Beauty brands are about to see a spike in performance - here’s how to prep

Spring is around the corner - with a seasonal change, we see a shift in seasonal shopping trends. One of the categories that thrives year after year as the warmer weather approaches is Body & Beauty (Women’s).

We’ve seen all the coverage:

• Vogue - Experts On the Spring Beauty Product Trends to Know
• CNN - 30 new beauty products we’re loving this spring
• InStyle - 15 Beauty Products That'll Usher You Into Spring

…and many more.

We took a look at consumer spending within Body & Beauty (Women’s) brands in the Disco Network and found that for the last two years (2021 and 2022), overall Shopify web revenue in this category has been higher in March, April, and May than in any other months outside of holiday shopping season (November and December).

So, how can your beauty brand make the most of this spike in seasonal shopping in spring?

We asked our friends at Hawke Media, who work closely with beauty brands like Sio Beauty, Ogee, and Algenist, about how they optimize their paid social strategy to prime these accounts to drive high engagement and conversions in the spring/summer months. 

Read on for their exclusive insights and strategies.

Diversification of Media Mix

Many brands make the mistake of putting too many eggs in one basket and don’t expand into other channels when they scale to a certain point. Having a consistent media mix to fill your Top of Funnel efforts along with remarketing is a balance that takes testing and time.

Hawke Media worked with Algenist, a vegan skincare brand, to create a campaign that included paid search and paid social efforts to build up customer lifetime value. Here’s what worked:

• Paid search - They targeted new users for overall growth by A/B testing creative and campaign types such as display, discovery ads, YouTube, and Performance Max, which was brand new at the time. Google Ads resulted in a 69% increase in new users and a revenue growth of 22%. Google Ads became the top driver of traffic to the site. 
• Paid social - Algneist had only been in the social media advertising space for a few months before bringing Hawke Media on. They initially took a similar approach on paid social channels as in paid search. They also helped guide campaigns to leverage user-generated content and continued to expand platforms for the brand, launching a TikTok Advertising program. After one year, Algenist saw a 466% increase in revenue and a 12.5% increase in AOV from the paid social program.

TikTok, Snap, Meta, and Google all work hand in hand together and many brands cut channels thinking that they’re cutting fat when ROAs aren’t there. Unfortunately, we don’t have the type of attribution we used to have so looking at this can cut a brand's overall growth.

Looking at ROAs on one platform causes tunnel vision.

Today, the customer journey is more complicated as they jump from platform to platform.One of Hawke Media’s brands is spending over a million dollars a month and finally added TikTok to their mix – this rose their Meta retargeting ads from 2x ROAs to 5x ROAs in a span of a couple of weeks. 

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Content is King

Social Media requires lots and lots of content today.

Paid and organic media perform better when consistently being fed. Hawke Media recommends that brands have a combination of static images, high-production videos, and User Generated Content (UGC).

Many times, the UGC content performs the best across the board. Brands need to partner with their community and work with authentic creators in their space. Many consumers like to see a diverse customer base to feel like the brand is credible. Many times brands are looking for their influencers to drive sales but instead their main value is the type of content that they can create that is more on-trend and faster to produce.

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Keep in mind that different platforms require different trends and working with influencers long-term allows you to test, optimize, and trust the type of content they’re creating for you. Utilizing Disco’s community for advice and co-marketing efforts is a resource which can allow you to make the best decisions for your brand.

In addition to social media, affiliate content can also be very effective. Hawke Media worked with Algenist to create a content strategy that would increase brand recognition with new audiences. By placing affiliate content on discount sites and influential name-brand publications (InStyle, Harper’s Bazaar, WWD, and more) with “subscribe and save” style messaging, they secured over 70 top-tier placements for the brand. Algenist saw an increased average monthly revenue from affiliates by approximately 63%, producing up to $100,000 in affiliate revenue in a single month.

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First Party Data

Cookies are going away, this means the playbook to start a brand online is going to shift. 

• Audience building is going to be key as investing in advertising is going to require a longer runway and more investment. (This episode of the Limited Supply podcast by Nik Sharma and Moiz Ali does a deep dive into buying/building the right audiences)
• Partners such as Disco sharing insights and allowing brands to cross-sell are going to help a brand's tool belt. 

Additionally, retention marketing efforts such as email and SMS are going to allow brands to have first-hand access to this data and use this to drive revenue. Hawke Media worked with ZIIP Beauty to implement email marketing tactics to increase sales during the 2020 holiday season. To achieve this, they: 

• Leveraged first-part data to create specific execution lists
• Increased campaign cadence to weekly and utilized campaign resends
• Incorporated the following campaigns: Add to Cart, Sale Extended ‘From the Founder’, e-Gift Card, and Bundles

This led to a 164% increase in email revenue, 201% increase in annual revenue, and 158% increase in orders placed during the 2020 holiday season.

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Best Foot Forward

Hawke Media is a month-to-month a-la-carte option best suited to put a team together to fill your needs. They have a highly specialized team that runs everything from media buying, email marketing, SMS, affiliate, creative, SEO, content, and fractional CMO services. Their goal is to help brands find their biggest opportunity and grow from there with their outsourced capabilities. 

We’re excited to share that Disco has partnered with Hawke Media to offer complimentary analytics audits and competitive analysis to our network. Hawke Media’s experts want to take a magnifying glass to your business and help you uncover the growth opportunities you might be missing. They’ve grown over 3,500 brands, making them industry leaders in eCommerce and great detectives. Don’t wait, schedule your complimentary audits with Hawke today by clicking here!

If you’re interested in understanding how Disco’s audience insights and other functionalities can help you drive collective growth alongside like-minded merchants, schedule a demo with Disco to find out more.