The skincare category will reach $200 billion in sales in five years. Between 2018 and 2026, the global skincare market is projected to grow by more than 50 percent. Skincare is the top-selling category on all of Amazon.
Okay, I’m not here to regale you with a bunch of fast facts that you could Google. But as an e-commerce agency with several clients in the skincare vertical, we care a lot about this space. And we like to think we know quite a bit about it, as well. For more than three years, we’ve managed digital strategy, influencer strategy, creative strategy, paid media strategy and execution, from social to programmatic to Amazon.
One client has had 4X returns for three years, and another just saw 26X returns on Amazon Prime Day.
Okay, enough humble bragging. As the skincare category expands, competition does too. There are a ton of players, and the L’Oreals, Sephoras and Cliniques of the world are sharpening their knives for a fight. Which goes to say that if you’re going to really compete in this space, and really make a name, you’ve got to be prepared for a fight. And you’ve got to prepare to do even the little things well.
What those things are, in detail, is a conversation for another day. But I’ll summarize it this way — if you are not customer obsessed, someone else will be. If you do not blow your customers away with personalized experiences, someone else will.
Here are some more stats on the skincare space that provide a lens into what you should look out for.
Augmented and virtual reality are putting products on faces — without leaving home.
Subscription services will grow an 72 percent before 2023.
Clean beauty is growing 5X as fast for brands that are free of parabens and are all-natural.
60 percent of women would be willing to spend on new brands if they offered natural products.
Real influencers, when leveraged properly, can return 11X on the investment.
Brand collaborations are hot, and can be 30X cheaper than digital advertising alone.
Personalization is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s becoming a mandatory. Eight out of 10 surveyed consumers say they have purchased personalized skin care.
If I could summarize all of that into one sentence, it would be this —
Skincare customers want clean, natural products behind an authentic story with a brand that’s impossibly easy to engage.
That’s an oversimplification, but that doesn’t make it less true. But the ‘why’ is just as important. Augmented reality, for instance, was growing in popularity but became a game-changer when, during COVID, the physical story literally wasn’t an option. AR lets customers put products on bodies from their phone. Sometimes they can’t even do that in the store.
And it’s desirable because it’s easy, it’s accessible. It greases the skids on an e-commerce transaction because you’re enabling trial right there on your site. If they’re that far, there aren’t many objections left.
Let’s talk about why clean beauty is important. Chemicals are starting to scare the shit out of people. As this information becomes easier to find, customers are growing apprehensive of having weird goo on their skin. Clean products create trust and confidence too. And they’ve proven they’ll open their checkbooks a bit wider if you can deliver it.
And of course, personalization. There are a lot of ways to do this, and not all of them are truly personal; they just feel personal, like you’ve thought of everything and you actually care.
Jebbit is a quiz tool that we love. They deliver interactive experiences that let a user enter their own information with specifics on their skin, and based on how you code the quiz, it will drive site visitors to the categories or products that are best suited to their skin condition or skin type.
Customers love it. But so do the brands because now they have a wealth of first-party data that they can use to — you guessed it — send personalized content. And not just personalized product recommendations, but need-specific videos and tutorials, tips and pointers, stuff like that.
The more you know about your different categories of customers, the more you can delight them with.
There are a few other trends we’re monitoring, as well. Be sure to check out our podcast, The Marketing Moment, where we’ll talk about a few of them on next week’s episode (due out July 20).
Some of the things we’ll discuss are differences in usage behavior by generation; Gen Z and Millennials want all-natural (and maybe sustainability/a social cause) as we mentioned. Baby boomers want age-refining. How has this changed over time, and how will it change over time?
One key difference that is emerging between Gen Z and millennials is the decreasing interest in cosmetics among the younger demos. And among those still buying cosmetics, the motivations have changed; cosmetics are now more a form of expression versus an attempt to model a normalized standard of beauty.
Another trend is beauty products reflecting diets. We’re seeing a huge increase in beauty products being marketed as vegan and gluten-free with mainstream brands highlighting this in adverts, as well.
What does it all mean? Tune into our podcast next week, and continue to refresh this blog, as well. We’ll be talking about skincare quite a bit.
-DB