The beauty industry is a large and rapidly growing market. According to forecasts by statista.com, around 20% of sales will come from online channels.
That’s why building a solid marketing strategy will help you find partners and clients, as well as automate the processes of analysis and creating a marketing budget.
Order a personalized consultation for your beauty business today!
Table of Content
- Features of the Beauty Business
- How to Find Promotion Ideas for a Beauty Business
- What Works Best in a Marketing Strategy for Promoting Beauty Businesses
- Exhibitions and Industry Events
- Tips for Beauty Businesses
- Case Studies
About the Author
Mykola (Nick) Lukashuk has been in marketing since 2013 and has been the director of Marketing Link agency since 2017. Prior to that, he held leadership positions in the industry. Mykola is a certified specialist in Google, Microsoft, and Meta platforms, and also teaches marketing courses approved by the Ministry of Education. His portfolio includes successful projects from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Ukraine.
Features of the Beauty Business
The beauty market stands out due to its rapid shifts in trends.
New players, even with great products, often struggle to reach large corporate clients. Established players are more cautious about trying new offerings because they already have long-term partners.
For new service providers in the beauty sector, it’s challenging to offer the necessary personalization, individual approach, and to choose the right marketing strategy.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP), Product, and Pricing
Building these three core elements requires a strategy that is continually updated with best practices and marketing steps.
Best Practices:
- Create a compelling USP that makes your beauty business stand out.
- Maintain the quality of your product or service, ensuring it meets market demands.
- Develop a pricing strategy with competitive and profitable prices that consider production costs or service fees, as well as market demand.
Marketing Steps:
- Collect common customer questions and address them not only in sales scripts but also on your website, in FAQ sections, and on social media, thus building a knowledge base.
- Map out customer journeys by consistently putting yourself in the client’s shoes. Think about how they would search for your business, who else they would find in search results or on relevant platforms, and what information might be missing. Use these insights to inform your marketing strategy.
How to Find Promotion Ideas for a Beauty Business
Analyze your competitors and discover creative ideas:
- Analyze traffic using SimilarWeb: assess the volume and traffic channels of your competitors.
- Check boosted posts, creatives, and competitor ads in the Meta Ad Library.
- Identify competitors’ organic and paid keywords using tools like SerpStat, Ahrefs, or Semrush.
- Look up competitors’ ad keywords in oogle Ads Planner.
What works best in a marketing strategy for promoting beauty industry
A comprehensive strategy in 2024 includes:
- Search Ads
- Targeted advertising on social media
- SEO promotion
At first glance, all the tools are classic, but they have undergone important changes.
Search Ads
Search advertising fits all beauty businesses B2C, B2B. Our team has gathered tips on how to advertise new products and those with existing demand.
Keyword Segmentation
Segment your keywords and ads strategy.
For services or consultations in Google Ads, launch the following campaigns:
- Search campaigns and search remarketing;
- Display campaigns, especially remarketing (if Google classifies beauty as “medical,” use similar audiences);
- Video ads.
For ecommerce in Google Ads, in addition to the above, consider launching:
- Google Standard Shopping;
- Performance Max campaigns;
- Dynamic remarketing.
Don’t forget to consistently refine your campaigns based on performance data.
Paid Social
Regularly update your content on social media and within your targeting strategy. For the beauty industry, it’s a necessity.
Meta Ads for B2B
In Meta Ads for B2B, you should launch:
- Lead ads using Instant Forms (with automatic forwarding to email or directly to the CRM for the manager);
- Conversion ads driving traffic to your website.
Test several audience segments simultaneously. If the cost per lead from Instant Forms differs by more than 30% compared to website conversions, choose the better-performing campaign type.
Also, test running ads only during business hours, and separately test mobile vs desktop devices.
Meta Ads for B2C
In B2C, Meta Ads might not be cost-effective for all beauty businesses. On average, the cost per click is higher than in search networks, and the conversion rate is lower. Nevertheless, we recommend keeping remarketing active.
For ecommerce, where purchases happen directly and there are higher-margin product categories, launch:
- Catalog Sales;
- Advantage Catalog Sales.
For services, first assess the acceptable cost of customer acquisition, launch test campaigns, check the quality of leads and conversion rates, and only then scale up.
LinkedIn Ads
Launch LinkedIn Ads targeting markets in Europe, the USA, and Canada, as well as specific user roles related to export.
What you can do with LinkedIn Ads:
- Target employees of specific companies;
- Target employees holding specific job titles;
- Combine targeting by company and job title;
- Cost per click (CPC) ranges from $2 to $5-10, depending on the job title and region.
Pinterest Ads
Pinterest is suitable for advertising in the US and Canadian markets.
- Launch remarketing campaigns for brand awareness.
