Defining Clean Beauty
Before we dive into marketing strategies for products with clean ingredients, we’d like to define the parameters for a clean beauty brand.
A clean beauty brand refers to a makeup, fragrance, skincare or hair care company that prioritizes the use of natural, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly ingredients in its products. Clean beauty brands are committed to transparency, avoiding harmful chemicals, synthetic fragrances, and potentially hazardous substances commonly found in traditional beauty products. These brands often emphasize ethical and sustainable practices, such as cruelty-free testing and eco-friendly packaging. Key characteristics of a clean beauty brand include:
1. **Natural Ingredients:** Clean beauty brands focus on using natural and organic ingredients, sourced responsibly to create products that promote skin health without relying on synthetic chemicals.
2. **Transparency:** Clean beauty brands are transparent about their formulations, providing detailed information about ingredients and avoiding the use of hidden or undisclosed substances.
3. **Free from Harmful Chemicals:** These brands avoid using common harmful ingredients such as parabens, sulfates, phthalates, and artificial fragrances, which are often associated with adverse health effects.
4. **Cruelty-Free Practices:** Clean beauty brands are committed to cruelty-free testing, ensuring that their products are not tested on animals at any stage of development.
5. **Sustainability:** Many clean beauty brands prioritize sustainable practices, including eco-friendly packaging, ethical sourcing of ingredients, and reducing their overall environmental impact.
6. **No Greenwashing:** Authentic clean beauty brands avoid “greenwashing,” which involves misleading marketing tactics that may falsely claim a product is more environmentally friendly or natural than it actually is.
As the demand for clean beauty continues to grow, these brands play a significant role in reshaping the beauty industry towards a more conscious and sustainable future.
How to Market A Clean Beauty Brand
Define Your Brand
The core of your marketing strategy needs to focus on the brand identity. A marketer needs to market a clean beauty brand by starting with clearly defining the brand’s mission, purpose, person and the all-encompassing brand identity. A strong brand identity creates a foundation for effective marketing.
Balance Clean Ingredients and Efficacious Product Messaging
While most clean beauty brands believe the whole marketing focus should be on the clean ingredients, we strongly suggest balancing both the clean ingredients with the products’ efficacy. While more people agree clean products work just as well, and if not better than conventional products, it’s imperative to show the clinical results, the before and after content, consumer reviews, and additional key content to prove the products deliver the promised results.
Education
If a consumer knows how to use a product and if it’s seamless to incorporate into their morning and evening routines, the product is more likely to be used. And therefore, this creates a replenishment product, meaning the consumer will repurchase the product with little to no doubt once they run out of the product.
How-to content is a key component of marketing a clean beauty brand, as it highlights how to apply skincare, how to optimize a makeup product and other key points of difference for the product.
Sustainable Packaging and Distribution
Packaging and distribution is an important aspect of marketing your clean beauty products. Consumers are more knowledgeable than ever and many research the materials used for the primary and secondary packaging, as well as the sources of manufacturing and distribution. We advise working with sustainable packaging experts to review options with bamboo, glass, recyclable materials and additional sustainable packaging materials available.
Distribution is a rising topic of awareness for consumers. A beauty brand can tell a stronger clean beauty brand story with more environmentally friendly distribution and manufacturing processes.
SEO Strategies for Clean Beauty Brands
Conduct thorough keyword research to identify the most relevant terms for your clean beauty brand. Focus on keywords like “clean beauty products,” “natural skincare,” “talc-free powders” and “cruelty-free cosmetics.” Integrate these keywords seamlessly into your content to improve search engine rankings.
SEO content is used in product page description, blog posts, Instagram captions, and keywords added to TikTok videos. It’s important to avoid using words just because they have large search volumes. Instead, use keywords that match your clean beauty products’ descriptions. For example, avoid using “jojoba oil moisturizer” if the primary ingredient in the moisturizer is rose-hip oil. Google scans website pages to make sure the search engine results page has the coordinating information that’s linking to the keyword.
Optimize Your E-Commerce Website
Focus on enhancing the user experience and search engine visibility. Begin with thorough keyword research, integrating relevant terms throughout the site that consumers will organically type into google when searching for new, clean products. Utilize these keywords on product page copy, within blog posts and in H1 headers.
Clearly communicate the brand’s commitment to clean ingredients on the homepage and landing pages, and optimize product page descriptions with detailed information and high-quality images. A product page with swatches, ingredient visuals, product packaging details, and models wearing or using the product will increase conversion at point of sale.
Ensure mobile optimization, fast loading speed, and user-friendly navigation for a seamless experience. Develop educational content, showcase customer reviews, share before and afters, and emphasize trust through certifications and awards. Secure the website with HTTPS, encourage newsletter signups, and integrate social media for broader engagement. Prioritize accessibility to cater to diverse users. Continuously take time to update the website and further optimize pages after running A-B tests..
Photo and Video Content
Produce a library of photo and video content to highlight the clean ingredients, display the product in use, show before and afters, style the products for a 16×9 homepage banner home page image, test different video compositions for landing pages, capture product details, swatches and the products on models to optimize e-commerce product pages, and leverage this content as a core component of the brand’s social media strategy.
Brands create content in house, partner with content creators, and hire creative agencies and marketing agencies to produce content.
