How Social Media Changes the Beauty Industry Landscape

The beauty industry has always been one of the most competitive commercial niches. Even before social media, beauty brands organized major ad campaigns to target consumers. Now with social media, while the same principles still stand, it’s different. Social media is bringing a whole host of new opportunities and challenges as well.

New Marketing Opportunities for Beauty Products

The obvious change is that social media opened the door to a whole new type of ways to target consumers at a reasonable cost. This is especially beneficial to small and start-up brands, enabling more businesses to enter the market.

With a wide variety of social channels, brand discovery for the beauty segment also became more complex and refined. For example, consumers are around 40% more likely to be discovering new brands or products via ads seen on social media, and 45% more likely to be doing so via updates on brands’ social media pages.

The beauty industry was also one of the first niches that adopted the influencer marketing techniques. Beauty buyers find out about new brands or products via reviews and opinions their peers — whether in the form of recommendations or comments on social media, posts from expert bloggers, or celebrity endorsements.

With half of consumers in the beauty segment looking at peer reviews for online research prior to purchase, brands need to be able to manage this channel to boost their brand awareness.

The use of influencers as a marketing medium also shows no signs of fading away. Influencer marketing fits the beauty industry very well too. Businesses can boost brand awareness effectively by leveraging the social reach of influencers and bring their beauty products to market.

Enhanced Brand-Consumer Connection

If on one side social media changed how beauty brands market products to consumers, it also changed consumers communicate and connect with brands. Most of beauty buyers follow their favourite brands on social media, creating an opportunity for brands to directly engage with consumers.

Data also indicates that beauty buyers like engaging with brands on social media and more than the average internet user too. Around 20 percent of users interacted with brands on social media within last month and shared a brand’s post. At the same time, brands also need to find ways to take advantage of the increased engagement and enhance their online presence.

Social Media Pressures Brands to Get Involved

As social media play an increasingly important role in society, it has become a platform for conversation around cultural and societal issues. Social media gives people an open platform to speak out about issues that matter to them — and brands are in a way forced to join the conversation.

Sustainability and environment is one of those topics, and the beauty industry is one of the spaces that will be scrutinized for bad practices. Consumers are becoming more aware of how their behaviour is impacting the environment, making them question whether brands are too. One in four of beauty products consumers want their favourite brands to provide eco-friendly products. Similarly, they would be inclined to purchase from a brand if they knew the product and company are environmentally friendly.