Case study on social media marketing of domestic cosmetics brands

In recent years, traditional Chinese style and trends have become very popular, and new and cutting-edge cosmetics brands have risen rapidly. In the past 2019, the emerging cosmetics brand Juduo sold nearly 1.8 million products in Tmall's "618". Huaxizi, which participated in Tmall's Double Eleven for the first time, achieved sales of over 100 million yuan early on; the sales of Meikangfendai's Xianyun series loose powder exceeded 75,000 pieces, and the single-color eye shadow was sold out.

Today, when traffic growth on e-commerce platforms has peaked and customer acquisition costs are high, how do emerging domestic cosmetics brands go from 0 to 1 and achieve a double breakthrough in reputation and sales?

We take four cosmetics brands, namely, Meikangfendai, ZEESEA, Huaxizi and Juduo, as research cases to analyze how they use social media platforms to achieve brand breakthroughs.

1. Single platform entry, omni-channel layout becomes the norm

From the perspective of social media platform layout, Meikangfendai, ZEESEA, Huaxizi and Juduo have established a social media platform matrix with Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin and Kuaishou as the core, and omni-channel layout has become the norm.

However, in the early stages of a brand’s establishment, most will prioritize operating on a single platform, then gradually expand into other platforms once the operation matures. In this process, different brands have different strategies.

Meikangfendai: Seizing the WeChat bonus, building personal IP, and breaking through the bottleneck of brand development

Meikangfendai, a Taobao brand, also encountered growth bottlenecks during its brand development. In the process of seeking breakthroughs, Meikangfendai's founder "Meijie" began to try to build a personal IP, conduct personalized operations, establish hundreds of personal WeChat accounts to interact with users, and continue to synchronize interactive information on Weibo to improve interaction with fans and break through the bottleneck of brand development.

In 2016, Meikang Fendai began to build a content team, creating its own makeup tutorials, product swatches and other content, distributing them on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and launching customized cosmetics in collaboration with costume dramas, trying to seed content and increase the brand's voice on social media.

In 2019, Meikang Fendai began to launch cross-border joint works with beauty bloggers, jewelry cultural and creative products, and popular animations, and participated in Tmall's new cultural and creative offline activities many times, creating a national style experience store and leading the national trend.

ZEESEA: Missing the Weibo and Weibo dividends, relying on short videos and live broadcasts to improve brand awareness

ZEESEA, founded in 2012, had already made its presence felt during the boom period of Weibo and WeChat platforms, but saw no improvement.

With the rise of short video platforms, ZEESEA began to make efforts in 2018 and began to try to cooperate with celebrities from Guangdong couple to create short video content, and published it on short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou to increase user attention.

In 2019, ZEESEA began to collaborate with the National Gallery, the British Museum and others on joint cosmetics, and tried to promote it in Taobao celebrity live broadcast rooms, while signing celebrity spokespersons to quickly increase brand awareness and brand voice.

Huaxizi and Juduo, which were established about three years ago, have differences in platform selection. In 2017, Huaxizi prioritized Weibo and WeChat, two relatively mature platforms, and gradually deployed Xiaohongshu and short video platforms; while Juduo prioritized Weibo and Xiaohongshu from the beginning, and after the operation became relatively mature, it quickly deployed WeChat and short video platforms in 2019.

Huaxizi: User co-creation + omni-channel promotion to occupy the user's mind

In the early stages of the brand’s establishment in 2017, Huaxizi opened official Weibo and WeChat accounts and began to publicly recruit product experience officers, embodying the concept of “user co-creation”.

In 2018, Hua Xizi cooperated with celebrities, beauty influencers, etc., and started omni-channel promotion on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Kuaishou, and launched new products in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room to enhance brand awareness.

In 2019, Hua Xizi began cross-border collaborations, adopting elements such as Hanfu, West Lake, and Peking Opera to shape the brand image of traditional Chinese style cosmetics.

Juduo: Weibo and Xiaohongshu promote products in batches and quickly attract fans

In 2017, Juduo cooperated with small and medium-sized KOLs and KOCs in large quantities, and published a large number of picture and text content on Weibo and Xiaohongshu to quickly attract users' attention. The low-priced single-color eye shadow products quickly captured the hearts of makeup novices, students and other groups.

In 2019, Juduo began to launch limited joint products across industries such as bloggers, animation, and movies, and simultaneously created limited-time theme pop-up stores offline, and began to exert its efforts on short video platforms to attract users to visit stores and check in.

At the same time, Juduo upgraded its brand and launched the "Color Lab", collaborating with artists, florists, dessert shops, art galleries, etc. to launch creative makeup works, constantly refreshing users' understanding of color and shaping the brand image.

2. Content + user operation to improve brand user loyalty

Even with an omni-channel layout, brands still have different focuses during operations. Judging from the distribution of the number of fans of the official accounts of the four brands, Meikangfendai, Zisese and Huaxizi have accumulated fans on WeChat, and Juduo has an outstanding ability to attract fans on Xiaohongshu.

Content operation: Promotion + lucky draw + color test/evaluation + tutorial are standard content

By comparing the content released by the official accounts of the four brands on different platforms, it can be seen that each brand has its own content production team and also cooperates with influencers.

Weibo is a brand promotion channel, and the content operations of various brands are not much different. The interactive lottery content is mainly released on WeChat, which has become the main platform for user interaction and accumulation. Product swatches and makeup tutorials are mainly released on short videos and Xiaohongshu platforms, mainly to attract user attention.

User operations: experience evaluation, lucky draw, fun interactions, etc., to bring users closer

Comparing the user operation methods of the four brands, Meikangfendai and Huaxizi focus on co-creation of products with users, evaluate products through user experience, and conduct product research and development/improvement. However, Meikangfendai is more mature in R&D and supply chain, and its product launch speed is faster than Huaxizi, and the number of products is also larger.

ZEESEA frequently launches lucky draw activities on platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu where users post their orders; Juduo creates offline limited-time pop-up stores, provides fun and colorful gameplay to attract users to check in, and updates new products quickly, which allows users to maintain a sense of freshness and attracts users to visit stores and check in.

3. Multi-platform promotion increases voice and key channel conversion promotes transactions

Comparing the voice distribution of the four brands on social media platforms in 2019, Juduo had the largest number of mentions, while Huaxizi and Meikangfendai had greater social media exposure. Although they are promoted on multiple social media platforms, there are significant differences in brand voice, which is related to the promotion strategies of different brands.

Meikofendai, ZEESEAZ and Huaxizi all have celebrity spokespersons, but Juduo has not signed a contract yet, which will affect the volume of Juduo's mentions on social media to a certain extent.

In addition, in terms of KOL cooperation, Juduo chooses small and medium-sized KOLs to cooperate, while other brands all cooperate with top KOLs, such as Li Jiaqi, serious girl Yan Jiu, etc. Top KOLs have a better effect on boosting brand voice.

Regarding the layout of sales channels, for online channels, Juduo mainly uses Xiaohongshu, and also deploys offline shopping malls such as Watsons to form linkages to promote user conversion, and the cost of social media promotion is relatively low. Meikangfendai, ZEESEA, Huaxizi and others all focus on different sales channels to promote user conversion.

Finally, from the breakthrough process of these four beauty brands, we can find that in today's social media era, the logic of brand building has changed, from product selection, marketing to product development and supply chain layout. Faced with the situation where traffic is becoming more and more expensive and growth is becoming increasingly difficult, more and more emerging brands are finding a way to break through growth by getting infinitely close to users through social media platforms, taking users as the center, and reshaping the brand.

Author: Watermelon Data

Source: Xigua Data