Beauty blogger secrets: what marketers should take in mind before their digital campaign

I recently came through a post regarding 'Top Digital Marketing Mistakes in the Beauty Industry' by Sukesh Jakharia. It pointed out several fatal mistakes marketer should avoid, which I heartly agree, such as lacking a complete brand strategy, forgetting about men, as well as not connecting your digital platforms.

However, the solutions were nowhere to be found - marketers are accused of there mistakes but not provided with actionables.

In the meantime, many individuals who started their beauty blogger as amateurs, had made remarkable success. Not to mention the famous Temptalia, whose website contains thousands of swatches, reviews, comparisons and attract millions of visitors, even a graduate student at University College London who call herself 'SEPTEMBER the life recorder' has attracted 40K enthusiastic followers in two months on the Chinese microblog Weibo. And the number is much greater than many beauty brands including Elizabeth Arden.

A few secrets that those beauty bloggers utilized that digital marketers might find useful:

1. 'Retweet Lottery'

The prize could be as tiny as a lipstick or an eyeshadow platte - regardless of however costless it might seem, it is one efficient way to conduct market test and increase followers. The number of retweets for lottery of a specific item could be insights on how popular the item is in the market, and as consumers have to become followers first to enter the lottery, the beauty blogger/ the brand account could attract users that actually consider making future purchase. As far as I'm concerned, a recent retweet lottery with a Chanel limited edition blush (value ~80USD) has attracted 20,000 eager users to retweet.

2. Engage the Men

Some smart moves are surveys conducted by bloggers such as - "ask your BF/BFF what's the most flattering eyeshadow color on you". Surprisingly while the question is targeted at female users to answer, many males had been bold and brave to contribute opinions. Traditionally straight men had been portrayed as '' silly dude unable to tell between no-makeup and expertly-done-heavy-makeup", but the opinion of men could matter as much. In fact, a SUQQU eyeshadow palette named SAKURAHABA had been constantly sold out for six months because it was depicted as 'THE first date eyeshadow' in a blogger survey.

THE first date eyeshadow that made women crazy

3. Talk Beauty and BEYOND Beauty.

A close friend of mine, and also a beauty enthusiast and Sephora VIBR, followed almost every popular beauty bloggers. However, whose posts does she read?

Only those bloggers she likes and feels like a real person, who live, eat, talk, date, and occasionally feel upset.

It is no time that beauty products are hidden in counters and available for VIP only - it is time that they bring along their personality with them when communication with digital audience. It does not imply that a bottle of YSL nail laquer should has a boyfriend named Ken, but rather bringing genuine experience instead of superficial descriptions of movie stars and supermodels.


4. Let Followers Interact with Each Other.

I always find users' comment more interesting than beauty posts themselves - there are green hands to be educated, experienced beauty assistant volunteer to share, eager full time moms seeking friends to hang out, and high school teens anxious to find the perfect eyeliner for a night out. That's the magic of beauty bloggers that marketers should catch. That great contents could be generated by followers, and the content team would never have to stay awake for the new idea.

The Ads You Won't Take Home To Mom?

There were a couple of interesting articles in October highlighting studies about which advertising mediums earn the greatest trust by consumers. Seems like as online ads continue to grow and newspapers, magazines and TV scramble to keep their business models afloat, the true value of an ad is being overlooked. According to Nielsen, the tradional forms of ad messaging far outscore their new online counterparts. Obviously there are probably lots of reasons for this discrepancy. First, as mentioned in class, online advertising is both blessed and cursed by its low barrier to entry. Almost any sized company selling virtually any type of product can get its ads placed on 1000s of websites. The cost of TV and print advertising on the other hand is quite expensive and has a much tighter supply of inventory so the companies that can utilize these ad channels are basically pre-qualified as "legitimate" brands. Within the online advertising inventory I am sure that name brands from auto companies, big name retailers and large media companies earn as much trust as their offline counterparts. It's just when evaluating online advertising as a whole, there is tremendous trust dilution from the myriad of ads from small unknown brands and out-and-out fraudulent scams.

One positive highlight of the study was that among all online messaging, recommendations from other consumers was the most trusted form of "advertising." So can companies leverage customer recommendations to build brand awareness and buzz for its products? Maybe so, but it better be careful how it does it. Another study in October by WPP Group PR shop Burson-Marsteller indicates that online "influencers" - those most likely to recommend a product to friends - are beginning to distrust the opinions they find on product review sites and forums. There is growing skepticism by these brand advocates over the credibility of positive reviews with 30% believing that fake reviews are becoming a significant problem.

That being said, brands should still focus on building positive online "word of mouth" through legitimate means. Viral applications and user generated content are two ways that companies can provide customers a positive brand experience that they will share with others. If you have a good product then raising awareness through these types of user-focused campaigns can be a real winner among influencers and the rest of us alike.

Visit the following links to read the full articles referenced above:
"Do Web Ads Lack Credibility?", AdWeek, 10/02/07 (http://tinyurl.com/2bhh4m)
"Caveat: Influencers Growing Wary of Fakes", AdWeek, 10/23/07 (http://tinyurl.com/2699ye)

Amazon invest in Shelfari

Amazon has invested $1 m in Shelfari, a website where users input all of the books they own, and have an online visual representation of their library to share with others. Users can share their library through the Shelfari website or via a widget, and make money by linking to the books for sale at Amazon. It's a new idea of user generated content.

Let's see how it evolves.

Will Teens "Flip" or Just Stick to MySpace?

Conde-Net, the interactive arm of Conde-Nast, is jumping into Web 2.0 with Flip and they're taking the advertisers along with them.

Flip will basically be a Conde-Net version of MySpace (if perhaps a bit cleaner in layout). The promise of access to the 'tween and teen market has attracted major advertisers, like Nordstroms and Clean and Clear (a J&J brand) who, in keeping with the spirit of the site, will allow users to choose where and how they view the ads. These ads will appear in each user's image bin. From there, a girl could place this brand's chosen image anywhere on an any of her Flip pages.

First of all, these companies will be surrendering a huge amount of control over their brand to 13 year old girls who will be able to not only create the content surrounding the image, but also, will be able to digitally doodle on the image itself. Companies like J&J (you know, A Family Company) do not take the idea of objectionable material lightly and must be counting on a traditional media company like Conde-Nast to keep things in line - monitors have been hired to examine sites and remove anything objectionable.

Second, unlike traditional advertising, no one has to view these ads. The onus will be on these companies to create images that are attractive, interesting and hip enough to be chosen by the users. Perhaps in response to this challenge, many of the images will be largely unbranded. Nordstrom will offer clips of their clothing that viewers will only be able to identify by clicking on the image. Clean and Clear will not place its brand anywhere on word-play icons, like "Fresh!"

While this seems like a huge sacrifice of control and visibility on the part of the advertisers, I think that they are bending over backwards to seem genuine and, thereby, find a foothold in this explosive market that seems largely resistant to any intrusions by the market.