Analysis of Estee Lauder’s Double 11 marketing strategy!

In the fiercely competitive beauty industry, major brands have all used their trump cards to prepare for Double Eleven. Among them, Estee Lauder has firmly established itself as the industry leader with its multiple marketing strategies.

In the fierce Double Eleven krypton gold war, cosmetics are still the hot category this year, and Estee Lauder is the one that firmly sits on the top spot.

According to Tmall data, Estee Lauder achieved a transaction volume of nearly 500 million yuan in just 25 minutes after the pre-sale started, exceeding the transaction volume of the entire day of Double 11 last year. The transaction volume on the first day was 587 million yuan, leaving Lancome, L'Oreal, SK-II and other brands far behind.

(Pictures from the Internet)

Because of the attributes of the industry and as a loyal user of Estee Lauder for many years, Estee Lauder's brand youth marketing strategy has been my focus in recent years. So I would like to take the opportunity of Double 11 to deeply explore #Estee Lauder Double 11 marketing strategy# from the perspective of brand investment strategy, and chat with you all about it.

How did Estee Lauder do it? After layer by layer analysis, I think it can be summarized into the following three points:

1. Joining hands with popular traffic stars, Samsung's endorsement matrix = a king bomb combination
2. Deeply cultivate social media platforms and place heavy bets on KOLs to promote products in a "pyramid-like" manner
3. E-commerce traffic diversion + large discounts, a two-pronged approach to create a critical hit

So, let’s take a closer look at how these marketing strategies played a role in Estee Lauder’s Double 11 sales growth.

The blessing of three major traffic stars = the best sales combination

Founded in 1946, Estee Lauder is 73 years old this year. For a long time, its anti-aging skin care products have won Estee Lauder a good reputation, but it has also solidified its image as a brand only used by women over 30 years old. You can always search for questions such as "Is Estee Lauder suitable for young people" on the Internet.

As for how brands approach young people, celebrities have undoubtedly become the most direct media bridge between brands and consumers. Estee Lauder is also aware of this, so in recent years it has boldly chosen to cooperate with young celebrities with huge social media fan traffic to quickly increase the brand's popularity among young people on social media. From Liu Wen, Tang Yan, Wang Junkai to Yang Mi, they have all cooperated in different forms.

On the eve of Double 11 this year, Estee Lauder played the traffic star strategy to the extreme.

In September, Li Xian, who became a top-tier traffic star with the hit drama Go Go Squid!, was signed by Estee Lauder as the brand's skincare and makeup spokesperson for the Asia-Pacific region.

Then, one day before the Double 11 pre-sale started, Estee Lauder officially announced Xiao Zhan as the brand's Asia-Pacific makeup and fragrance spokesperson, and launched a Xiao Zhan lipstick reversal micro-film, directly pointing to the Double 11 pre-sale site.

As an aside, I think this advertisement is worth learning and drawing lessons from for many brands.

Why?

Because most of the current cosmetics brands’ lipstick advertisements are nothing more than showing the lipstick color, texture, etc., and they all focus on the direct display of the lipstick product. This time, Estee Lauder gave the advertisement a storytelling touch. The main "reversal color" and "rejection color" lipsticks were more vivid and concrete, integrating into workplace situations. The lipsticks had their own scene-based memory points, making it easier to capture the minds of users, which undoubtedly contributed to the pre-sale of Double 11.

Back to the brand's celebrity strategy selection, joining hands with Li Xian and Xiao Zhan means that Estee Lauder, which focuses on the women's skin care market, has won over the hottest top-tier male celebrities this summer. Together with Yang Mi, the global spokesperson known as the "Queen of Sales", this has formed a three-star endorsement matrix of "Yang Mi + Xiao Zhan + Li Xian", which has attracted 140 million fans on Sina Weibo alone. The coverage is so large, and the influence of the fan economy is needless to say.

Not only that, careful people will find that recently, the splash screen ads on WeChat Moments, Weibo, TikTok, Xiaohongshu, Tencent Video, Amap and other apps have all been contracted by Estee Lauder. The traffic effect of the spokesperson can be said to have been fully utilized during the Double 11 pre-sale time node.

Of course, Estee Lauder's lavish spending was not in vain. For example, it took advantage of the opportunity to launch a limited gift box selected by Xiao Zhan, which sold 8.52 million in one hour. The pre-sale amount of products recommended by Xiao Zhan exceeded 40 million in one hour, and the spokesperson's traffic effect was successfully detonated at the Double Eleven pre-sale time node, bringing an impressive return on investment.

(Pictures from the Internet)

It is worth noting that in the process of interacting with Estee Lauder, celebrities are increasingly showing their social side.

In addition to the Xiao Zhan lipstick reversal micro-film mentioned above, Estee Lauder has also begun to try to continuously use social media platforms led by WeChat to strengthen its spokesperson role since this year.

For example, in July this year, the advertisement of Yang Mi’s WeChat Moments was held hand in hand. The advertisement adopted the form of video interaction and invited users to click into the H5 page by “wiping Mi Mi’s tears”.

Through this type of marketing, Estee Lauder not only promotes its products, but also further accumulates users' online behavior data, bringing it closer to users, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Social media pyramid placement: stable and accurate

Fabrizio Freda, President and CEO of Estee Lauder, once said that Estee Lauder's marketing focus in recent years has been to invest 75% of its investment in digital marketing and social media influencers, and has achieved high work efficiency.

Therefore, in addition to the precise "magic use" of celebrity spokespersons, Estee Lauder's in-depth cultivation of social media for Double 11 pre-sales this year is also a top priority in the marketing process.

