In the last blog, I explain why the beauty companies should use the Facebook to marketing and today, I will explain how the beauty companies actually use Facebook for marketing via the study of Shen & Bissell (2013). This study analyses the Facebook page of six beauty companies which including Estee Lauder, MAC Cosmetics, Clinique, L’Oreal, Maybelline, CoverGirl.

According to Shen & Bissell (2013), among 6 types of posts (event, product, promotion, entertainment and other) the entertainment is the most popular and engaging post on the Facebook of the six beauty brands. The picture A, B and C are the example of the “Product”, “Event” and “Promotion” post and the example of “Entertainment “posts will give later because there are many different types of entertainment post such as: beauty poll, Q&A, survey, activity with reward, application.

Picture A: “Product” type of post (Source: https://goo.gl/MLsCSV)

When the beauty business would like to introduce new products or remind customers about existing products, they can use “Product” type of post.

Picture B: “Event” type of post (Source: https://goo.gl/2hgWKJ)

When the beauty businesses want to let the customers know what are they doing or when they would like to invite people to come to their event, they can use this type of post.

Picture C: “Promotion” type of post (Source: https://goo.gl/XKfcG5)

This post is often used to let the customers know about offers and promotion of the business.

The study of Shen & Bissell finds out that the most engaging tool of its entertainment-related posts that urged the Facebook users make comments is survey or beauty poll. However, the beauty companies preferred to give open-ended questions (Q&A), but Shen & Bissell (2013) revealed that the survey group was more likely to get more answers and commented than other types of entertainment (beauty poll, Q&A, survey, activity with reward, applications and others.

Picture D: open – ended questions (Q&A) (Source: https://goo.gl/MLsCSV)

The beauty companies will write the question on the post and people can comment to answer them.

Picture E: Survey and Beauty Poll

(Source: https://goo.gl/XKfcG5, https://goo.gl/IIr6O0 )

Two types of post will get more answer and comments than other types of entertainment and the business usually asks multi choice questions.

This study also points out that the high end brands (MAC, Estee Lauder) rarely or may never have post that carry promotion information and in the opposite, the department store brands like L’Oreal, Maybelline, CoverGirl has more promotion posts which including coupons or a discount code.

Thus the department store brands use Facebook as sales tool, but the MAC Cosmetics does not have any promotion posts but It is the champion of the beauty digital index 2011. The reason is because the company can collect the thoughts and advice of consumers via Q&A posts. This could help the company enhances the brand loyalty and the customers may become the long-term buyers gradually because the customers may feel the business listen to their opinions. However, Schultz (2009) argued that the primarily aim to using the social media is to selling products or services.

Among the six types of cooperative channels which including social media, spokesperson/model, expert/artist, blogger, brands within the same company, and other, the beauty companies often use social media, spokesperson or model, makeup expert or artist to enhance brand loyalty.

Picture F: L’Oréal Paris links its post with its Youtube channel

( Source:https://goo.gl/rDcM9O)

Picture G: In this post, Mac is included the clip about Ariane Grande talk about the profit of this Mac lipstick will donate to the charity (Source: https://goo.gl/2hgWKJ)

Overall, the beauty companies can use different types of post to achieve different aims. So your businesses want to introduce new products or remind the customers about existing products, the “Product” post is for you. But do not forget about having a link to your website or direct to product’s website that the customers can use to find out more information about it and also may consider about purchase it because Facebook can be used as sale tool (Schultz ,2009).

If your business creates the event like free makeup class to teach how to use your products or which event that you will be attend or you have any campaign that you are currently running or may have in the future, you can let your customers know about via “event” post.

The beauty companies do not use “promotion” post much, so if you want to let customers know about your offers or promotion, I suggest that you should use the email marketing because it will send direct to your target customers.

The most popular and engaging post on the Facebook for beauty companies are the entertainment type which means most of your post should be beauty poll, Q&A, survey, activity with reward, application. However, if your businesses want to collect thought and opinions of the customers, you should use beauty poll and survey because Shen & Bissell said those post will have more answers or comments than other post, so you will have a rich information about the customers.

However, many beauty companies preferred Q & A because it will increase the interaction between the customers and the business and the customers may share their experience or tips of using products on the comment. So other customers can read those experience and tips and may use or share it as the reference, thus the Facebook can be used as eWOM tool too. Moreover, the beauty companies can use other types of cooperative channels such as social medial, spokesperson/models or expert/artist to enhance brand loyalty.

