10 latest trends in digital marketing for beauty brands [Part.2]

The latest trends in digital marketing for beauty brands

Following our previous blog article, here the additional five key trends in digital marketing for beauty brands.

• Leverage user-generated content 

Digitally-savvy brands are not only good at content creation, but also at content curation. In case you have not heard yet, the power of content creation is shifting away from brands to consumers, letting their target audience participate in the process. Once again, the recent surge in UGC proves that customers prefer hands-on experiences of their fellow consumers, rather than professionally created content. 

Both The Body Shop and China Glaze employ UGC to complete their branding story on their Instagram accounts. Whether to raise brand awareness or create a fanbase, brands that constantly interact with users on social media platforms are more likely to excel at both.

Here’s another beauty brand’s Instagram account that we’re proud of: Miller Harris (see our case study to find out more). 

• Virtualization of beauty experience 

The importance of touch, feel and smell will never diminish. But that doesn’t mean that online stores is irrelevant when it comes to choosing the right product. From virtual mirror to virtual makeup, big brands like Lancome has invested in virtual technologies to help their customers find exactly what they need. So if customers can save their time and energy from having to visit the physical store over and over again. 

• Seamless online checkout 

We can’t emphasise enough on this – smooth checkout process is KEY to prevent shopping cart abandonment and therefore conversion. While the process of online checkout has been seemingly standardised these days, many brands often get it wrong by paying little attention.  

Excellent checkout page should be easy to find and navigate. And it is often the small details that make a big change in conversion. Benefit’s checkout page, for instance, allows the new user to proceed to payment as a guest. That’ll save some time for busy users who doesn’t want to create an account. Similarly, Jo Malone’s checkout page allows regular customers to see and add products from their previous purchase.

• Utilise Pinterest 

As more and more consumers are turning to social media like Pinterest for inspiration before going to Amazon or elsewhere, it is important that your brand stay ahead of the game. Fact: Pinterest, though mostly known as a social network, does also functions as a search engine. To be more precise, a visual search engine. This is an ideal place for beauty brands to showcase their stunning product imagery, according to different themes, and grow followers.

• Mobile-first

Going responsive? That was last century’s trend. It is now considered as a “given”. But does every responsive site get it right? Not really. An excellent responsive mobile site requires excellent graphic and UX design practices. The experience browsing on mobile interface needs to be seamlessly navigable and products need to be easily searchable. On top of those, brands are expected to offer extra bits to improve mobile shopping experience. 

As a matter of fact, “only 40% of Index brands offer ratings and reviews on their mobile sites” according to L2.  Also, very few beauty mobile sites offer geolocation features, while some offer geolocation system that just don’t work efficiency.

  

So, what’s the key takeaway here? Not every beauty brand has to follow the same pattern, nor has it tick every digital trend. The secret is to have a clearly defined audience group, along with a clearly defined purpose, and craft a completely unique web design and digital marketing strategy on a handful of online platforms.

What do you think?

Appnova is a digital agency specialising in web design, UX, eCommerce, branding, digital marketing and social media.

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