Phygital Marketing: The next big wave in marketing beauty brands
Jamila Bannister
Brand and Marketing Strategist to Indie beauty brands | Marketing Campaigns and E-Comm Systems for beauty brands| Shop the Beautiful Market
The first time I heard the term “Phygital marketing” I was very intrigued. I was intrigued. I was reading one of my “go-to” cosmetics marketing magazines and I had to stop and ruminate. In case you’re wondering, what in the world is “phygital marketing” it’s exactly what it looks like. It’s the blending of the physical and digital worlds to create an enhanced customer experience as people shop and engage with brands. In the world of beauty and personal care, consumers still value in-store experiences as much as online experiences. According to a 2019 Euromonitor report on the state of the beauty industry, in the next 5 years, 80% of all sales of beauty products will be influenced by digital engagement. There is no doubt that if you didn’t prioritize it before, incorporating a phygital marketing strategy to drive sales of your beauty brands and services is almost mandatory for growth. But how do you optimize for success? We explored 5 crucial elements of any successful phygital marketing strategy.
Set out your business Strategy
There was a time when building a thriving beauty brand was reserved for those lucky enough to secure investors with deep pockets or at the very least, those with a small inheritance. The rest of us had to grind for years and pray to get lucky. However, building your beauty brand is no longer a one (wo)man show where you simply learn your craft and tend to your clients or you mix your formula in your kitchen and hustle. With access to labs, formulas, markets, and people dramatically increasing in the last 20 years, barriers to entering the beauty industry have all but disappeared.
This means there are many more brands competing on the market. An unfortunate side effect of increased access though is that many of these brands lack a real business strategy to grow their business. Implementing any successful marketing strategy, including a phygital one, requires you to be clear on the vision you have for your business, the core values that will guide the way you do business, and the mission that will set out the goals you want to achieve. Without a clear vision and accompanying mission, you will be on a path to getting nowhere fast.
Prioritise the customer experience
Once you’ve gotten clear on your business strategy and goals, your next step is to think about the customer experience you want to create. With consumers being more health and safety conscious because of the pandemic, your phygital strategy needs to strike a balance between delivering the product while creating a sense of safety as people shop in-store. Companies like Perfect Corp retail products like AI-powered virtual interfaces allow you to “try before you buy” with full makeovers being delivered by AR technology.
If you haven’t been using automation to help you manage all the incoming questions and queries, you are sleeping on a tool that can make your life easier. Whether it’s a specialized chatbot like Manychat or the native auto responses on Facebook or Whatsapp messenger, wherever you’re telling people to contact you, set up auto-responses to help with your communication. People don’t want to be given the silent treatment. They want to know that they have been seen, heard and most of all they want their products.
You can also consider smart mirrors that allow you to test your foundation or give a hair colour recommendation before making a purchase. Tools that offer AI-driven beauty product recommendations add to the shopping experience. This can be offered in-store without the use of physical testers before buying.
Now, these are all high investment solutions, and maybe you don’t have a massive budget to install smart mirrors in your store. As a more cost-effective alternative, consider turning this experience into an app for your brand or offer discount codes on product samples as an incentive to scan an in-store QR code or share about your purchase experience online. Regardless of which activation you choose, you always want to think about how you can manage the process as closely as possible while creating a unique and delightful shopping experience for customers.
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Keep it simple
Creating a simple yet delightful experience should be a core value guiding the phygitial strategy you develop for your beauty brand. There is nothing worse than tech “doing too much” when we just need it to help us move towards making a purchase. Yes, it would be awesome to get the “ooohhs” and the “ahhhs” from customers as they engage with your activation, but never sacrifice simplicity and satisfaction to please your need to put on a show.
As you prioritize the customer experience, you’d realize that while people enjoy being engaged differently, they still want the outcome to be pleasurable and want their product delivered without draining their energy or time. Activations like pop-up booths used by HUDA Beauty and Glossier, created delightfully unexpected experiences while customers did their usual shopping.
Play to your strengths
A fundamental part of your phygital marketing strategy should be playing to your strengths. Complex and high-functioning technology is becoming increasingly cheap and accessible, therefore creating a digital solution that works with any budget is now within reach. What requires work, thought and planning is how you will create an activation that works with your specific brand.
Even if you’re a small beauty business and your physical distribution points are weekend markets, pop-up shops, or small trade shows, you have to turn that booth into the best phygital experience those shoppers have ever seen! Make your booth a selfie haven, allow shoppers to unlock online coupon codes if they spend over a certain amount or create a small scavenger hunt around the event with clues accessible via QR code. Whether it’s a highly engaged community, agility in mobilizing resources, or a having particularly unique product, use what you’ve got. The possibilities are endless, but you must spend time figuring out your area of mastery and leverage it to skip ahead of the competition.
Collect that data
While you’re having fun creating phygital experiences for your customers, don’t lose sight of the end game which is collecting the consumer data. Use this as a chance to capture data like names, email addresses, phone numbers, and even birthdays. Of course, with every piece of data collected, you now have an immense responsibility to your customers to properly manage and protect their information.
A policy for data management and privacy is expected to be present in every business, but you should make the effort to ensure terms and conditions are visible and easy for consumers to see and agree to as they “enter your world”.
Phygital marketing is going to become par for the course for beauty brands as they grow their business in the coming years. If you want to create unexpectedly delightful customer experiences along the buyer’s journey, you’ve got to find ways to engage all five senses of your customers by creating physical and virtual experiences. The brands that can blend the two worlds simply and seamlessly will be the ones ahead of the marketing and profit curve.
This article originally appeared in PERSONALITY Magazine . Click to subscribe for the full issue in your inbox.
Customer Service |Digital Marketing | Beautypreneur | Beauty Business Consultant| Founder: The Girl Code Conference NON- PROFIT- H.O.M.E FOUNDATION (Helping Our Moms Elevate)
2 年This was a good read and offered quite a few recommendations I can definitely use to improve my beauty brand, thank you!