What are the Effects of Social Media on the Beauty Industry?

What are the Effects of Social Media on the Beauty Industry? – Social media is one of the most common tools to include in a beauty marketing strategy, thanks to the rise of image-sharing platforms like Instagram. However, in what ways has social media changed beauty marketing that makes it such a good thing to include in marketing strategies?

Social media is vital for beauty marketing

With the vast majority of consumers finding out more about beauty products on social media, no beauty brand can afford to not be using it in their marketing strategies. However, why does social media play such a key role? The image below shows a selection of statistics that show that parts of social media marketing, like influencers and guides, are vital parts of the purchasing process for most consumers.

Caption: Image showing statistics for the beauty industry and social media

User-generated content

One of social media’s biggest impacts on the beauty industry has been through the innovative ways it has allowed businesses to market products. Instead of just placing an advert in a magazine, beauty brands can use user-generated content (UGC) to show the different looks being created with their products. This shows potential customers how those products can be used to create effects that might apply to them, rather than images of celebrities who’ve had a professional makeup artist do their makeup for a photoshoot for an advert.

Influencers

Another new way of marketing products that social media has given to brands is influencer marketing. Many users visit influencers’ pages and watch their videos to find out which brands and products they recommend, and often prefer smaller influencers to the large influencers with millions of followers. This is due to the fact that smaller influencers are more likely to respond to questions and comments than big influencers like Kim Kardashian. Consumers also prefer smaller influencers because they seem more authentic, with the ones who give the most honest reviews having the most trust.

Brands engage the audience more

Engaging with your audience has never been easier thanks to social media, and beauty brands all over the world are creating communities on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook due to their engagement with their audience. These communities are full of people who are engaged with the brand and want to share their thoughts and experiences, giving beauty brands more UGC to work with and chances to show that they care about the community around their products.

Create a narrative

Social media also allows beauty brands to create their own narrative about their products. A good example of this was Fenty’s narrative of having makeup for every skin tone, touching on a part of the beauty industry that had seemingly ignored women of colour for decades, and altering the beauty standards. Using social media to establish a narrative for your beauty brand is a great way to make it stand out and to help it appeal to the right audience.

Talk about important topics

Social media allows brands to engage on topics that are important to their audiences, like beauty standards or sustainability. This shows that the beauty brands share their audience’s concerns, and can provide them with opportunities to address those concerns in their posts.

Find reviews

Social media is a great place to find reviews for your products – whether that’s from influencers or other consumers. You can share these and show what people think of your product, or even find things that people didn’t like and think about how you might address these concerns in the future.

Summary

Social media has had a profound impact on the beauty industry, giving it new ways to market products and reach new people. It has also allowed it to engage with its audience on a variety of levels, from influencers to discussions of topics that are important to its audience. One of the most important developments in social media marketing for beauty is user-generated content, which allows beauty brands to tear down the barriers of beauty standards and show what their products can do at the same time.