The social media is self-projecting platform in its core but it has widened its scope so rapidly that it is now affecting major chunk of human population across the globe encompassing many fields of human endeavour as it has broken the shackles of traditional and orthodox methods of developing contacts with the people.
Social media since its inception almost a decade ago has influenced all the sectors of the industry and beauty industry has no exception in this regard. If carefully analyzed, social media’s effects on the beauty industry are more profound and pervasive than other industries. Social media has brought innovations and new ideas which has broken the barriers of old marketing methodology because it has enabled the beauty industry to develop real time and direct approach to the wide range of consumers. With its visual effects, videos, clips on social media, the beauty products become more attractive and eye-catching for the millennials and particularly for the Generation.
PARADIGM SHIFT IN MARKETING
The social media opens up new avenues for the beauty industry with regard to marketing strategy. The social media influencers are playing a key role in promoting the beauty products. The end users particularly the young ones explore the social media to find the lines of the cosmetics. The feed may be uploaded by the friends, influencers or the brands so the beauty content is aplenty on the social media. The selfie phenomenon has flooded the Instagram as the people, to satiate their desire to show themselves off, appear on the Instagram with modern haircut, beard style and beauty presentation. With over 500 million entries, the hashtag featuring beauty overwhelms Instagram as over 85 percent of the top 200 beauty videos on YouTube are uploaded by the users not by the brands.
Moreover, the reviews, suggestions and advice given by the consumers and friends are more trustworthy than by the brands. The photos, videos and clips uploaded by the consumers have real impact on the other users as they trust a user giving tips and revealing beauty secrets more than the brands as marketing strategy. In this way, a natural peer pressure is generated and the users tend to follow others and it also creates fear of being missed out (FMO).
Apart from self-projection, users input on the social media platforms is an unconscious effort to promote the cosmetics products that has given shape to a paradigm shift in the marketing trend. It is promotion by the users and costs nothing to the brands.
NEW BUSINESS MODEL
The influencers on the social media have developed a strong community of the followers as they have created a real time impact on the beauty industry. A German influencer with her over 8 million followers on Instagram triggers country wide trends with her beauty tips and tutorials. Some of the influencers have launched their own limited line of the beauty products and have become cosmetics entrepreneurs. Some celebrities having the following of the millions of people have become cosmetics entrepreneurs. All this is happening because of the trending presence on the platform as they have easy access to the consumers through their following on social media and it becomes all the more viable to launch their products.
TRENDING SOCIAL MEDIA APPS
Instagram is perhaps the most powerful social media app with regard to beauty industry and its products as more than 90 percent of beauty-related posts appear on this platform. It has become a vibrant platform for the beauty brands because it offers integrated links to the websites or ecommerce shops and provides wide range of opportunities to the consumers and the industry. This users and industry integration provide an enabling environment to generate huge business. Instagram is the top platform to access huge audiences through makeup appearance, videos, tutorials, giveaways etc.
YouTube with its over 2 billion users is the most dynamic channel for beauty products due to its videos and tutorials. Visual content is always appealing to the viewers as it catches first look and develops deep-rooted and longstanding engagement among the users giving an impetus to the beauty products.
TikTok having over 1.2 billion daily users provide a vibrant platform for the beauty products. The short form videos on the TikTok addresses mostly the Gen Z as its unique algorithm supports the content goes viral within no time and its viral campaign influences millions and millions of people.
In this way, social media platforms are boon to the beauty products and they generate huge business activities throughout cross section of society despite the fact that these are not primary source of sale of the beauty products. These platforms offer special tools for the consumers to make shopping directly through social catalogues, pins or integrated call to action. Moreover, the beauty brands also initiating social shopping aspects or pilots. In this way, the influencer marketing is growing and leaving its foot prints on social media as the brands are also engaging the influencers to enhance traffic.
BRAND SAVVY PLATFORMS
The social media platforms offer friendly, vibrant and congenial environment for the beauty products and cosmetic items. It is social media where the young consumers find variety of beauty brands on the social apps. It develops a new approach among the beauty brands that their marketing focus should be shifted to the social media platforms having most successful product categories. In fact, more than 85 percent of professionals in the marketing field rank Instagram as the most vibrant, dynamic and enabling platform. It is also a fact that the social media users find two pleasantries at the same time having their favourite content and the beauty products which are appealing to everyone. It is this fact that that the beauty brands are more inclined to contact the beauty influencers to develop real time access to the end consumers. They are diverting major chunk of their marketing budget to the social influencers for better collaboration and cooperation.
As a bottom line, the cosmetics brands and beauty products find a completely new world on social media platforms for their products as these platforms offer an endless panorama of the consumers and it is widening with the passage of each day. The platforms are more appealing because here interests of the influencers and brands combine together as both have their own axes to grind. The brands find enabling avenue for the projection of their products and the influencers use these platforms for their self-projection.