Data suggests that beauty products in Singapore retails at S$120 million every year, with perfumes taking one quarter — Singaporeans love smelling good, huh!
Skin care products account for 40% of the total sales and make-up products taking the remaining 35%. There isn’t an official confirmation statement on how worth the beauty market is in Singapore.
But if we were to run the numbers, taking into account all the beauty products that have been labelled by doctors, sold in salon, or sold through multi-level marketing, then it’s safe to say that the combined sales of health and beauty products in the country bores through the S$500 million market, with an estimated growth rate of 30% annually.
This just confirms one thing – beauty products in Singapore sell. They’re among the few products in the country that are always flying off shelves, and finding their way into many Singaporeans dressing tables.
In terms of per capita spend on beauty products and toiletries in the whole Asia Pacific region, Singapore stands second to only one country, Japan. South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong all line up behind it.
Now, the question to ask, how you market health and beauty products in this amazing country? What are the strategies and tactics must you adopt to penetrate the cosmetic industry in the country?
Read on to find out:
Focus on Social Media
The first place to direct your effort when marketing your health or beauty products online is social media. That’s because this is one place where users influence each other.
Of all the social media platforms that exists, your key priority should be with Instagram and Facebook. One thing with health and beauty products is that the majority of the users you encounter on these two platforms (particularly Instagram) is a potential buyer.
Shoppers aren’t just browsing through the platforms. They’re paying attention to everything that’s happening around them. They’re paying attention what the Facebook connects or Instagram followers are doing and taking mental notes.
They’re paying attention to what products they’re using or which brands they’re endorsing and making the decision to try them out. You’ll find them on Influencers’ feeds browsing and trying to understand some things about them. What products are they using? Why are their skin tones so fine? And why are a great majority of them endorsing a certain product or brand?
You’ll also find them posting their own content on their newsfeed, and trying to influence each other – indirectly though.
Brands aren’t left behind in this. You’ll find them receiving their fair share of stalking. In other words, Facebook and Instagram users are a curious lot. Once they see something they like or are convinced it’s good for them, the next thing they want to do is dig up for more information about it.
You can capitalise on this trend by taking a cure from some of the world leading brands like Glossier. Ever wondered why this brand has managed to attract a cult-like following? Everything might appear so effortless or less calculated on their part, but dig into their strategy and you’ll learn that it’s not a matter of luck.
What these brands do is focus on generating awesome posts with the ability to influence and spark curiosity. Their primary target are usually two groups of people, Gen Z and millennials.
Once they’ve succeeded in locking a user in, they’ll then try to lure them into taking action through retargeting. This is a strategy most of them have been capitalising on, and which has seen to it that they’re able to capture even more sales.
Retargeting also makes it possible to capture health and beauty shoppers that are still hanging in the grey area. It’s what pushes them to the brink of taking action, and forces them to lay down their guards and take action.
How to Manage your Social Media Accounts
It’s been established that one of the most effective way to market your products online is to focus on maintaining a super-active social media presence.
Here’s some entry-level pointers on how you can manage these social media channels:
For Facebook:
· Learn to share articles, images, and videos with tricks and how-to tips. Your approach should be an empathetic and educative one. If your users can feel and be convinced that they’re interacting with someone who’s undergoing the save predicament as they, then you’re already halfway to getting them to take action.
· Highlight the reviews and milestones that you’re getting from influencers. A simple endorsement from your Facebook and Instagram influencers is enough to get your sales through the roof. You can get them to vouch for your product or even release a simple promotional video for it. The next thing you want to do is highlight everything they’re saying and make it available for the whole world to see.
· Be consistent with offering customers services. One thing you want to prove to your users is that you’re concerned and that you’ll be always there when they need you. So be sure to respond to all their questions on time, and with enough patience and attention to minor details.
· Adopt a culture of sharing well-researched, and useful content at least once in a week. Teach them about something they don’t already know or that which only a few of them know.
For Instagram:
Instagram should be your best platform for this.
Instagram is centred on good visuals, so you want to start by taking nice photos to grab the attention of the users on this board. Forget about snapping and uploading. With Instagram you have to be prepared to take an extra mile. If your photos aren’t legit, then there’s no way you’re growing to be like any of those beauty brands that attract thousands of likes on their photos.
You need three things for this – good lighting, good colouring, and good framing. Your subject matter must also be on point. And yes, steer clear of those garish ads that you’re tempted to plop on your Instagram newsfeed. No one logs into their Instagram accounts to be shouted at about discounts. If you must promote your products on this platform, then learn to keep it low key until the opportunity presents itself naturally.
