In 2020 the skincare industry in the US is worth $148.3 billion, projected to reach $189.3 billion by 2025. This huge increase is due to a couple of key factors, the first being that most people use some form of skincare and the second is the potential for the industry to develop into more diverse markets such as anti-aging formulas, eco-friendly and organic products.
When it comes to marketing skincare products, it’s key to remember that different consumer markets have different skincare products. Lifestyle, age, income, skin type, skin conditions, and budget are some factors that will determine which products are best. While the older generation will generally be seeking anti-aging treatments, teenagers tend to seek acne remedies.
Many businesses make critical mistakes in advertising their product, whether this is targeting the right age, ethnicity, gender, etc., or not using audience targeting features available on ad platforms, which can result in your audience is too narrow. We’ve developed a comprehensive list of the top 9 skincare advertising rules to help increase your conversions and ROI.
9 Rules When Advertising Skin Care Products
1. Unify your strategy
Companies today must recognize the importance of creating a consistent brand image across all platforms and ad campaigns. This is important to consider when designing your advertising campaign. Ensure that your ads, landing pages, and other assets are consistent with your brand’s identity to allow consumers to recognize your brand and increase the chance they’ll click on your ads.
For example, Kylie Cosmetics uses the same shade of pink and the traditional drip effect on their products, their social media posts, and their website so that consumers associate these elements with the brand in the future. See the examples below:
2. Research and understand your market
Market research provides critical information about your market and business landscape. It can tell you how your company is perceived by the target customers and help you connect with them. You can do this by conducting consumer research through surveys and data collection. You can identify what consumers want to see from your brand, which will give your campaigns the best possible chance to perform well.
To research you need to:
- Identify your competitors and how you compare to them
- Analyze their SEO efforts
- See what your rivals are doing in terms of content marketing and PR
- See what’s working for your competition on social media
- Review your competitors’ advertising campaigns
- Review your findings with your own goals and strategy in mind
3. Set clear goals for the success of your campaign
You can then accurately create goals for different campaigns based on your market research. When you’re creating a campaign it’s key to focus on a specific goal whether that be customer recognition (brand awareness), traffic or sales.
Once you have identified your goals, it’s important to remember to target all ad copy and creative around them. This will ensure that your consumers understand what they’re clicking on, reduce the bounce rate on your landing page and improve campaign performance.
Suppose you want to increase brand awareness to make it easier for customers to discover your brand. It’s key to build as many relevant impressions as possible, do this by advertising your best skincare or beauty related articles to send users to your blog. Doing this will allow customers to discover and start trusting your brand. And if you want to increase sales, you will have to show your audience your products and remarket to people who left your store without buying anything.
4. Create compelling ads
Creating compelling ads that can generate a high click through-rate (CTR) is crucial for a campaign’s success – whether your business is in the beauty industry or not. Including freebies or discounts for new customers is a great way to get people to click on your ads. See the example below and how IT Cosmetics have used both a deal and a freebie as a call to action (CTA).
Another example is using customer reviews or testimonials within the ad copy; doing this will stand out to the consumer as relatable – making them more likely to click on your ad. See the example below of True Botanicals using customer testimonials within their ad copy:
5. Make sure to use Google Search Ads
There is no denying that search ads are a valuable component to generate brand awareness, as they give your brand that desired first position on Google. Not only do well-crafted, targeted ads increase the effectiveness of your advertising efforts, but when paired with an optimized landing page, they reach their full potential.
Further increase your ads CTR by adding snippets and extensions that include products that customers will identify as unique. This will strengthen your brand image and attract a wider audience. These attributes could include: no animal testing, eco-friendly, refillable, quality ingredients, etc… Doing this will grab your consumer’s attention.
6. Include Programmatic/Display Ads in your strategy
Display ads have the potential to help increase your campaign’s ROI. Boost your product visibility by including videos, reviews, before and after pictures, and product images in your display ads. These features act as trust signals for consumers. If your product is accurately presented in an ad, then it’s more likely to convert. For example, if your product promises to get rid of dark circles, make sure you include real before and after pictures in your display ads and organically post these on social media.
By using customer experiences that clearly show how your product works, you will decrease the bounce rate while increasing your ROI. The beauty and skincare industry has been subject to controversy over using photoshopped images in their marketing campaigns. Doing this will only lead to bad reviews, which will negatively affect brand reputation, so make sure that you’re as transparent as possible within your campaigns.
