How A Cosmetics Startup Beat Big Brands With Digital Ads

How many makeup brands can you name right now?

How many makeup products do you (for guys - female around you) have? 

As we can tell from countless brands and products, people LOVE makeup. The U.S. beauty industry is a $56.63 billion market and the revenue of the U.S. cosmetic industry is estimated to amount to about $62.46 billion in 2016. On top of that, digital has played a significant role in boosting up the industry by catching consumers attention in various ways.

Pixability’s new study analyzes the YouTube practices of 215 beauty brands and 182,621 independent YouTube beauty creators. 51% of them focused on makeup. In 2015, more than 45.3 billion viewers watched YouTube videos and over 169 million Facebook posts were shared. Once you consume cosmetics-related contents, Mr. remarketing/retargeting start to tail you showing ads here and there when you surf the Internet. 

Birchbox - A box of Cosmetics, Not Chocolates

Thanks to great strategies on digital contents and ads, some smaller brands are killing it. Birchbox is a New York City-based online monthly subscription service that sends its subscribers a box of four to five selected samples of makeup, or other beauty related products. Full-sized products are offered on its e-commerce site. It was born in 2010, and rapidly expanded; now having more than 1 million customers. Here are what Birchbox is doing and how it is doing with digital ads.

1. Influencers

The genius of WOM(Word-Of-Mouth)! Research shows that viewers trust creators more than they trust brands. Therefore, influencer marketing is a cost-efficient way to promote consumer products since it is a combination of online and offline marketing. Please remember marketing is human to human!

Birchbox recently launched its in-house makeup line, LOC (Love of Color), and use beauty vloggers and bloggers to curate new products on a seasonal basis. They started with Tati Westbrook (GlamLife Guru), who has more than a million YouTube subscribers. Tati’s large fan base and universal appeal were a perfect choice for the launch of LOC.

The results were immediate: Love of Color launched on Oct. 16, 2015, and by Oct. 21, 2015, it was 258% ahead of its sales plan for that year. Brittany Tomkiewicz, Senior Manager of Acquisition Marketing at Birchbox, said the brand itself jumped up to one of Birchbox’s top 15 makeup brands of 2015, even with only two and a half months left in the calendar year.

Birchbox teamed up with Emily Schuman, a beauty and lifestyle blogger that runs Cupcakes and Cashmere, who has more than 260,000 Instagram followers. The partnership involved five Instagram photos promoting the products inside one of Birchbox’s monthly kits. The simple partnership resulted in 18,000 likes and reached more than 550,000 consumers.

Influencers can be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just to take some photos. And those payments have continued to rise each year as brands recognize the effectiveness of influencer marketing. According to SocialPR Chat, marketers that implemented influencer marketing campaigns earned an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 they spent on paid media. And 81 percent of marketers say influencer marketing is effective.

2. Facebook & Instagram Campaign

May 2016, Birchbox released a six-week campaign with two videos on Facebook and Instagram to increase brand awareness and reach to a new potential consumer demographic, 'multitasking women with only a casual interest in beauty products'. Each video features a representative woman of new target-demographic; “Modern Day Ninja” Lauren, a police officer juggling her career with three kids, and “Modern Day Virtuoso” Christine, a lawyer.

The two videos are shown to non-followers on Facebook and Instagram, and then those prospect consumers find the second series of additional ads educating them on the subscription box retailer. All ads will drive users directly to the Birchbox subscribe page. Unfortunately, it was very hard to find the videos. Below is the capture of the campaign.

Heena's Review

Smart strategies! This small cosmetics brand has been a smart kid in this bloody competitive market. For cosmetics, great reviews are almost a must-have feature of the product. Birchbox optimized influencer marketing on its strongest social media channels and made the most powerful word-of-mouth system. With a well-designed marketing plan, Birchbox successfully pushed a campaign using Facebook and Instagram ads. Needless to say, their banner displays on Facebook and Instagram and search ads are doing great!

The digital ads mentioned above are given to all. However, not everyone takes advantage of them. You need to know yourself first. Know your brand image and unique features, and then analyze your customers. This smart kid, Birchbox, knows well about its target audience and comes up with digital ads that can maximize the ROI.