Beauty is a sector that has always reinvented itself. Even during the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home or forced to wear masks, brands redoubled their creativity to adapt their beauty routines and products.

But beauty is also an ultra-competitive sector. Les nouveaux arrivants ont du mal à se faire de la place. De nombreuses marques ont émergé sur le créneau de la beauté naturelle et des produits bio. Mais l’offre est de plus en plus saturée et les consommateurs submergés sous les publicités.

To stand out from the crowd, beauty marketing needs to be innovative and original. By getting closer to their community of customers and relying on more authentic and playful campaigns, companies have the opportunity to reinvent themselves and win over new consumers.

Here are 3 innovative marketing levers to explore to boost visibility and conversion.

SUMMARY

• Marketing idea no. 1: Leveraging the community in the beauty sector
• Marketing idea no. 2: Prioritise personalisation and inclusiveness
• Marketing idea no. 3: Implement a coherent omnichannel marketing strategy

The beauty sector is fiercely competitive. Brands have to compete creatively to stand out from the crowd. One of the first levers they can use to stand out in beauty marketing is the community. Building a community of committed and loyal customers is one of the best barriers to entry that companies can create.

Co-creating in beauty through gamification

This co-creation process can be duplicated by sharing surveys on social networks to its audience. This will enable brands to better understand their customers’ expectations and consumer trends.

Another interesting mechanism: the swiper. Popularisé par des applications de dating comme Tinder, le principe consiste à swiper vers la gauche ou la droite pour choisir le look de make-up que l’on préfère. C’est un bon moyen pour les marques de identify the desires of its audience.

Interactive experiences to stand out from the crowd

Offering interactive advertising experiences as part of marketing campaigns also means :

• gain visibility. Notamment grâce à l’engagement de ses fans sur les réseaux sociaux ;
• generate authentic content. Il permettra de créer un lien de confiance avec ses prospects (via l’UGC, soit les publications partagées autour des produits de la marque par ses clients) ;
• co-create innovative products that really meet the expectations of their market;
• recruit new customers by leveraging the power of brand ambassadors;
• build customer loyalty by creating a much more human and authentic relationship between the brand and its users.

Many start-ups in the beauty sector have banked on the community as their main marketing lever. One example is the brand Respire. She has managed to build up a core group of fans during its crowdfunding campaign. Its customers were its first investors and now act as powerful ambassadors for the brand and its products.

Another inspiring use case is that of Nide.co. The beauty brand co-creates all its products with its community of customers. It is they who suggest new ideas, based on the needs they encounter (and which are not yet being met by other brands). Each idea is then put to the community for a vote. In this way, the brand ensures that it has a solid demand for each new product before it even begins to be produced.

The trend in the beauty world is towards personalisation and inclusivity. To compete with the big beauty brands like Sephora and L’Oréal, newcomers are increasingly focusing on specific niches. In this way, they address market segments that are often ignored by the market leaders. It’s an opportunity to win over ultra-committed customers who have long felt shunned by the more established brands.

It’s a strategy that singer Rihanna’s brand has applied. Fenty Beauty made a name for itself right from the start with its ultra-varied foundation palette. The brand aimed to appeal to women of all complexions, from the fairest to the darkest.

Another beauty brand that has managed to stand out thanks to this marketing idea of beauty is MÊME cosmetics. L’entreprise a en effet décidé de s’adresser spécifiquement aux femmes souffrant du cancer du sein. Elle leur propose des produits naturels et qui répondent à leurs besoins dans cette période délicate de leur vie.

Customisation is another way of addressing very niche needs while continuing to offer a wider range of products.

Many of the major generalist brands offer their new customers the chance to take a quiz. Il peut prendre par exemple la forme d’un gift finder. Il permet de trouver le cadeau idéal en collectant des préférences. Ce dernier fait office de diagnostic pour cibler leur type de peau ou de cheveu. La marque peut ensuite proposer des produits qui répondent mieux aux besoins de chaque client.

