Online sales increased by 170%, Perfect Diary’s promotion strategy!

In the world of brand marketing, new "marketing miracles" are born every once in a while.

This time it’s the turn of the domestic beauty brand Perfect Diary .

Recently, Perfect Diary and Discovery have collaborated to launch a twelve-color animal eyeshadow palette. The first recommended puppy plate uses Li Jiaqi's dog Never as the "spokesperson". The 12 colors in it are the color schemes selected by Li Jiaqi based on Never's 12 emotions, namely innocent, energetic, enthusiastic, curious, warm, dreamy, shy...

• At 0:00 on February 25, the Puppy Palette was pre-sold in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room. Within seconds, 150,000 palettes of eyeshadow were sold out.
• On March 5, the Puppy Plate was officially put on sale, and 300,000 plates were quickly sold out.

Judging from Perfect Diary’s previous sales, this start is not surprising.

• In the 2018 Tmall 99 promotion, Perfect Diary emerged as the No. 1 in sales in the cosmetics industry;
• During the 2018 Double 11 event, Perfect Diary’s sales exceeded 100 million yuan in just 1 hour and 28 minutes, becoming the first cosmetics brand on Tmall to achieve sales of over 100 million yuan.
• During Tmall 618 in 2019, Perfect Diary’s sales growth rate reached 1193%, ranking first in the beauty category;
• During the Double Eleven event in 2019, its sales exceeded the entire day’s sales in 2018 in just 28 minutes, firmly ranking No. 1 in Tmall cosmetics, followed by first-tier international brands such as Maybelline, Estee Lauder, and Lancome.

In 2016, Perfect Diary was officially launched. In 2017, it registered a Tmall flagship store. In 2018, it participated in the Tmall Double 11 event for the first time. In 2019, it successfully won the crown of domestic cosmetics sales. Even under the epidemic, Perfect Diary still handed in a beautiful "report card". Not only did it complete a counterattack online, its Taobao live broadcast sales in February increased by 170% month-on-month. Its offline store expansion plan was not affected by the epidemic and will continue to proceed in an orderly manner.

So, how did this young brand, which was founded less than 4 years ago, quickly become the No. 1 beauty brand? What brand marketing logic is hidden behind it?

This article will discuss Perfect Diary’s “winning formula” from multiple dimensions.

1. The secret of Perfect Diary’s rise

In fact, there is a reason why Perfect Diary became a hit.

We can start with a formula for hot products, that is, hot products = supply chain * dividends * traffic. Following this formula, we can glimpse the secret of its rapid rise.

1. Bonus of domestic products. In recent years, driven by the national trend, young consumer groups have become increasingly receptive to domestic brands, providing Perfect Diary with an opportunity to break through.

2. Category constitution. As people's consumption level continues to rise, consumers' basic survival needs have been met, and they have turned to the pursuit of "appearance upgrade", and more and more people have begun to pay attention to their own external image. Therefore, the beauty and cosmetics category has grown rapidly in recent years. Perfect Diary has seized the opportunity to enter the beauty and cosmetics market, which is actually seizing the bonus of the category.

3. Optimize the supply chain. In Angry Alan's analysis of Perfect Diary released by GrowthBox, it was counted that Perfect Diary had registered nearly a thousand SKUs from 2017 to 2020, and cooperated with dozens of OEM factories in total. Its main OEM factories produce the same products as big brands, such as L'Oreal, Dior, etc., which means that its quality can be directly comparable to that of big brands.

Data source: National Cosmetics Registration Network

At the same time, in order to better cooperate with OEM factories, Perfect Diary has recruited a number of factory representatives. Just like a buyer, they are stationed at various sources of goods, and once there are new products or packaging materials, they will immediately arrange and combine them and quickly iterate them.

2. Perfect Diary’s Marketing Strategy

After having several factors to become a hit product, it is time to start brand marketing. Below, let’s take a look at what Perfect Diary’s marketing strategy specifically includes:

1. Appearance is justice

When consumers know nothing about a product, I believe they would prefer a product that looks good but average over a product that looks average but is very good.

It can be seen that product packaging is the key to attracting consumers.

I observed the packaging of Perfect Diary, and I have to say that its packaging is really beautiful. Here are some pictures!

(1) Jointly-branded products

Perfect Diary×National Geographic

Perfect Diary×Metropolitan Museum of Art

Perfect Diary X Discovery 12-color Animal Eyeshadow Palette

(2) Holiday items

Christmas deer gift box

Halloween limited edition gift box

It can be seen that Perfect Diary's product packaging neither has the elements commonly used by domestic cosmetics brands, nor does it copy foreign big brands. Instead, it designs packaging in different styles according to product categories and holiday themes, embodying unique creativity, rich connotations without losing beauty, and perfectly catering to the psychology of the main consumer groups born after 1995 and 2000 who pursue high appearance.

2. Target platforms where young people gather

Perfect Diary's target audience is young women aged 18-28 . These new generations born after 1995 and 2000 have more diversified channels of access, so its brand marketing strategy on social platforms is also very clear: it goes wherever young people are.

