2 Digital Marketing Trends That Are Taking Over The Health & Beauty Industry

Digital Marketing Trends are advancing at a tremendous rate, it feels like only yesterday that we were first introduced to Facebook and Twitter which opened us up to a new world of technology.
Now almost 15 years later we have a plethora of different social media platforms each with diverse features suited to different business sectors.  With all these new features advancing over the years organisations are able to attract new customers by implementing great digital marketing strategies.  One of the business sectors that has proven to take a strong lead in changing the way they interact with consumers is the health and beauty niche sector.
Our health and beauty social media experts discuss below two important digital marketing trends that you should be focusing on if you are in the health and beauty industry:

1. Video Marketing & Influencers

   Brands should already be optimising the use of video in their marketing strategy.  Any good social media marketer will understand that adding video content to your marketing campaign can be a very powerful & effective tool – so what this itself is already old news!
   So what’s changed?
   Video Marketing has become so increasingly popular that it is almost near on impossible to scroll through your social media channels without seeing a hundred videos.
   Almost 5 Billion YouTube videos are watched everyday around the world, along with 100 Million hours worth of video footage on Facebook.  The rise of Beauty influencers is truly revolutionising the retail sector in relation to digital marketing.
   Years ago adverts with models and glossy magazine covers were deemed unrealistic and put many consumers off purchasing.  Beauty consumers purchasing decisions are now heavily influenced by their desire to see what specific products look like on ‘real people’.  Many Beauty Influencers are adopting video tutorials to showcase products as well as, perhaps more importantly, how to use them.  It is safe to say sales and instant purchasing decisions have increased significantly mainly because of this.
   Instagram has also played a leading role in consumer purchasing decisions with their introduction of Instagram Stories and most recently Instagram Shopping.  Instagram stories was a great new feature added recently which allows users to curate a slideshow with multiple photos and videos taken throughout the day.  Instagram Shopping on the other hand, is a feature that allows businesses the opportunity to showcase their products and create a direct link to purchase.  Instagram Shopping also allows you tag up to 5 products per post which gives a detailed description of the item, the price of the item and a direct link to the website to purchase – it is essentially a social media marketer’s dream.
   With tools like this brands are understandably structurally changing their digital marketing strategy and using this as well as influencers to their advantage, and more so why wouldn’t you?
   If you are in the health and beauty niche, you really need to be focusing much of your social media management into these points as soon as possible.

2. Augmented Reality & Virtual Experiences

   Augmented Reality (AR) is starting to take over the world by storm, businesses are slowly realising the contributions and benefits it has to them.
   Technology is evolving at a fast pace and it’s time for businesses to jump on the band wagon to get ahead or risk being left behind.  Opportunities for the health and beauty industry are rising rapidly with different features available to them, starting with, but by no means limited to, virtual website experiences.
   Health and beauty heavyweight Sephora introduced a virtual artist on their website which allows users to have an interactive experience giving them the opportunity to try on different shades of products with the obvious end goal of pushing the user to a purchasing decision.  This type of feature is only the start to virtual experiences and is a great way to change your digital marketing strategy.  Anyone reading this who has a product within the health and beauty industry can see how huge this could be for their sales.
   Other beauty brands are already becoming pivotal key players and have started to embrace augmented reality in their digital marketing strategy with the aim of trying to mimic the application of makeup.  Smashbox for one, was one of the first beauty brands to implement AR (Augmented Reality) into their digital marketing strategy by introducing an eye tracking technology.  This technology allows them to identify a users eye movement towards certain products to track whether there is a positive or negative interest, thus allowing Smashbox to tailor their marketing strategy towards that user and drive purchasing decisions.  After 2 months of using this technology Smashbox confirmed they saw a huge 27% increase in overall conversions.
   L’Oreal is another Powerful beauty brand that has dedicated time and research into AR focused on maintaining beauty aspirations and sustainability.  They recently introduced the ‘L’Oreal Beauty Lab’ in their New York HQ.  So what is the ‘Beauty Lab’? It is a conference room kitted out with a high resolution (4k) Virtual Reality screen along with VR glasses.  This concept is a very thorough and thought out process aimed at defining the best methodology behind in-store layouts.  The aim is to use this immersive virtual technology to work with retail partners to work out true feelings towards store layouts in turn improving current inadequacies and as well as improved product merchandising.  This solution has had a great impact allowing new ideas and inefficiencies to rolled out at a much faster pace, thus reducing unnecessary costs and ultimately increasing sales.

The only question left is with these insights in mind how are you going to implement these digital marketing strategies into your campaign?
As always our health and beauty niche experts can help you plan or implement your social media strategy to maximise on new technology such as this.  Feel free to get in contact with us or take a look at our social media management packages to get your health and beauty company to the next level using the UK’s number one social media agency.