Learn to Utilise Hashtags. Without them, you might as well just forget about gaining followers. With each photo, you’re allowed to post a maximum of 40 hashtags. You might want to optimise those hashtags and make sure you’re using them to the full maximum.
A good portion of your time should be directing to researching about these hashtags. Scour around for all the hashtags similar brands are using, and then list them all in the notes app.
While at it, be sure to take notes on the number of photos on each hashtag. For this case, you might want to avoid any hashtag with millions of photos unless you have another convincing reason to use them.
Small niche hashtags are your slum dung. You can take a few of these hashtags and focus on building them slowly. The more your followers grow, the more you can progress to hashtags with so many followers. It’s after you hit 100K followers and above that you can start capitalising on the highly competitive hashtags. But until then, learn two stick with hashtags with a small following.
Think of Instagram as Your Magazine. To perfect your marketing strategy on Instagram, you must learn to think about your Instagram as a magazine, a lifestyle magazine to be more precise. Your followers are your key readers, and what they want to see is your overall lifestyle.
You can use an app such as UNUM to make your Instagram account. With such an app, you can upload your photos in advance, and throw in some little sizzle to find the right colour composition that you can adopt for the entire Instagram account. Your focus should be to create a board that not only looks pretty, but also consistent. With time you should be able to come up with a formula on how to post your photos.
It goes without saying that none of this is easy. You have to be willing to pump in a lot of effort in experimenting with different features and elements to be able to pull this off.
Your magazine should reflect what you stand for as a brand. It should embody your business culture and the feeling you want to evoke in your customers. Your colour scheme should be modern and fresh, and a clear depiction of what your business is all about.
Show Your Products
Your goal is to sell your health or beauty products. So, you must be willing to show them around to your followers. However, while at it, be sure not to use your account as a product catalogue. Instead, try focusing on the lifestyle that your users are likely to have should they decide to go ahead and try out your beauty products.
The point is to focus on the benefits of using your products. It’s also fairly possible that your users already know about your products or if they’re interested in checking them out, the least they could do is visit your web portal for their catalogue or more information on them.
You’re also allowed to snap the best features of your products and show them around. Remember, you’re not doing your business any justice by hiding your product images. The problem sets in when you’re overtly promotional with the approach that you take.
Go slow on trying to win you followers and instead focus on educating on a thing or two that they don’t know about products.
Study Your Competition
This step is absolutely necessary. You need to dig out all the dirt on your competition and evaluate your advantage. Find out about all the brands offering the same products as you. Find out about what they’re doing, and use the information you find out to carve out your own unique path.
This is also the right moment to do some little bit of SWOT analysis. What is your strength, weakness, opportunities, and Threats in this? If you consider your competitors as a threat, analyse them from their point of weakness and come up with a well-thought out plan on how to outsell them.
Try to Make Your Mobile Experience Awesome
As cliché and repetitive as this piece of advice sounds, it’s true (especially here in Singapore) that the bulk of online shopping is happening at the palm of shoppers’ hands. App usage is experiencing an upshot.
About 65% of all the online transaction in Singapore is happening via mobile. To capitalise on this trend, you can start by adopting a responsive design and using image that are easy to read on mobile devices and carts that are pretty persistent across all devices.
Your mobile experience must be well optimised to capture on-the-go opportunities to the max.
Activate as much Shopper data as you can to Personalise your Content
The point of activating your shopper data is to gather more intelligence on your customers experiences. Your customers are online hunting for a broad range of beauty products. They browsing on the mobile phones, checking apps, visiting social media pages, and watching videos. They are doing all this just to understand the products they’re using or intend to start using in the future.
The least you could do is come up with a plan on how to best connect with them. The more you know about them, the more you’ll be able to personalise your content and stick to what is more relevant to them.
A good example of a brand you can take a cue from is L’Oreal. If you’ve been keen on following their subsidiaries, including Urban Decay, Essie, Lancome, NYX, and Garnier, you must have noticed how much clout they’re gaining by personalising their interaction with shoppers.
Try using Video Retargets to Reel Your Customers Back
There’s no way you’re running a successful online marketing campaign for your health and beauty products without considering video retargeting.
Data shows that online shoppers use close to a third of the time they spend online to watch video content. This is especially true with the GEN Z. Most of their time online is spend digging through online videos. As a marketer, it’s best that you capitalise on this common trend by using retargeting to draw back your customers.
Video advertising has increased by roughly 40% over the past few years, with some study findings projecting more than a half of the traffic that you’ll be getting in the next two years will be video-based.
Get in touch with us on +65 6789 9852 for more digital marketing ideas that you can use to market your healthcare products here in Singapore.