You can know the disadvantage of using Facebook in my last post which is the business can not control the content that the customers will comment or post on their well such as bad experience or have problem with customer service/ products. Moreover, Shen & Bissell also suggest another disadvantages is the costumers often “like” rather than “comment” on the post because the Facebook users may think It is easy to “like” rather than spend time and effort to comment. However, there is not enough evidence or studies about this explanation yet, so it will need further investigation to find out the answer.

Reference:

Shen,B. & Bissell K. (2013) Social Media, Social Me: A Content Analysis of Beauty Companies’ Use of Facebook in Marketing and Branding. Journal of PromotionManagement. Volume 19 (Issue 5) [Online] < http://goo.gl/crkzWH> [Assesses 9 May 2016]

Schultz, D. E. (2009). Solving Marketing Problems with an Integrated Process. International Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications. Spring, 2009.

Sengupta, S. (2012). Facebook’s prospects may rest on trove of data. The New York Times. [Online] < http://goo.gl/zwAqpU> [Assesses 9 May 2016]

In the previous blog, we get to know what is social media and different types of it and today, I will explain why the business should use the Facebook in details. Firstly, Facebook is a social networking site and has 665 million daily (Smith, 2013) active users and now many companies use Facebook to promote their brands as well as their products. Also, in the past the business often uses one-way communication but the Facebook helps to turn it into a more interactive model of communication which is the business can delivery its information to the customers and the customers can give their feedback and thoughts back to the business (Sengupta, 2012)

There are many benefits that the business can get by using the Facebook for marketing (Smith,2013; Belicove, 2009; Shen & Bissell,2013):

1. Build relationships with customers:

The first benefits is building a relationship with your customers because Facebook provide the opportunity to let you connect with your customers and build a trusting relationship gradually. When people likes the Fan page of the business, it means that they are interesting in this brand and they can find out more about the brand through the posts of business. If the post is useful and meaningful, people will trust the business gradually and willing to share it with their friends and family.

2.Engage with the customer and influence your prospects:

The customers can engage with the brand on a Facebook Fan Page by posting them ask and answer questions, share their video and photos about the products on the business’s Facebook Wall. And the business can also communicate back with the customers by replying the comments or posts.

Moreover, the customers can become brand ambassadors of the business. For example, If the Dove share the tips to take care of skin on its wall, and the customers see it and think it is useful. So they share the post of Dove to their friends and may influence theirs friends to like the Fan page and even become aware of Dove or its products.

3.Increase brand awareness and reinforce brand loyalty:

The business can introduce its new products, promotions or campaign in its wall and the post will pop up on the newsfeed of the customers, so the customers will know about it. Those posts also help to remind the customers about the brand, thus it will Increase brand awareness and reinforce brand loyalty.

4.Drives Traffic to Your Website:

Most of the business will leave a link to their website in their Fan page and their posts. Then a small portion of Facebook huge amount of daily active users that redirect to the business’s website could improve the amount of qualifies traffic on their sites

Example: In the Dove’ Fan page, it has more than 26,000,000 people that can see its new post on their newsfeed and the business can leave its information which including its website in the “About” box and as you see in the picture, Dove also leave the link to its website in their post as well. So if people see the Dove’s post pop up on their newsfeed and they are interesting about it, they will click to the link and go to the Dove’s website.

Picture 1: Dove Facebook Fan page (Source: https://goo.gl/p1w3We)

5.Improve your business:

The customers may let down their guard and be honest to share their information with the business and others about how do they feel about the products and services, the good and bad experience and also some of their opinions or comments will helps the company improve their business.

For example: The link in the post below of Dove was not working, but then the customers noticed and comment to tell the Dove about it, so the Dove can fix the link right away.

(Source: https://goo.gl/p1w3We)

6.Improve your SEO:

The new Social Search feature of Google is now listing contents that are created on sites such as Facebook, your Fan Page content therefore will have the potential to generate favorable search engine results. By connecting your Fan Page to your website, you can use Social Search to drive even more viewers back to your site.

Example: When people type the brand on the search engines like in picture 1, it is not only shows the main website, but also shows the Facebook’s page of the business and in picture 2, the customers use the Social Search of Google, they will leaded to the Fan Page as well. So that will increase the chance that your customers will redirect to your website.

Picture 2: Search “Dove” on Google (Source: https://goo.gl/P0Pi3q)

 Picture 3: Search “Dove” on Google Social Search (Source:https://goo.gl/hkKohB)

Overall, the beauty companies should use the Facebook marketing because it has lots of benefits, but like other digital marketing, the major disadvantages of the Facebook marketing is the business can not control the content, comments, post that post by the customers about  its products or services. However, the business can contact the customer and solve the problems right away and it will helps to increase the reputation of the business as well.

