Beauty Shoppers Spend Most of Their Journey 'Pre-Searching'

 

As an example, to buy beauty products in the past, a consumer had to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Now, every kind of cosmetic you can imagine is only a few clicks away.

Within that, a recent Condé Nast study found “consumers spend 80 percent of their time in the pre-search, or influence, phase of their purchase journey.” If beauty shoppers spend most of their journey “pre-searching,” how can retailers engage them in a meaningful way early on in the purchasing journey?

Social Media in Beauty Ecommerce

As NBC News writes, one of the greatest advantages for beauty brands selling online is “the ability to educate consumers on how products work.” How-to videos, also known as beauty tutorials, are an especially efficient way to demonstrate cosmetics in action. Since online consumers can’t personally test products before they purchase them for the first time, posting high-quality content across social media platforms is a great way to boost consumer confidence and generate interest around your product lineup.

Selling beauty products from home requires a responsive, branded ecommerce website to facilitate browsing and buying. But customers’ decision-making process begins long before they start adding items to their shopping carts. For this reason, it’s important to build a solid social media presence across the popular platforms to showcase your cosmetics and drive traffic to your actual store.

A comprehensive social media strategy for beauty merchants breaks down into two broad components: content marketing and paid advertising. The content you produce—static and video alike—should be interesting and informative above all else. Creating genuinely engaging content is a great way to establish authority in the eyes of your customer base. For maximum impact, use it to provide genuine value to your customers rather than trying to promote your brand.

As for paid advertising on social media, beauty brands are having great luck with sponsored posts on visually focused platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

Harnessing the Power of Beauty Influencers

The beauty industry is a veritable “who’s who” of influence. When shoppers are conducting pre-search, they’re investigating more than just products and brands themselves—they’re looking to see who’s wearing and modeling them.

Microinfluencers, or industry tastemakers with a few thousand followers, in particular have been able to connect with target audiences during the pivotal early stages of the purchasing funnel.

Tutorials, blog posts, testimonial videos or social media posts from beauty micro influencers generate brand awareness. Put it this way: Would you rather buy a product suggested to you by a random marketer, or by a social media influencer you’ve been following for months because you enjoy their content?

Beauty shoppers spend a large majority of their purchasing journey “pre-searching.” If retailers want to drive traffic to their websites, it’s essential for retailers to connect with these potential customers early. The best tool for influencing shoppers in the early stages of making a purchasing decision is social media.

Again, with so much information at their fingertips—not to mention constant exposure to ads across platforms—consumers are forming ideas before they even set “foot” into your online store. In other words, consumers seeking beauty products typically make their decisions before they begin searching for products. They usually have the brands they’re seeking already in mind and they tend to trust content from known sources more highly. Keeping this in mind, and positioning yourself accordingly, will help you get ahead of that curve.