Marketing with Technology - a boon for Beauty Brands

Beauty brands face quite a challenge in today’s multi-channel world inhabited by digitally evolved customers. The demand for large amounts of content suitable for various channels and which will increase customer engagement can be overwhelming for brands.

A customer today, engages with many pieces of content about a product before they buy. They look for information about the product in formats that are sophisticated and visually appealing. Apart from this, they seek personalized content that they can respond to and learn from.

New channels and touch-points are born in keeping with these new demands, so now voice or augmented and virtual reality content that enables a dialogue between customer and brand, is common.

Things have definitely changed over the last couple of years. There is an increase in online activity, social channels and ecommerce since the pandemic. The customer demands a personalized engagement regardless of the channel they use – and they do jump channels! Their customer journey is never linear. And with brands being present in various countries across the globe, there needs to be contextualized content that resonates with each geographical region.

In this context, beauty brands can struggle. On one hand the customer needs are constantly changing and evolving. On the other hand, are new channels that are unique and which require a different kind of content, are popping up! To handle this, beauty brands need to have a strong omni-channel strategy in place along with a mechanism to generate large amounts of varied content.

Let’s take the example of L’Oreal.

L’Oreal is a beauty brand with ecommerce capabilities and 400 websites. Some years ago, it began to digitize its presence in the market – enhancing ecommerce capabilities and even making in-person interactions, more digital. It worked with Sitecore to set up a digital factory that only concentrated on creating a consistent brand image and digital assets for each of its billion customers across the globe, every single day.

And L’Oreal uses technology to engage with customers effectively based on where they are located.

The main lesson one can take away from what L’Oreal is doing is the fact that they have made customers the center of their business strategy. Regardless of the product offered, the customer is the hero – not the product itself. A shift like that will change everything else.

Brands will then tailor everything they offer and do, around the customer. It doesn’t matter what the channel is, everything will be crafted around ensuring that the customer’s expectations are met.

That is a very important lesson for any brand – whether it is a beauty brand or otherwise.

The next is the fact that technology can be a complete game-changer. With so many advancements in technology like virtual reality and AI, creating great customer experiences and conveniences for them, is now a possibility. With all the data that is available about customers (because they have been interacting with the brand online and are comfortable sharing information if it means that they will get something in return), one can craft highly-personalized meaningful experiences for them.

Technology can enable virtual try-ons – which takes away guess-work from the equation to a large extent. Customers know what they want and they are usually more informed and have a better idea about what they are purchasing. This cuts down on returns to a large extent. And equipping beauty advisors in stores with devices that can track what is all the rage on TikTok, can help them engage with customers when they walk in to a store.

The key is to be able to strategize and use technology to engage with a customer who expects a seamless “phygital” experience with the brand, no matter what.