- Consider what topics or subreddits your target audience might follow, and test ads within those spaces.
- Make sure to allocate a sufficient burn rate for sampling, aiming for at least 500 clicks.
SEO
SEO in 2024 still has its pros and cons, but they have changed a bit.
Yes: Some users still trust organic results more. | But: Google has updated EEAT factors, and now, besides useful information, it must be trustworthy, so you need to indicate authorship, certifications, and set up the technical part: micro-markups, interlinking, etc. |
Yes: SEO works long-term, and over 2+ years, the cost of attracting a customer becomes cheaper than in search ads. | But: New sites in competitive areas need 1-2 years to see significant traffic growth. |
Yes: Linkbuilding works, specifically regular posting of PR articles, increases brand recognition overall. | But: Google has set clear distinctions for placement platforms, considering geo, audience, and the weight of the donor domain, making platform selection harder. |
Yes: Technical SEO work, especially speed, positively impacts user conversion from all channels. | But: There may be additional costs: hiring developers, paid services like CloudFlare, better hosting. |
Yes: SEO content work positively impacts the quality score of the target page, and search ads work more effectively. | But: ROI takes significantly longer compared to ads. |
SEO Tips
- Plan your SEO work as soon as your ads start working and bring in customers. Ads alone won’t bring organic traffic, although they can add bonuses in the form of behavioral factors.
- Hire SEO specialists in advance when developing a new site. Additional tasks for developers at the development stage are completed faster and cheaper, plus you reduce the risk of site blocking.
Exhibitions, trade fairs
Exhibitions and trade fairs are an important part of an online marketing strategy.
Preparing for an Exhibition in a Digital Strategy
Notify your target audience about the event in advance: on social media, in the News section on your website, in remarketing. This will allow visitors planning or wanting to interact with you in a less formal setting to discuss necessary details or terms.
Update information after the exhibition in the same channels: how the exhibition went, who participated, especially if you had a booth – that’s a double success, what news you learned and what you will implement, congratulate new partners.
Organize interaction between online marketing specialists and the sales department.
Interaction of Marketing with the Sales Department
Organize interaction between online marketing specialists and the sales department.
For example, after a successful exhibition, you have 1000 contacts in the form of business cards or forms with phone numbers and emails.
You can use this contact base beyond email newsletters and calls:
- as an audience in Google Ads;
- as an audience in Meta Ads.
This also applies to existing contact bases.
Apply the rule of more than seven touches, and before the sales department calls the target contact, show them more ads, so the contact:
- Remembers you from the exhibition or just from the website.
- Saw the booklet, stand, and other promo material.
- Received an email.
- Received a text message.
- Saw media ads through Google (for example, while reading Elle or news sites—essentially any site that has Google AdSense code and displays Google display ads, so your ad can reach users on practically every website, each touchpoint being a new interaction).
- Saw ads on Facebook.
- Saw ads on Instagram.
- Saw ads on Meta Audience Network (includes more than 55,000 sites or networks, including TikTok).
- The sales department will be calling an already warmed-up contact, and the conversion to a successful sale increases.
Ads based on the database work effectively when there are more than 1000+ contacts in the audience. If there are fewer than 50 contacts after the exhibition, that’s okay too; you can have a general audience for exhibitions with the message—”met at the exhibition,” without specifying a particular event.
Keep in the audience and update:
- the list of all contacts obtained through the website;
- separate lists for separate contact bases, which you accessed through partners, etc.;
- a separate list of leads from CRM, who have gone through the first stages of the funnel, are clearly target, but have not yet purchased a product or service;
- A separate list of current clients to whom you can upsell and remind about the need for repeat purchases, etc.
Tips for Beauty Businesses
Tips for B2C beauty
— For beauty services, contextual advertising and social media targeting work best.
— For beauty e-commerce, it’s worth investing in SEO, while for beauty services, focus on Local SEO.
— Don’t forget about remarketing chains to boost repeat sales (e.g., if someone submitted a request or interacted with CTA elements over the past year but hasn’t visited the site in the last 30 days, re-engage them).
Tips for B2B beauty
— In social networks, you can target admins of pages with specific industry interests.
— You can enhance direct interaction by adding a list of phone numbers and emails as an audience in Google Ads or Meta Ads, increasing the efficiency of your campaigns.
Cases
Marketing Link specializes in advertising and promoting beauty businesses, with successful experience in online marketing for over 40 businesses, including:
- From coconut oil to active ingredients, antimicrobial components, and other natural raw materials for B2B.
- From Ukrainian B2B e-commerce to launching products in 7 new European countries.
- From local beauty businesses to relocation and opening several international salons.
