12 Ways To Market Your Beauty Brand in 2022

If you’ve set up a beauty brand in 2022 – or you’re thinking about it – then marketing needs to be part of your plan. It can be a competitive industry and you’ll want your products to stand out (after all, you’ve spent the time, budget and effort to formulate them). This doesn’t usually happen by accident.

Marketing can seem like a huge amount of effort, especially when you’re first starting out and juggling your business. However, it’s the key to generating sales and interest in your products. It might not be feasible to do every single idea on the list below at once, but take the time to look at what your competitors are doing and where your customers are hanging out to get a feel for where to focus your efforts.

12 Marketing Ideas For Your Beauty, Skincare and Cosmetics Products

Here are 11 ways that you can market your beauty brand in 2022 – take what resonates with your brand, budget and your target audience. You might also find that working with a marketing specialist or agency is the best way to let you focus on your business, but sometimes DIYing where you have the skills can work too.

Branding

Your branding isn’t just your logo or how your website looks, though that is part of building a brand. It’s the entire way that your brand looks, feels and acts. From your logo through to your brand personality, products, values, photography, typography, brand colours and tone of voice.

Getting your branding right is important in the beauty industry. It’s visual, crowded and can be tough to stand out. Getting your branding right can help you reach your target audience, make connections, generate sales and scope out opportunities.

You can always update your brand at a later date (there aren’t many brands around that haven’t evolved from when they started), but it can take time and budget. If you decide to rebrand, look for an expert to help you.

Social Media (especially TikTok)

Beauty brands have quite literally been created from scratch on social media. While it used to be that Facebook and Instagram reigned supreme, short form video platforms like TikTok havebeen huge to drive beauty trends and sales.

Take the time to understand your audience, the industry you’re in, what your competitors are up to and the platform that you want to share content and build a community on. They all work differently and have their own vibe – understanding that is key to going viral and making money.

Public Relations (PR)

PR is short for “public relations” and refers to the strategic communication that comes from an organisation to help raise awareness, generate sales and drive positive sentiment about a brand. This could be generating press coverage and news stories, delivering events or setting up publicity opportunities.

It’s about relationship building with the right experts and journalists to help support the goals of your brand.

Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing and SEO is how you structure and create content on your website strategically to utilise the way that search engine algorithms work. This is usually a longer-term strategy that looks to inform and entertain your target audience, leading them to your website and your products.

There are many different aspects to content marketing and SEO so it’s often best to work with an expert or agency to support your content strategy and creation.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing didn’t exist a decade ago, now it’s a billion dollar industry. This is where you work with someone who already has an established community or audience that aligns with your product/brand to generate sales or awareness.

Always use your due diligence to make sure you’re working with the right influencer. Be clear of what you want to get from the partnership and what both sides of the arrangement need to do. Have a contract in place that clearly outlines your expectations too, and an idea of whether you’ll be providing products or budget.

An influencer doesn’t always need to mean massive follower numbers either. Micro-influencers can actually have a more engaged follower base that drives sales. This is particularly good if your product fits with a certain niche.

Sell to Retailers

Selling to professionals and retailers can lead to bulk sales with less effort and increased awareness, especially if you end up working with a well-known retailer. This could be salons, independent shops or ecommerce sites.

It’s not always easy to get your product into retailers, but there are some ways to make it easier. Products that go viral on social media can be picked up by retailers and working with retailing experts who have the expertise and contacts can be beneficial too.

Affiliate Marketing and Brand Ambassadors

Affiliate marketing and brand ambassadors are the process of enlisting the support of others to act as your sales force or promotional team. It’s similar to influencer marketing, but these advocates could be existing customers, professionals or those within the industry with influence.

They may receive financial compensation (such as a sales percentage, fixed payment or discount) and incentives (such as free products or exclusives) to promote your brand.

Cosmetics brand Doll Beauty absolutely smashes it when it comes to their brand ambassadors, working with makeup artists all over the world to promote their products in a way that connects with their audience.

Trade Shows and Events

It’s official, beauty industry events and trade shows are back after disappearing during the pandemic. These events offer an opportunity to showcase your products, raise awareness and connect with your ideal audience. You can also connect with retailers, journalists and other business opportunities too.

They aren’t the cheapest option – you usually need to take a ton of product, events material and people with you – to book your slot and stock your site, but they can be great for getting your name out there.

Reviews and Testimonials

Building up reviews and testimonials can be big news for your brand. People often spend time reading reviews and recommendations online before they make a purchase, so having these ready is a big deal for a brand. You can also use them on other channels too to showcase your products.

You might choose to use a plug-in, app or incentive to give people a reason to leave a review. However, you might find that your most passionate, dedicated customers leave reviews all of their own.

Email Marketing

Despite some changes to email opt-ins recently, it can still be an effective way to help drive sales, promote your products and raise awareness of offers. Email marketing strengthens your brand offering and can help turn your customers into fans.

There are lots of different email tools out there to help you, whether you’re creating a sales funnel or just want to sent regular emails to your customer base. Familiarise yourself with the rules, data protection and how these tools work – you also need to make sure you’re collecting emails too. Sometimes offering an incentive for sign ups can really help to grow your email database.

(P.S. Need some email marketing ideas? I’ve got you.)

Building A Community

Building a community can be a big deal for your brand. It turns them from customers to dedicated brand advocates (and maybe in turn into ambassadors or affiliates). Many brands and experts are now looking to create and cultivate their own communities, rather than just amassing social media followers.

This also links in with the trend for personal branding, which can indirectly generate sales and awareness for your brand – especially if you’re considered to be an expert in your industry (and that industry is related to your products).

Paid Advertising (PPC)

PPC stands for pay-per-click, a model of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.

Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC. It allows advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches on a keyword that is related to their business offering. It can be competitive and needs a certain level of expertise, so you’re often best working with a pro on this.

Bonus Tips To Market Your Beauty Brand

Think about cross promoting your products and content across different channels at the same time. This starts to create a cohesive brand story across all of your brand platforms. It also makes sure that your communication is aligned. You can also use your marketing channels to point to one another – e.g. link your Instagram account from your TikTok account and use your social feeds to generate email sign-ups.

When it comes to content, you can cross promote that too. Use your TikTok content on Instagram Reels or Pinterest Ideas. Take a longer piece of content and turn it into an infographic. Embed video into your written content. It’s all one big ecosystem.

As a freelance writer with a background in marketing, I have a strong understanding of where your content strategy, content marketing and copywriting fits with the rest of that marketing ecosystem.

Want to find out more about me? Get in touch and let’s talk about the content your beauty brand marketing needs.