Perfect Diary has invested heavily in all platforms where young people gather: Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Bilibili... In June 2019, a research report released by Tmall ranked Perfect Diary as the second largest domestic brand in terms of fans born after 2000, second only to Huawei.

Different platforms have different characteristics, so Perfect Diary will choose the most suitable delivery method on different channels.

(1) Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu is the main community for heavy beauty and cosmetics users in China. It has active users and strong content production capabilities, and is a channel that Perfect Diary is focusing on promoting.

Since 2017, Perfect Diary has been making a splash on Xiaohongshu. Many KOLs were invited to write "grass-planting notes". As of now, Perfect Diary’s official account on Xiaohongshu has 1.935 million followers. If you search for “Perfect Diary” on Xiaohongshu, you can see more than 150,000 notes.

However, it should be pointed out that when choosing its advertising targets, Perfect Diary does not blindly seek endorsements from big-name celebrities, but instead pays more attention to various small and medium-sized KOLs.

In other words, Perfect Diary not only values ​​the influence of top KOLs, but also pays more attention to small and medium-sized KOLs to create an overwhelming screen-sweeping effect.

We can organize Perfect Diary’s strategies in this regard into: official notes, celebrity recommendations, KOL promotion, and ordinary people sharing their experience.

• Through celebrity recommendations or well-known KOL reviews, a wave of word-of-mouth endorsement for the brand is created;
• Invite top and mid-level influencers to evaluate, test and compare their products to increase brand exposure and stimulate sales conversion;
• After using the products, ordinary people who have purchased the products will post "grass-planting notes". When the sharing reaches a certain level, new consumers will be generated, which is "natural fission", and ultimately achieve the effect of "seeing and buying".

In this three-stage communication chain, "natural fission" is formed, and ultimately the effect of "just look and you'll buy" is achieved.

(2) Tik Tok

After exploring experience on one platform, it is replicated in the same way on another platform. Perfect Diary has also targeted the Douyin platform, where 70% of its users are born after 1990. It released its first video on Douyin in July 2018. In less than two years, it has accumulated 2.325 million fans and received 21.7 million likes, putting it ahead of other domestic beauty brands.

Generally speaking, when most beauty brands want to advertise on Douyin, they will look for influencers with beauty tags to advertise on. Perfect Diary takes this conventional approach and collaborates with beauty influencers. For example, for the “12-color eye shadow”, Perfect Diary directly cooperated with “Chen Cai Ni” from Huaxing Cool Entertainment, a big beauty account on Douyin.

But Perfect Diary is not limited to only beauty accounts.

Taking Perfect Diary’s “Matte Lip Glaze” as an example, data on “Douyin.com” shows that a total of 42 accounts participated in the release of the product video, with the number of fans ranging from 10,000 to more than 1 million, including large non-vertical accounts and some small vertical accounts.

For example, there are Lao Zhang, clams, etc. at home. Moreover, a closer look reveals that most of the users who follow these accounts are women aged 18-25, which is also a typical characteristic of Perfect Diary's target users.

Image source: Dou Da Da data platform

In other words, Perfect Diary’s advertising strategy on Douyin is not to advertise through influencer attributes, but to find influencers through fan portraits. This advertising strategy has actually broken away from the advertising inertia of beauty brands.

(3) Bilibili

Bilibili is the most popular APP among young users under the age of 24. More than 80% of its users are born after 1990, and more than 50% are from first-tier cities with a certain economic foundation, which coincides with Perfect Diary's target group.

On Bilibili, Up hosts combine their own characteristics to recommend Perfect Diary through color trials, reviews, and makeup tutorials, deeply integrating Perfect Diary products into the content. Moreover, for young people who are tired of traditional embedded advertising, Bilibili's barrage interaction can continue to create a guiding atmosphere, resulting in a high marketing input-output ratio for Bilibili.

Perfect Diary Amway video on B station

The emphasis on other channels does not mean that Perfect Diary has given up relatively "traditional" channels such as Weibo and WeChat. Weibo has a large number of users and a loud voice, making it particularly suitable for image building. Perfect Diary will officially announce its spokespersons, cross-border collaborations, etc. on Weibo. WeChat’s strategy is mainly based on WeChat private account marketing + official account + mini program.

As a result, Perfect Diary can be seen on various social media platforms, which greatly enhances the visibility of its brand image and creates momentum for a full-scale explosion.

3. Create a new private domain

After acquiring users in the public domain, the core issue is how to continuously ensure user retention and obtain repeat purchases. In the previous article "The "re-emergence" of private domain traffic tells me that if we don't get on board now, all the users will run away", we mentioned that Perfect Diary is building its own private domain traffic pool through a virtual female IP "Xiao Wanzi" .

Whether online or offline, Perfect Diary will guide users to add the personal WeChat account "Xiao Wanzi", and then let users enter the "Xiao Wanzi Welfare Club" applet and join the WeChat group, and then interact with users through daily sharing in Moments, output of practical information and community benefits, so as to keep users and increase the repurchase rate of products.