Case Study #1: Equipment and Cosmetics Supplier for Beauty
Our client is the owner of an online store offering professional equipment and cosmetics for hair, face, and body. They are the exclusive distributor of brands from Italy and France in Ukraine.
- Service: Google Ads
- Region: Ukraine
Reduced cost per lead
by 47%
Increased leads
by 600%
The in-house marketer initially handled Google Ads with a single Performance Max campaign, without interests or segmentation, while also managing SMM and targeting. We left social media management to the marketer and focused on implementing a structured optimization process for Google Ads.
We revamped the campaign structure in Google Ads, adding all product types, remarketing, as well as separate display and video campaigns targeting beauty interests. Instead of one campaign, we now run an average of 15-20 campaigns depending on the month and seasonal factors. Over three years, the marketing budget increased fivefold.
Results of working with us:
- Increased profitability from Google Ads sales, boosting ROAS from 425% to 625%.
- Leads grew 7x, while the marketing budget increased 5x.
Case Study #2: Tattoo Studio in Prague and Berlin
Our client has been in the tattoo and permanent makeup industry for over 5 years. In 2022, they opened two new salons in Prague and Berlin.
- Service: Google Ads
Region: Czech Republic, Germany
Increased leads from Google Ads
by 1366% monthly.
Reduced cost per lead (CPL)
by 30%.
We started working together in 2022 with the primary goal of increasing leads.
Before our involvement, the client was running their own ads in Prague, generating 10-14 inquiries per month. Advertising for the Berlin location had been postponed, as they were relying solely on Google Ads and the cost-per-acquisition wasn’t adding up.
We revamped the campaign structure, expanded keyword targeting, and localized segmentation. By the second month, with the same budget, we achieved 22 inquiries in the Czech Republic and added Germany to the mix. In the first months, the CPL was 80% lower than before, but as the demand for the salon was insufficient, we adopted a strategy of consciously overpaying per click to advertise to a colder audience through display ads while keeping both salons fully booked.
After two years of ongoing collaboration, we now generate 176 inquiries per month across both locations, capturing maximum demand and supplementing with display ads to meet our goals.
Results of working with us:
- Increased monthly inquiries from Google Ads by 1366%.
- Reduced CPL by 30%.
Case Study #3: Natural Cosmetics Manufacturer
Our client has been producing natural cosmetics for over 10 years, specializing in products for the body, face, and hair.
- Service: Google Ads
- Region: Ukraine
Increased leads Google Ads
by 247% monthly
Achieved an average ROAS
of 800%
The primary goal was to maintain a ROAS of 400%+ (the account we took over had a ROAS of 230%).
Previously, the account was managed by an in-house marketer, and there had been a pause in advertising. When ads were resumed, they were left unattended, resulting in a drop in ROAS from 500%+ to 230% in just three months without oversight.
We started by disabling automatic recommendations, removing broad keywords from search campaigns (focusing on exact and phrase matches), regrouping Google Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, and identifying weak spots, shutting down unprofitable campaigns. We reached the target ROAS by the second month of collaboration, and by the fourth month, we increased ROAS to 800%.
Besides our online ads, the client also operates offline stores, works with retail chains, and runs ads on aggregator platforms, so scalability has its limits. We continually monitor the performance to ensure every dollar spent delivers returns.
Results of working with us:
- Achieved an average ROAS of 800%.
- Improved profitability by 247%.
Case Study #4: Beauty Salon in NYC
Our client has been running a beauty salon in New York City for over 2 years, specializing in nail services.
- Service: Google Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram Ads targeting)
- Region: NYC, USA
Increased leads Google Ads
by 1700% monthly
Increased the ad budget
by 300% monthly
We started working together in 2021, with the main goal of scaling results while maintaining a CPL cap of $100 (with manicure services priced at $60-$75 and an LTV of over 10 months, plus upselling of other services, this was profitable). We began with Google Ads, and once we maximized performance, we added Meta Ads.
Before we took over, the salon’s Google Ads were managed by a social media specialist, with decent results (10 inquiries from 733 clicks). However, scaling was challenging due to competition, and the ads only performed efficiently with a budget of up to $1,000 per month. Attempts to increase the budget to $2,000-$3,000 yielded more expensive leads.
We started by restructuring the account, splitting the Nails category into 5 separate campaigns instead of one, disabling automatic optimizations, setting up search remarketing, and refining keyword targeting.
After 18 months of collaboration, we achieved 180 inquiries from 3,856 clicks, reduced CPC through SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Group) strategies and continuous optimization, and further expanded the reach through Meta Ads.
Results of working with us:
- Increased monthly inquiries from Google Ads by 1700% while increasing the ad budget by 300%.
- Reduced CPL by 35% through micro-segmentation and continuous optimization.