Here are some examples of good content for display ads:
7. Utilize Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)
Marketing does not end when a sale is made. Remarketing to previous customers encourages repeat business, may create referrals, and provides essential information for product development. There is now a Google Ads feature that allows advertisers to tailor their search campaigns based on whether a user has previously visited their website (or app) and the pages that the user viewed.
You can use RLSA ads in two ways: either make bid adjustments on your remarketing lists; or set up search ad groups to only be triggered to relevant users. These types of remarketing lists are essential for brand awareness and have a higher CTR because the target audience is already familiar with your brand.
For example, a shop that sells Burberry cosmetics, but not Burberry bags, might avoid bidding on broader terms like “Burberry”, because it could attract someone searching for a Burberry bag rather than the makeup range. RLSAs allow advertisers to bid on broader terms, in their own ad groups, only remarketing to a list of users who have already visited the Burberry makeup page. This means that this term will only be triggered when the user has some qualified interest in the makeup range rather than waste budget on users who’re interested in Burberry bags.
8 Create a remarketing funnel
Creating a remarketing funnel is crucial when retargeting relevant products to consumers who’ve shown intent to buy. A remarketing funnel can take different shapes depending on the conversion points for each business.
For an ecommerce store, it could look like:
Viewed product page > Added to basket > Completed purchase.
Creating a remarketing funnel in Google Analytics and Facebook Ads allows you to remarket the same product to a customer a set number of months after their purchase to encourage them to renew their products or browse other items. You could also remarket to people that saw a product but did not complete the purchase.
9. Optimize product titles on Google Shopping Ads
Shopping ads are an excellent option for beauty and ecommerce businesses as they showcase your products on a cost per click and cost per engagement basis. They use your product images and descriptions to decide how and where to show your ads.
When creating a shopping or smart shopping campaign, it’s key to remember to add as much microdata in your product titles as possible. This information could take the form of gender, age, size, brand name, etc. Adding this data will attract the right customers to the products they’re searching for.
Mistakes to Avoid
Many beauty brands make mistakes in their skin care marketing strategy simply because they don’t consider their consumer experience enough. Create the best plan for your campaign and make a note of these four skincare advertising mistakes to avoid!
- Not optimizing for mobile
- Forgetting to set goals
- Only marketing to women
- Not unifying your strategy
The Best Examples of Successful Beauty Brands’ Social Advertising Campaigns
Here are a few examples of strong beauty advertising campaigns that have provided massive results.
Fenty Beauty
No brand has had a more significant impact on the diverse beauty market than Rihanna’s Fenty makeup line. The company launched in 2017 with a 100% digital campaign, geared mainly around Instagram and influencer content; combined with the diversity of the skin tones available in the makeup range, the new beauty line quickly went viral.
Built on a very inclusive concept, Fenty launched its foundation in 40 different shades, thereby setting its inclusive, body-positive, and diverse marketing. Combining reviews and testimonials for industry professionals, models, and everyday fans – its unique Instagram strategy drew in 1.4m followers within just four days.
See below the range of tones skin tones available in the makeup range.
L’Oreal
In the last few years, L’Oreal has been focusing on digital channels, allocating 30% of its budget to digital media since 2016. The development of its Beauty Squad is probably one of the most significant digital initiatives ever undertaken.
The campaign involves several influencers creating YouTube videos and articles on the latest beauty trends. These influencers were responsible for creating content for L’Oreal’s website, their websites, and L’Oreal’s social channels. The campaign was very successful and reached approximately 5.5 million people. It worked so well because it provided value before purchase and can help people understand your product better.
This kind of marketing not only provides brand recognition to those who haven’t heard of you but makes you more familiar to those who have, which can increase engagement and conversions.
See L’Oreal’s media library here.
Conclusion
Overall, remember that your campaigns are there not only to build an audience – but to keep your audience engaged. The first step in successfully advertising skincare products is researching and collecting as much data as possible. This will allow you to develop a unified strategy, review your competition, and create better campaigns. Once your campaigns are up and running it’s key to remember to optimize your ads by using trust signals and continuity across all platforms.
Finally, remarketing is an important part of your strategy as it’s what keeps users engaged and transforms one sale into a returning customer – not a one-shot game!
Check out our complete Google Ads guide if you want to learn more about advertising your business on Google.
Whether you need Shopify Marketing Experts, or your website is built on any other platform, we have tons of experience in building unified skincare marketing campaigns. Get in touch with our team to create a strategy unique for your business.