Reference:

Belicove, M. E. (2009) 10 Ways a Facebook Fan Page Helps Your Business. [Online] <https://goo.gl/AnX9yC> [Assesses 9 May 2016]

Sengupta, S. (2012). Facebook’s prospects may rest on trove of data. The New York Times. [Online] < http://goo.gl/zwAqpU> [Assesses 9 May 2016]

Shen,B. & Bissell K. (2013) Social Media, Social Me: A Content Analysis of Beauty Companies’ Use of Facebook in Marketing and Branding. Journal of Promotion Management. Volume 19 (Issue 5).

Smith, J. (2013) 3 Reasons Why YOUR Business Should be using Facebook Marketing. [Online] <http://goo.gl/aWT8hR> [Assesses 9 May 2016]

In 1999, Pyra created the product that calls “blogger” and it is an user-friendly program that allows users update information frequently without cost any money. Nowadays, the blogging become more widely used and here are 152,000,000 blog sites available on the internet.

One research found out that the US internet user spend 3 times more time on blogs and social networking than the on email (The Nielsen company,2010) and Hubspot (2010) find out that the company that have blog site can get 55% more website visitors.

And if cosmetic company or any B2C company can writes or makes an official blog site, it is not only get 88% more leads per month (Hubspot, state of inbound marketing lead generation report, 2010) but those blog articles can also influence purchase as well (Juipiter research, 2008).

(All the facts in the 120 marketing stats charts and graphs of Hubspot,2012)

So the blog is a powerful tool that any companies should use to get more new customers and keep remind themselves to the existing customers. Then the first thing we should know is defining the blog.

Definition: Blogs are online diaries where information is electronically posted, updated frequently, and presented in reverse chronological order. (Grace & Rita, 2015)

There are a lot of free blogging platforms such as Tumblr, LiveJournal,Blog.com, but the Blogger and WordPress are the most popular platforms.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The blogger is owned by the Google and it is easy to use for the beginners because the Google supports and helps you managing the blog. Then you do not need to worry about its security, backups and you can get the free domain name for your blog.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The WordPress gives the bloggers more freedom to creative and make their blog become more appealing to their readers. However, you may end up paying a lot of money to get all the premium features, but then you have variety choices that can meet your own needs.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The WordPress.org is an open-source software and you owned and have fully control your blog site that means you will need to manage all your content, security and backups, but if you want, you can get support from you web hosting company at anytime.

The big advantage that using the WordPress.org is you do not worry about the hosted company suspends or even shut down your blog because they think it is spam or it may damage their terms of services.

For example, the Google shuts down Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism in 2008 (Salmon,2010) because it has large number views and incoming links and also the Google the same thing with one of top finance blogger in 2010 as well (Weisenthal, 2010).

How the cosmetic company use the blog for marketing?

The first way to use the blog as a marketing tools is working or sponsored with beauty bloggers.

If your company is already popular or have a good position in a market, you will you have a high chance that the beauty bloggers are willing to review and may recommend your products to their readers.

Example:

Source: http://www.pixiwoo.com/2016/03/soap-and-glory-highlight-sculpt.html

Pixiwoo is the most successful British beauty blogger with their ability to attract millions of readers to read and believe their honest review or feedback about the beauty products. Also in they leave the link to purchase the product in the end of the blog, then when the readers think the product is interesting, they will click the link to find more information and may even purchase the product later (Juipiter research, 2008).

However, the cosmetic company can not control how the blogger will write about their products and the blogger also do not just write a good review about product of company because they give sponsored deals for bloggers. The reason is like Sam Chapman (one of a founder of Pixiwoo) said she only accept those kind of sponsored deals if she really loves those products and would willing to buy them because if the bloggers do not being honest, those readers will not trust them again.

So It does not matter if you are the famous cosmetic company or just a new company, you have to make sure your products are good and then you may research about some beauty bloggers that suitable or their readers are the same of your target market.

For example, most the readers of Pixiwoo (www.pixiwoo.com) are between 18-65 and they can afford those high end products. So if your target market is adult and the products are luxury and expensive, Pixiwoo is a good choice for you. But if your target market is teenager and the products with affordable price, then Zoella (www.zoella.co.uk) is not a bad choice for you because her reader are between 14-30 and she already wrote lost of review about drugstore products.

Source: www.zoella.co.uk

After that you can ask the suitable bloggers to try and test your products and if they willing to do that. Then you can send those products or samples to them and wait for them to write the honest review after using the products. The review may be good or be bad, but you should be positive about it because even if the review is bad, at least you can use the review and the comments to improve your products later.

