The Facts and Figures Stories
Remember that when the time comes to present your brand to a retailer, they want to know that you are confident in your brand, you believe in what you do, it is financially viable. Be confident and proud about what you have created and support this with data, facts and figures. If you have a great product that is selling ’1000 units a month’ mention this and include comments from real customers about how this product has improved their lives. Whilst consumers are visual, they are also savvy.
Without the aid of human interaction – although human bots and live chat have been introduced – running a successful beauty e-commerce site is reliant upon providing rich and inspiring content, online tutorials and videos. It needs to be an interactive, educational experience established on trust and visualisation. There are online apps and tools which make this a seamless experience:
Building algorithms into an e-commerce system makes it easier to direct consumers to appropriate products based on their profile, enabling them to shop in the most efficient way.
Whilst certain categories are more difficult to sell online such as fragrance (although by providing a fragrance chart you can guide consumers as to what they might like) other categories present fewer challenges. Virtual try on apps allow consumers to try on make-up online, influencing their purchasing decision. Augmented reality enables consumers to share looks with their friends via social media.
Sampling has always been an important tool in the sale of beauty products, people like to try before they buy. Now e-commerce retailers are benefiting further from the sampling experience, as are beauty brands. By offering a subscription based service for samples – e.g. spend £10 and receive 5 beauty samples per month – in return for providing the e-commerce retailer with their profile and their feedback, retailers have valuable market research which they can use to build up their brand portfolio online and share with beauty brands. This is very helpful in determining the potential success of a new launch quickly.
Consumers expect instantaneous service and delivery and more and more e-commerce retailers are providing a fixed annual delivery fee, or free delivery service over a certain value.
Launching a brand online first allows you to gauge your customers reactions and make the necessary changes prior to launching this into retail. You have an opportunity to test your pricing, marketing and messaging and then to adapt this as needed based on instantaneous market feedback. It allows you to easily pivot your brand rather than having to wait for a reaction via retail, which may have involved a significant investment in upfront costs.
Do you need help with creating your marketing strategy? Get in touch to discuss how we can support you with this.
Welcome! We hope our blog is a source of inspiration for you, providing you with insight, knowledge and a vision for creating your brand. Think big, plan carefully and follow your creative ideas.
We love partnering up with visionary entrepreneurs and organisations to develop new brands in this industry. Our team are passionate and insightful professionals with years of experience – in strategy, branding, product development, buying, category management, global marketing, contract manufacturing – to help you to create, develop and grow your business.
Straightforward, positive, creative pragmatic thinkers, we believe in telling things the way they are. We work with you to develop a comprehensive strategy for your business by looking at the ‘big picture’ and then delving down into the details to create order and structure, neatly packaged up to deliver you commercial results.
Our founder Janet Milner-Walker has worked with leading brands and companies across the beauty, retail, travel retail and luxury goods sectors in the UK, Dubai and South Africa. She founded Bespoke Advantage as a beauty brand management company…
‘Through Janet’s management skills, expertise and proven track record on the job she successfully managed the purchasing of our retail operations and ensured the integrity of our brands in-stores. Her enthusiasm and total dedication, delivered results in any project she was involved in.’
‘Janet is one of the best people I have ever worked with in my career. She fully understands the whole process of product development, supply chain and marketing. Janet has in-depth experience of toiletries and international retailing. I would recommend her to any company or client.’
‘Janet has excellent beauty market knowledge. Level headed with clear vision, direction and the ability to drive business forward, Janet led the teams through a complete product design change advising on what the key marketing messages should be, incorporating her technical knowledge and beauty expertise.’
‘I highly recommend Bespoke Advantage to business owners across the beauty, spa and wellness industry. Janet has been a fantastic support to my business. Through her in-depth knowledge of the beauty industry she has provided me with strategies specifically tailored to my business needs, to help me to grow my business across the marketplace’.
‘Janet has a wealth of experience across retail, buying and marketing. She conducted a full strategic review of our cross functional business and the travel retail market to develop a comprehensive buying and quality control strategy that was signed off at board level. I highly recommend her as an asset to any business.’
‘Janet is extremely professional, knowledgeable and thorough, an expert of her field. This shone through from our first conversation, which instinctively led me to want to work with Bespoke Advantage. As a new skincare brand the expertise of Bespoke Advantage has been invaluable.’
‘Janet, absolutely fantastic to meet you today. Thoroughly enjoyed The Beauty Workshop. You definitely excel in your area and beyond.’
‘We have been really pleased to work with Janet. Through her 6-Month online coaching program she showed us exactly what we needed to do each step of the way. Really look forward to having future opportunities to work together.’
‘Many thanks again for all the help, support and words of encouragement, as I said before, best and most sensible thing I’ve done in developing my beauty ideas is to engage with you!’
‘It’s been inspirational working with Janet. We are in the process of launching a skincare brand however have received conflicting opinions from so many people we were really confused. I am so impressed by Janet’s knowledge and experience in product development, marketing and retail and the way she explains everything so clearly. She is very motivating and positive, and so much fun to work with. I have much more clarity and confidence in how to move things forward.’