Be Clear and Sincere: How to Find Your Tribe

The beauty industry – like most other industries – is having a tough time of it

In-store footfall is at an all time low, creating a challenge for brands who have typically relied on building relationships with their customers via face-to-face activities. These brands have had to scramble to improve their digital retail experience while fulfilment has, at times, been almost impossible as factories and warehouses suffered lengthy closures.

Beauty brands are now seeing the value in having a strong digital voice and presence and utilising expert content to entice and retain an engaged audience. Many lessons are emerging from the pandemic, and some brands will be quicker to adapt than others.

Relationship-building has always relied on brands truly understanding how to resonate with their audience and existing and potential consumers, and this is enabled by building a loyal tribe.

Beauty tribes were out in force when queues formed around the block for the arrival of Fenty at Harvey Nichols. They are also in evidence when someone makes a purchase at Glossier and adds a hoodie to their cart, not to mention when beauty obsessives rush to review the latest makeup palette from Makeup by Mario on YouTube.

Brands with a beauty tribe benefit from a loyal following of engaged consumers who are eager to buy its latest launches, and then tell the world. They are your consumer and your promoter. So, how do you find your tribe?

Communicate shared values and a strong brand identity

To really resonate on an emotional level, brands must share their audience’s values. Your brand must stand for something. In the case of Fenty, the audience resonated with the disruptive side of the brand and how it celebrated diversity, while Glossier was the first brand to really speak to a millennial, social-savvy audience. Brands like Hourglass are renowned for luxury products without animal-cruelty which makes them hugely appealing to a switched-on and informed customer.

Segmenting the target customer by age, income and lifestyle is important, but shopping habits go far beyond that. Whether buying a new serum, lipstick or gym gear, women want to align themselves with a brand that mirrors their own outlook on the world.

Put content at the heart

Glossier wrote the rulebook on how to really matter to customers in a digital world. After all, their brand was essentially built by their audience’s likes and dislikes. Their content platform, Into The Gloss (the OG Glossier) was already a huge hit with a millennial audience and, through social, in-blog commenting and audience data, Glossier founder Emily Weiss was able to create a brand that directly served the desires of her readers. She had the customer base before she had a product. Glossier Milky Jelly Cleanser and Youth Dew were spawned by feedback from her audience, proving this kind of direct insight into consumers is worth its weight in gold.

Excellent relevant and sincere content is essential when it comes to carving out a tribe. Get your content right and it will pull in an engaged audience, and that engagement will show you in which direction to steer, not only your product development, but every aspect of communication. Customers get to know you by consuming your content. A timely, well-written blog post will show them what you believe in, a slick video will demonstrate your authority and expertise, and your social campaigns will reveal who you collaborate with and whether your values are compatible with theirs.

Talk to the digital marketing specialists

These are daunting times for a beauty brand, and establishing a point of difference, a tone of voice and a credible and relatable identity in an already saturated industry can feel like an almost impossible task.

Talk to Mediablaze, the digital marketing specialists.