According to third-party estimates, Perfect Diary has opened hundreds of personal accounts, all of which are uniformly identified by the persona “Xiao Wanzi.” Calculated based on the standard of 3,000 people/account, Perfect Diary’s private domain fans are nearly one million.

What’s interesting is that the process of communicating with “Xiao Wanzi” feels very real, rather than talking to a machine. Because what Perfect Diary wants to do is to build a high degree of trust among users through the creation of personal image. Whether it is a mini program or a circle of friends, "Xiao Wanzi" appears in person.

In addition, when Perfect Diary was operating "Xiao Wanzi", it did not frantically swipe the screen like a WeChat business. The number of Moments posted per day did not exceed 4, and some of them were Xiao Wanzi's personal life records and skin care tips. It does not give users a strong sense of sales promotion, but rather it is like a good friend recommending a good product to them. In this way, we establish long-term and stable interactivity and trust with users, greatly extending the user life cycle.

4. Find popular celebrities to endorse

The biggest selling point of the fan economy is that consumers will go crazy for the idols they support, and the brand spokesperson strategy is an important part of it. Perfect Diary has its own strategy when it comes to choosing spokespersons, preferring new generation idols.

In addition to inviting celebrities such as Wu Qingfeng, Ouyang Nana, and Lai Guanlin to endorse and promote various products, Perfect Diary also chose Zhu Zhengting, a member of NINE PERCENT who successfully debuted in "Idol Producer", as the lip makeup spokesperson. After 66 days of cooperation, Perfect Diary sent Zhu Zhengting to the big screen in New York's Times Square and launched a co-branded customized small black diamond lipstick.

By using popular traffic stars to create topics and attract attention, Perfect Diary can be said to be able to capture traffic quickly, accurately and ruthlessly, and its sales scale has therefore grown rapidly. It is reported that in the "Tmall 99" brand promotion, the sales volume of the Little Black Diamond Lipstick endorsed by Zhu Zhengting reached "No. 1 in the entire industry! No. 1 in the number of visitors! No. 1 in the number of buyers!", effectively converting the spokesperson's traffic into sales.

The recent "spokesperson" Never has also gained a lot of publicity and sales. On February 24, Li Jiaqi posted a warm-up post on Weibo before the broadcast, which was forwarded more than 270,000 times and received more than 100,000 comments. At midnight on February 25, pre-sale of the puppy plate started in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room, and 150,000 plates were sold out instantly. Many netizens complained on Weibo that they could not get the goods. The sales power of the "female star surnamed N" Never should not be underestimated.

Perfect Diary undoubtedly took a fancy to its compatibility with Perfect Diary's animal eyeshadow, and it also has huge traffic and hot search physique (earlier, Never was on the hot search due to "fighting" behavior in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room), has its own fans, and has the ability to attract traffic and sell goods.

Never, the top dog who became a hot search because of fighting in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room

5. Cross-border collaboration

It is undeniable that Perfect Diary is really good at cross-border collaboration to create hot products. Before launching the Puppy Plate, Perfect Diary created many classic cases through the marketing strategy of co-branding to promote hot products. For example, "Perfect Diary x Forbidden City", "Perfect Diary x National Geographic China", "Perfect Diary x Discovery", "Perfect Diary x Metropolitan Museum of Art", "Perfect Diary x British Museum" and so on are all very successful examples.

It is worth mentioning that it also takes great care in choosing the timing of launching co-branded products.

• The British Museum co-branded eyeshadow palette launched during the 2018 Singles Day sale set a sales record of one palette sold every 11.5 seconds;
• The sales of Perfect Diary Metropolitan Lipstick launched during the 2019 Tmall 618 shopping event soared, achieving a win-win situation in both word-of-mouth and sales;
• On November 11, 2019, Perfect Diary took advantage of the "national trend" and launched the "Visionary 16-Color Eyeshadow Palette" in collaboration with National Geographic. The related topic "Chinese Beauty on Eyes" on Weibo reached 7.393 million readings.

At a time when consumers value individuality and heritage, the brand has been online for less than 4 years and still lacks a brand story, but it has continuously introduced diverse innovative designs through cross-border collaborations, giving its products a new brand charm. For the younger generation of consumers, this is exactly the personalized surprise and charm they are pursuing.

3. Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that Perfect Diary, which focuses on innovation, fun and fashion, constantly refreshes our understanding of domestic beauty brands and is a well-deserved dark horse in the beauty industry. This also shows that its marketing strategy is effective and worthy of learning from many domestic brands.

Based on the full text, we can summarize Perfect Diary’s marketing strategy as a set of “combination punches”:

From novel packaging designs that pursue appearance, precise positioning of consumer groups, building and operating private domain traffic, linking up with celebrities/internet celebrities KOL to promote the products, to cross-border collaborations that set off trends.

This series of creative marketing actions accurately captures the psychology of the new generation of consumers and ultimately achieves the effect of product and effect integration.

Author: Activity Box

Source: Activity Box Operation Society