Overall, I think the cosmetic company should consider blog as an effective marketing method because it is low cost and brings lots of benefits like increase the website’s visitors or may influence in purchasing products. However, the major disadvantage is the company can not control the content of the blogs and it takes lots of time and afford to find the suitable beauty blogger and build the good relationship with them as well.

Reference:

Today, I will introduce you about some different forms of social media because many marketers think about using this potential marketing method to marketing themselves, improve their customer relationship and may make people remember about themselves. Firstly, we should know what is social media.

Social media is the term that describes all the web-based software and services that allow people to communicate, discuss in any form of social interaction which included text, audio, images, video,etc.

Social media come in a wide variety of forms, but all of them based around the premise of interaction between people such as discuss, sharing and exchange content about news articles or blog posts, photographs, video, etc posed by other users in social media. There are plenty of social media sites out there, but we can look some of them below:
1. Social bookmarking sites is the site that allow users to save their favourite web resources (page, video,etc) as a “bookmarks” and users can also use tags to categorize and then share them with their friends. This site will helps users can access their favourite web resources from anywhere if have internet.

However, I think this site is not popular like before because most of website have as “share this” icons or share it directly on social network site.

2. Social media submission sites such as Reddit is quite similar with social bookmarking sites because the users can submit their personal favourite link in here. The addition feature is that the users can “vote’ to rise the rating of that bookmarks and there are lots of discuss and may also debate about the most likeable link.

So the marketers can find out what type of content or structure that lots of people like and then improve their site based on those reviews, comments to make the site become more appealing.

3. Online forums and discussion sites have been popular since the early days of the internet, anyone can sign up and start to discuss online about general or specific topics with other online users. For example, the steam forums discuss about game error or review about games.

The business can uses this site to get closer to their customer by checking the reviews or comments about the products/services and it also helps the business improves their customer services by answer the questions of customers
4. Media sharing site allows you upload their personal content (photographs, video,etc) and other users can discuss, comments and share them with their online friends, but you can set restrict access or access freely for those content.

For example, Vimeo allows their members can upload, discuss and share their videos with other members or Flickr do the same for photographs.
5. Reviews and rating sites can be stand-alone review site like Reviewcentre.com (www.reviewcentre. com) that allows users to review and rating about the experience when they use products or services.

Other type of review site is e-commerce site add review component like Amazon or review site that concentrated only in one industry like TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) that focus on travel.Good reviews can be used as advertising opportunities and bad reviews can help the business improve their services or products.

6. Social network site is incredibly popular and I am sure that you know or at least hear about Facebook, MySpaces, LinkedIn’s and Google’s new G+. Those sites is a place that you can crate a group of “online friends” with whom they can communicate, discuss or share about anything such as video,  photo, etc.
Enormous amount of people use social network and the numbers are keep increasing everyday and the business should not waste this opportunity to get brand awareness from their customer and increase their reputation.

7. Blogs such as Blogger ( www.blogger.com) or WordPress (www.wordpress.com) is free and easy to use, so anyone can sign up and write review, experience or feeling about the product or services. Some of bloggers can have huge influence over plenty of people because their followers believe their review and it may affect the reputation of the business.

For example, Zoella who is a famous beauty blogger in UK and has enormous amount of followers. She often review about beauty products and most of her readers are female and all of they also interest about beauty. So Zoella think this is a good product and recommend it to her followers, then people may buy or at least consider about it when they need that product.

Overall, I think different forms of social media has different benefits and limitations. So if the marketers understand well about it and know how to using suitable form of social media that fits with their aims, then it will bring a huge success for their business.

Reference:

Ryan,D. & Jones, C. (2012) Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. London: Kogan Page. 2nd ed. [Online] Available at: <http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/brighton-ac/items/1272776> [ Accessed 1st February 2016]

Email marketing is still new compared to other traditional marketing, but marketers still think it is still a effective marketing method. For instance, The Radicati Group found out that worldwide revenues for the Email Market in 2014 is $12 billion and estimate to increase more nearly 50% revenue in 2018 [9]

One of the market researches shows that the organization may gets as high as return of more than 40 times for $1 that the marketers invested [7] [8]. So more than 65% of marketers think that the email delivers an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ return on investment [1].

Today, we will research about some basic knowledge of Email Marketing and the first thing need to do is defining Email marketing.

Definition: Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail to send promotion or build customer relationship or brand awareness among potential customers [5].