For example, on Taobao Live, Estee Lauder "steadily, accurately and ruthlessly" recruited two top internet celebrity anchors, Viya and Li Jiaqi, with a very clear goal of boosting sales.

Among them, in Wei Ya's live broadcast room, "Buy 20ml of Estee Lauder Advanced Night Serum and get 18ml for free. Estee Lauder has never offered such a big discount, only 20,000 copies", "Buy Estee Lauder DW foundation, Wei Ya's live broadcast room will exclusively give away beauty eggs/eye masks, plus a calendar". Soon the special supply of these two products were sold out in seconds, once again confirming the ability of Taobao's number one anchor to bring goods.

Looking at Li Jiaqi again, with his strong promotion of the "Little Brown Bottle Eye Cream" and "Qinshui Liquid Foundation", 410,000 sets of the "buy one get one free" little brown bottle eye cream were instantly sold out by users.

In the selection of KOLs, similar to the Perfect Diary advertising strategy that became popular some time ago, Estee Lauder did not insist on advertising only to top bloggers, but chose a pyramid advertising strategy, infiltrating into the Double 11 strategies of a large number of mid-level bloggers, achieving a scale circle effect.

For example, looking at the data, we find that in Estee Lauder's campaign, some bloggers with 50,000 to 300,000 followers will share related content to maintain the hot discussion about the product. There will also be a large number of product feedback posts by bloggers with 1,000 to 5,000 followers to create a scenario of good reputation.

Let’s first look at Xiaohongshu. Starting from September and October this year, Estee Lauder has been intensively cultivating its output on Xiaohongshu. The KOLs it has invested in are deeply bundled with tags such as "Double 11, Estee Lauder Shopping Guide". Just searching for #雅诗兰黛双11# will pop up more than 6,000 notes, which shows how strong the effort is.

Looking at Bilibili, Estee Lauder has also successively placed a number of Bilibili bloggers and experts under the label "Double 11 Must-Buy List". Although the number of views is not amazing, it wins in terms of authenticity and quality of content.

This pyramid-shaped circle communication includes celebrities and bloggers KOLs of various levels, allowing them to "perform their respective duties". Celebrities undertake the triple tasks of enhancing brand image, producing marketing content and "bringing goods", while well-known internet celebrities harvest top-level traffic, and mid-level KOLs use real experience to output product reputation, influence amateurs and bring in UGC content.

This pyramid-style delivery strategy is not random. It has a set of logical systems. I have roughly summarized it:

• The main purpose of cooperating with traffic stars and top KOLs is to create waves, increase brand awareness and pave the way for subsequent voice.
• Due to the celebrity effect, top influencers will value products endorsed by well-known celebrities. After all, they have their own traffic, and when brands negotiate cooperation with them, there will be more room for premium.
• With the endorsement of traffic, mid-level bloggers will follow the trend of celebrities and top influencers, and it will be natural for them to start cooperation.
• Finally, from top to bottom, the impression was created that everyone was using Estee Lauder products, which led to ordinary people following suit and posting their own notes, and UGC content followed suit.

From volume to word of mouth, multi-dimensional and in-depth promotion has formed an ever-increasing rhythm of communication. Are you convinced by Estee Lauder's step-by-step approach?

Unprecedented preferential strength = trump card

If the celebrity effect and the promotion by internet celebrities have caused some rational consumers to remain on the sidelines, then the simple and crude discounts offered by Estee Lauder on Double 11 have become another trump card that consumers are scrambling for.

In this event, Estee Lauder showed its utmost sincerity in price discounts. For the first time, many star skincare products including the "Little Brown Bottle Eye Serum", "High Energy Little Brown Bottle Serum" and "Pomegranate Water" achieved the "buy one get one free" promotion.

As a loyal Estee Lauder customer, I did the math and said, “Buy one get one free at Estee Lauder, it’s much more cost-effective than purchasing on behalf of others.

Looking at Estee Lauder's competing brands, the usually "aloof" CPB, SK-II, etc. are still relatively conservative this year. Although they have launched new limited edition packaging, the appeal of "getting coupons + some gifts" is still slightly inferior.

In comparison, for those price-sensitive consumers who are confused by the Double 11 discount rules, Estee Lauder's simple and crude buy one get one free strategy has achieved real competitiveness in terms of price. Naturally, consumers vote with their wallets and directly push Estee Lauder to the "throne" of the first pre-sale.

at last

The top-tier traffic stars promoting the products + the top internet celebrities recommending them + the intensive promotion of products by mid-level influencers + the unprecedented preferential benefits have created an atmosphere where users feel that they will earn a profit if they grab the products. It can be said that Estee Lauder has the last laugh in the Double 11 battle among a number of cosmetics brands.

Of course, marketing is just the icing on the cake of Estee Lauder's success. Only a complete "combination punch" can push it to its current position: whether the product is of high quality and in high demand, the influence of long-term brand building, and the deep cultivation of user minds will all determine whether consumers will pay for your product.

However, starting from the details, we can still gain valuable inspiration from it:

• Marketing is a combination of punches. If you only do a certain promotion, the two inevitable results are burning money and no effect. Therefore, brands must learn to use resources rationally and create their own unique combination marketing to be effective.
• When joining hands with traffic stars, the sales conversion brought by fans should not be the ultimate goal of the brand. Fans are willing to pay for love, but it does not mean that they will pay for love indiscriminately. How to successfully transform the star effect into the dissemination and diffusion of the brand and achieve a win-win situation for all three parties is the fundamental value of the traffic endorsement war.

The above is all. I hope today’s sharing will give you some inspiration.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)