Gamification to collect customer data

Gamification is a particularly important lever here for collecting data in a fun and intuitive way. Users are invited to share personal data via a game or interactive format. They are all the more encouraged to share reliable and accurate information as they will be the first to benefit from it. In exchange for their answers, they will receive highly relevant recommendations. Customers can also benefit from vouchers to use on a personalised selection of products.

The way we discover and buy beauty products has changed dramatically. Nowadays, we no longer follow the advice of the muses but influencers that look like us. In the same way, we don’t necessarily buy our make-up in shops, but directly online.

Brands that want to stand out from the crowd in beauty marketing will need to succeed in creating an omnichannel experience (both digital and physical). They will be able to engage their prospects online thanks to interactive playable marketing.

For example, Showroomprivé has set up a Click & Win with a wide choice of prizes to highlight the new La Roche Posay serums. The activation attracted over 69,000 subscribers to this 100% winning activation, giving the product great visibility.

For customers who prefer to try out a product before buying it, a drive to store strategy will enable online marketing to be stepped up. Beauty brands will be able to capitalise on in-store events (with influencers, for example) to generate traffic to their physical points of sale. On-site competitions, via an interactive terminal or using Scan&Play, will make the retail experience more fun for consumers.

Conclusion

Engaging and retaining an audience has become a major challenge for brands in the beauty sector. To stand out from the crowd, they need to adopt new marketing ideas to make their branding more appealing to new consumers. Gamification will enable them to respond to all the main challenges they face (visibility, community engagement, personalisation through data collection and omnichannel activation).

Fashion marketing has always faced unique challenges. Brands must constantly adapt to new trends, including consumer trends. It has also become increasingly complex to identify the marketing messages and channels that can most effectively target existing customers and potential new markets.

Gamification – incorporating game-based elements into your marketing strategy – is proving to be one of the most effective ways of meeting today’s challenges. It’s an excellent way of facilitating interaction with consumers who are increasingly demanding authenticity. But gamifying your shopping experience, both online and offline, is also a way of updating your branding and modernising your brand image.

In this article, we’ll be looking at how fashion marketing can successfully update itself through gamification. We’ll look in detail at the different stages of the customer journey that can benefit from the introduction of game mechanics to help brands achieve their objectives.

SUMMARY

• The key issues in fashion marketing
• Why gamify your fashion brand?

The buying behaviour of fashion consumers has changed enormously in recent years. In particular, they have been transformed by the arrival of e-commerce, but also by the pandemic.

New players have also entered the fashion market. Those known as DNVBs (Digital Native Vertical Brands) have rapidly competed with the more established brands, creating from the outset a strong connection, particularly online, with a highly engaged community of customers.

The channels through which consumers discover fashion are no longer the same. Yet fashion marketing has had to adapt to digital, and social networks in particular. Luxury brands, for example, have undergone a major change in their branding and communication codes by moving onto media such as TikTok.

The rise of young Gen Z consumers has also dramatically reshuffled the deck. Fashion marketing that relied on inaccessible muses has given way to influencers and UGC (User Generated Content), and therefore to more authentic communication and less retouched visuals.

Inclusiveness, digitisation and data collection

The values of inclusiveness, transparency and sustainability are now central to standing out from the crowd and winning the loyalty of consumers (particularly younger ones). Fashion brands therefore need to review not only their production chain, but also their product range (by including unisex clothing and accessories, for example) and the values they stand for.

Finally, the explosion of online shopping also poses challenges for fashion marketing. The introduction of an omnichannel customer journey, which can start in-store (for consideration), continue online (for purchase) and return to retail (for returns management) also involves a change in marketing paradigm.

Brands therefore need to open up to more fluid, test-and-learn marketing strategies in order to adapt to all these upheavals. The issue of data and knowledge of their audience will also be decisive in adopting a positioning and offering that is aligned with their customers’ expectations.