Some example of email marketing:

The Bonobs’s email is a email campaign that encourages the customers to take action. This email is a good example for marketing campaign because its simple, attractive and convinient for customers. So it will increase the ability that the customer will take action and it still looks good even the customer use mobile to check email [3].

I think the email from Litmus is quite interesting because it used swipe motion for eye-catching and make people curious about the content of email. However, I am not sure that the email can still load perfectly on the mobile phone because the motion may not be supported.

There are some advantages of email marketing[ 2]:

1. Low cost: the cost for email marketing is lower than other types of marketing
2. Save time: Email do not required lots of time to create or send like video, newspaper, advertising,etc
3. Target marketing: The business can use email marketing to send a suitable and personally email to their customer based on customer segment such as demographic, lifestyle, etc.

For example, Amazon often send email that related to personal interest or search history of recipient.

4. Brand awareness: The consumers have subscribers the business’ email which give the business permission to send email, So the business can send email to customers to encourage potential customers to take action or at least make the brand or product stay on their mind.

5. Increase purchasing: The email marketing is still a good method to achieve or increase the sale even that your products/services sell only in an actual store. Also according to ExactTarget’s 2009 Channel Preference Study, the email marketing can encourage more than 50% customers to buy products/services [6].

For example, the business often send email about promotion before special day such as Christmas, Black Friday,etc and the customers’ demand at that time is high, so the potential customers will purchase or at least consider about buying the products.

6. Build loyalty: all the business want to turn a new customer into loyalty customer, but they should not forget to maintain the current customers. So the email marketing can also be use to build and keep the customer loyalty. As an example, the Boots send email about the advantage card to current customers and remind the customer about their existing points that they can use to purchase.

The first limitation is increasing email marketing list, so the business should find ways to make people willing to subscribes to their email list. Then the business should focus more about how to make the “lightboxes” without make the customers feel annoy or frustrate. The “lightbox”is a small box that pop-up in the website to encourage people register for receive email from the business [10].

Other limitation is how to prevent people to opt out your subscriber list and some main reasons for it is because the business send too much email that may be mark as spam or people do not interest about the email anymore. Then the business can try new way to make the email more appealing such as using Video campaign in email. They also need to improve their email to make it be more mobile-friendly because mobile phone become a personal things that everyone can have and they spend lots of time with it.

Overall, I think that email marketing is a good marketing method because it is suitable for all kind of business, lower cost, save time and it is high return on investment. However, it still has some limitation like limited ability to grow email list and customers like other marketing methods such as using social media. But if the business spend more time and effort to invest the email marketing, I think those limitations are not a big issue.

Reference:

1. Adestra, ‘2014 Email Marketing Census – email is number 1 for ROI’,
2014. [Online]. Available:
<http://www.adestra.com/resources/downloadable-reports/2014-emailmarketing-industry-census/.> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
2. Bawm, Z. L & Nath, R. P. D (2014) A Conceptual Model for Effective Email Marketing. 17th International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT). [Online]. Avalaible: < http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=7073103> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
3. Carly, S. (2015) 16 Examples of Awesome Email Marketing Campaigns. Hubspot. [Online] available: < http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32854/10-Simply-Awesome-Examples-of-Email-Marketing.aspx>
4.Joe,M (2013). 6 essential benefits of email marketing. Fusionfarm. [Online] Available: < http://blog.fusionfarm.com/blog/six-essential-benefits-of-email-marketing> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
5. Marketing Runner (2016) Email Marketing-Traction Channel #9. [Online] Available: <https://marketingrunner.com/email-marketing-traction-channel-9/> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
6. Morgan, S. (2009). Is Email Marketing Endangered?. Exact target. [Online] Available: < http://assets.exacttarget.com/legacy/uploadedfiles/Resources/Whitepapers/ExactTarget_EmailUtilization.pdf.> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
7. S. Jenkins, The truth about email marketing. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
FT Press, 2009.
8. GetResponse, ‘Email Marketing Secrets Guide’, 2008. [Online].
Available: <http://www.getresponse.com/documents/core/whitepapers/Email_Marketing_Secrets_Guide.pdf.> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
9.Radicati Team, ‘The Radicati Group, Inc. Email Market, 2014-2018’,
Radicati.com, 2014. [Online]. Available:
<http://www.radicati.com/?p=12482.> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]
10. Shireen, Q. (2015) Forecast: Top 4 Email Challenges Your Enterprise Will Face in 2016. Benchmark.[Online] Available: <http://www.benchmarkemail.com/blogs/detail/forecast-top-4-email-challenges-your-enterprise-will-face-in-2016> [Accessed 31st Jan 2016]