Less is More for Kiehl's

I was fascinated to see this article about Kiehl's not devoting a significant amount of their budget to digital advertising. At a time when so many brands are devoting a massive amount of their marketing budget to the digital advertising space, it's a very counter-intuitive thing to read. However, what's much more interesting is how they spend the limited digital ad dollars they are spending, and where their dollars are going otherwise. Managing to increase online engagement with relatively low ad spend compared to their peers is a win-win.

It was good to see that a lot of Kiehl's focus is on marketing rather than advertising. They understand that the people most likely to convert to subscription models with them are the folks who are regularly purchasing from them already, not some brand-new customer they convert off the street. Focusing on marketing to those existing high-spend customers is a much better way for them to ultimately drive the customer lifetime value up. These customers ultimately act as the brands biggest advocates, and ensure growth through word-of-mouth.

In addition I was surprised to see their use of Facebook bots to reach out to customers who are within the geofence of one of their stores. In contracts to word-of-mouth marketing this seemed so high-tech. I think one of the potential challenges of technology like that is what I would call the "creepiness factor". Ultimately if it works for Kiehl's then who can argue with that, but I do think people are still a bit apprehensive about this kind of technology which monitors their movements/location.

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the article, which was surprising, is their use of influencers to promote their product. More recently I have seen some Kiehl's products promoted by Instagrammers and bloggers. It's definitely not at the same scale as some other beauty brands but I have seen it starting to trickle in. Based on the article it sounds like they are trying to strike a delicate balance with their use of paid advertising, and trying to ensure that their message doesn't over-saturate the market.

More on Kiehl's Marketing and Advertising strategy here.