Gamified marketing is a strategy that involves using games to strengthen the conversion funnel. Integrating interactive and playful elements into the customer journey is a way of arousing consumer interest, effectively conveying brand values and encouraging users to move from consideration to purchase.

In a demanding sector like fashion, gamification can provide a competitive advantage that will prove crucial in standing out from the crowd and encouraging consumers to buy from your brand.

Easy to integrate into every stage of the sales funnel, playable marketing addresses a number of issues specific to fashion marketing.

Strengthen your branding

In a sector undergoing rapid transformation and faced with a multiplication of communication channels, the main challenge for fashion brands is to successfully update their branding to attract an increasingly demanding clientele.

Luxury brands in particular have understood the appeal of gamification as a way of rebranding themselves to a younger audience.. Elles ont par exemple puisé dans de nouveaux outils comme la métaverse ou les NFT pour séduire les jeunes consommateurs (et même plus directement les amateurs de gaming).

Some have offered digital versions of their most iconic pieces to dress up your video game avatar. Another interesting user case is the fashion shows organised in the metaverse, which have democratised events that were previously considered elitist. As a result, brands have been able to significantly increase the reach and visibility of their catwalk shows.

Without using such advanced technologies, brands can reinforce their branding with more low-fi gamification mechanisms such as a wheel of fortune. C’est le choix qu’a fait Kiabi. La marque de mode a lancé une opération ultra engageante dédiée à la mise en avant de son offre de seconde main, lancée en 2020. Le but de la campagne était de faire grandir et rayonner cette offre. Mais aussi de moderniser l’image de Kiabi by communicating its commitment to make fashion sustainable and socially responsible.

Boosting community involvement

Gamification is not just a way of democratising fashion marketing. On the contrary, it can be an excellent way of reinforcing a sense of belonging to an exclusive community. Kenzo, for example, gave a limited number of its most loyal customers ’accéder à son propre jeu. Les utilisateurs devaient ensuite vaincre leurs adversaires pour espérer remporter 100 paires exclusives de sneakers Sonic.

Tape à l’Oeil, for its part, relied on playable marketing to attract new customers. For its anniversary, it set up a Wheel of Chance 100% winning in France and Belgium. The campaign generated 48k opt-in leads, which it was then able to reactivate and turn into customers by distributing prizes.

Increase the visibility of a new collection

As we have already mentioned, organising fashion shows in the metaverse or through interactive video games is an excellent way of reaching a new audience and boosting the launch of a product or a new collection. This is what Balenciaga has done, for example, by forming a partnership with the game Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow.

The interactive format offered by gamification allows users to discover clothes in a much more immersive context. In this case, they could navigate in a virtual reality with characters dressed from head to toe in the new collection.

The BZB brand also relied on playable marketing, via the Flip & Win mechanism, to launch its summer collection and generate new leads.

Increase sales through promotions

Reward systems specific to video games can also be powerful conversion levers. In fashion marketing, this logically take the form of promotions, vouchers or other benefits to encourage participants to place orders with the brand.

Les mécaniques de type instant gagnant sont idéales pour booster la viralité de sa campagne marketingbut above all, it’s about turning participants into buyers. The opportunity to win discount vouchers will generate traffic to the brand’s online shop and significantly increase sales.

Optimising qualification and collecting product preferences

Finally, gamification mechanisms such as battles and swiper ads give fashion brands a better understanding of consumer preferences. The very principle of having to choose between two looks or two pieces will give valuable indications of the fashion trends to be explored. It’s also an effective way of gathering the product preferences of your audience and sending them marketing campaigns (in the form of product recommendations) that are more targeted.

Conclusion

Gamification is a powerful way to promote a product, raise awareness of your company and strengthen brand memory. To boost your marketing performance, all you have to do is discover all our interactive mechanisms and customise them to suit your brand universe.