If you work within the fashion, luxury or beauty industries, you’ll understand the power of influencers and how they have transformed the way in which brands connect with their target audiences. Influencers help them forge relationships with the consumer that they perhaps couldn’t alone, and in our latest edition of The State of Influencer Marketing, 76% of those surveyed stated that influencer campaigns are effective for building customer loyalty. With the multitude of messages and signals that we consume on a daily basis, brands are looking for specialized channels of communication that their audience trust and are more primed to listen to when it comes to their beauty marketing strategies.
Today we look at the specialized voice of the beauty influencer and how beauty brands can leverage YouTube content such as makeup tutorials to achieve different brand objectives.
In this article you’ll learn…
Why use YouTube Tutorials with Influencers?
Firstly, Instagram and YouTube are the go-to platforms of beauty influencers, but it is YouTube that is preferred by these creators for connecting with their audiences as they can communicate their personality via video content. The average engagement rate on YouTube is much higher than that of Instagram for all tiers of influencer.
YouTube makeup tutorials with established influencers are the perfect vehicle to drive conversation around a product and build a rapport with the audience. Depending on the initial intention behind a campaign, the correct tier of influencer should be selected; A Mega or All Star Influencer offers immediate diffusion within highly diverse audiences and communities. Whereas a Micro or Mid-Tier Influencer can help your brand reach more defined audiences that reach a certain niche and are more inclined to trust the opinion leader.
If you’re not too sure which influencer is the right one for your brand's beauty marketing strategy, our guide will show you which tier of influencer is perfect for your brand objective.
3 YouTube Tutorial Scenarios
There are many ways in which a brand can leverage the impact that beauty YouTubers have on their audiences. In this article, we look at 3 of the scenarios for which they can be used:
Launching a New Product Line
Makeup tutorials with influencers are incorporated into beauty brands' campaign strategies to immediately target a loyal and attentive audience. In early November 2019, Gen Z-centric makeup brand Glossier launched its first liquid eyeliner, the Glossier Pro Tip, and to do so they enlisted the help of Micro Influencers. The move was to hyper-target the initial impact of their campaign through trusted voices to their desired audience. Known as Glossier reps (people who are truly in love with the brand's products), the brand gifted the Pro Tip to these YouTube beauty influencers and, on the day of the launch, they each published their unique tutorials using the new product. Further still, the reps selected each command different segments within the same audience.
In tandem with YouTube tutorials, Glossier’s strategy included other authoritative Voices to drive awareness surrounding the new product. These included respected Media outlets, such as Refinery29, who have an audience consisting mainly of Gen Y, as well as Glossier's own Instagram account, through which they gave visibility to their reps through Pro Tip product videos. With 2.4M followers, the 3 videos published on Glossier’s Instagram feed garnered almost 800,000 views in just 3 days.
On the flip side, for the launch of Fenty Beauty by Rihanna in 2017, All Star Influencers were heavily incorporated into the launch strategy to connect with vast and diverse audiences. The All Star cast included beauty gurus Jeffree Star, Nikkie Tutorials, James Charles, Laura Lee and, of course, Rihanna herself. By leveraging them, the launch of Fenty Beauty by Rihanna reached astounding numbers of YouTube users effectively and built notoriety rapidly. You can read more about Fenty Beauty by Rihanna in our series #BBMoment and learn about the brand’s winning strategies.
Viral Product Launch
Viral beauty product launches rely on a marketing strategy of the same style, and who better to turn to than influencers? Generally, a viral product is designed to garner the attention of a certain target audience and encourage them to share their own experience with the product. A perfect example of this is GlamGlow’s range of Gravitymud face masks and, more specifically, the glitter edition that, still to this day, can be seen on social media. As well as utilizing Instagram, during the 4 month launch period, the brand used beauty YouTubers to ramp up the anticipation behind the product.
The aforementioned Jeffree Star helped drive the campaign’s success by sharing a video tutorial of him using it and enjoying the ‘viral’ side of the product. Similar content was shared on other social channels as the launch date neared. When the product finally hit the shops, consumers wanted to share their experience of the product on their own YouTube channels and feeds.
Generating Brand Awareness
One of the top reasons that brands turn to influencer-driven YouTube makeup tutorials as part of their beauty marketing strategy is the guaranteed impact that it offers. Apart from the scenarios highlighted above, brands also leverage the power of influencers to talk about their products in a variety of ways. One of these is the YouTuber product roundup, whether it be must-have videos, monthly favorites or season-inspired looks, a brand can opt to become part of a trusted YouTubers recommendations and generate brand awareness via a softer approach.
Another popular trend is celebrity makeup artists doing the makeup of All Star beauty influencers. An example is Nikki Tutorials’ series, XX Does My Makeup, which in one episode sees her share the screen with Lady Gaga’s makeup artist Sarah Tanno among others. Whilst they discuss the world of makeup, the guest is talking about the products being used and the story behind them. In this case, it was Marc Jacobs Beauty. The combination of relaxed conversation, trusted influencer, and of the artist behind a globally recognized celebrity’s makeup creates a unique scenario from which a brand can generate crucial brand awareness.
These are just 3 scenarios for which a beauty brand can incorporate YouTube tutorials with influencers as part of their marketing strategies.
To Summarize:
- For launching new lines by leveraging the correct influencers, a campaign can reach hyper-targeted, loyal audiences, or wider communities that are more varied.
- Viral product launches need content with influencers that incites an emotional response from the audience that in turn makes them want to talk about it on their own social channels. The sooner the generation of demand, the stronger the impact when launched.
- Generating brand awareness can be driven by different tutorial formats and even by a mix of influencers in the same video to further instill fidelity in the product.
Want to learn how you can improve your beauty marketing strategy, and get key insights into the industry and the top performers? Then click here.
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By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