Leverage Social Media
Social media platforms are powerful channels to directly connect with consumers and to essentially create digital storefronts. It’s important to create content that is on-brand and aligns with your brand’s identity, and it’s imperative to understand what is currently working on social media. We’re not suggesting a beauty brand to follow every new trend on the internet. But rather, it’s important to gauge what’s driving likes, shares, brings new followers, and which forms of content lead to lower levels of engagement.
Leverage social listening tools to collect data and efficiently and effectively analyze what content combinations are driving engagement, building awareness and driving conversions.
Build a Powerful Community
A brand is only as powerful as its community. Through events, social media, giveaways, reward programs, newsletters, merchandise and additional activations, bring consumers together and encourage the consumers to feel proud to buy the brand’s products.
Communities typically revolve around the brand’s products, values, and ethos, creating a sense of belonging among its customers. Beauty brand communities can take various forms, including online forums, social media groups, or even in-person events. Members of these communities often discuss product recommendations, share beauty tips, and participate in conversations related to the brand’s offerings. These communities play a crucial role in fostering brand loyalty, providing a platform for customers to connect, and allowing the brand to directly engage with its audience.
Glossier is a great example of a powerful community. The team gifts Glossier branded totes with orders, and consumers use the totes for their gym clothes and grocery shopping to show off their excitement and alignment with the brand. This is free marketing and incredible publicity for the brand, as this creates a walking billboard effect.
Influencer Collaborations
An influencer collaboration to market a clean beauty brand involves partnering with influencers who share a genuine alignment with the brand’s values of natural, non-toxic, safe, and environmentally conscious beauty. These collaborations rely on the influencer’s authenticity, credibility, and engaged following, ensuring that their audience trusts their recommendations.
A brand partners with influencers to create educational content to inform their followers about the benefits of clean beauty, showcasing specific products and personal experiences. Transparency is maintained through clear disclosure of the collaboration, fostering trust among the audience. The collaboration allows for creative freedom, enabling influencers to authentically integrate the clean beauty products into their content.
Additionally, the promotion often emphasizes the brand’s sustainability practices, such as eco-friendly packaging and explains the details of the clean ingredients.
To measure the success of the campaign, analyze the brand awareness, brand engagement and sales during the campaign to determine if the partnership drove an increase in any or all 3 of these metrics.
Longer partnerships, rather than one off sponsored posts, quite often drive stronger results
Partner with Creators
Creators are individuals who create content for their own social media profile, as well as for brands to leverage their photo, videos, text and graphics on the brand’s social media profile. Social media content creators typically have a niche or theme, and they leverage their creativity, humor, storytelling or knowledge within a specific space to attract and retain followers. Creators also produce content for brands for a source of income.
There are a few methods to work with creators. First, a clean beauty brand can reach out to a creator to commission content for the brand to post on their social media platforms and additional marketing channels. Second, a brand can pay a content creator to produce content to share on the creator’s channel to build brand awareness. Third, a brand can gift a creator with products in hopes the creator will share photos or videos using the product, or even a tutorial on the positive aspects of the product.
Email Marketing Strategies
Create a robust email marketing strategy by segmenting your audience and implementing a compelling welcome series. Provide educational content, announce product launches strategically, and showcase customer reviews to build trust. Offer exclusive promotions, personalized recommendations, and include interactive elements for increased engagement. Integrate loyalty programs, align campaigns with seasons and holidays, and implement re-engagement tactics. Ensure mobile optimization, conduct A/B testing, and cross-promote on social media. Regularly measure and analyze campaign performance to refine strategies and enhance future campaigns, fostering customer loyalty and driving sales.
Paid Media and Targeted Ads
Unlike earned or owned media, which involve organic exposure or owned channels (like a company’s website or social media profiles), paid media involves a financial investment to boost visibility. This can include various forms such as display ads, sponsored social media posts, paid search engine advertising, influencer collaborations, and more.
An example of paid media in the clean beauty industry is placing an ad on Byride.com to reach a very targeted group of beauty consumers, or creating a google display ad to appear when people search for specific keywords on google.
Targeting ads, on the other hand, refers to the practice of directing advertising efforts towards a specific audience based on certain characteristics, behaviors, or demographics. Targeted ads aim to reach individuals who are more likely to be interested in the products or services being promoted. This targeting can be achieved through various parameters, including age, gender, location, interests, online behavior, and more. By using targeted advertising, businesses can maximize the efficiency of their marketing budget by reaching the most relevant audience for their offerings. This approach helps increase the chances of engagement, conversion, and return on investment (ROI).
Examples of targeted ads for clean beauty brands include serving targeted ads to consumers searching for Detox Market, non-toxic skincare, and silicone-free eyeliner. This shows a consumer is most likely interested in clean beauty products based on their recent search practices.
Conclusion
Effectively marketing your clean beauty brand requires a multifaceted approach that activates many marketing levers and combines authenticity, creativity, and strategic planning. By implementing SEO-optimized strategies, producing engaging content, building strong communities, and keeping direct connection with customers, a brand can broaden its reach, increase brand loyalty, and solidify its position in the competitive clean beauty market. As the demand for clean beauty products continues to rise, this comprehensive guide will empower your brand to thrive in an ever-transforming industry.