Dive Brief:
- Cosmetics brands Maybelline and Lime Crime had the highest engagement across visual social media platforms so far this year, compared to competitors Estée Lauder, L'Oréal and Revlon, according to a ShareIQ study made available to Marketing Dive. The study analyzed the brands' marketing strategies across visual platforms including Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr from January through September 2017.
- Maybelline reported nearly 60 million likes on Instagram — 49x Revlon's count — while Lime Crime had 46.3 million likes. Instagram engagement for Lime Crime hit 0.78%, however, which beat Maybelline's 0.52%, per the study.
- On Pinterest, Maybelline got 2x Lime Crime's engagement and 25x Estée Lauder's.
Dive Insight:
The ShareIQ study emphasized the importance of a visual content strategy for cosmetics brands and highlighted Maybelline's as a "smart" model designed to bolster interactions with beauty consumers through social media and influencers. Maybelline saw a major jump when model Adriana Lima posted an image with the brand's products in April, per the study. That post alone drove 290,000 engagements on Instagram.
As more consumers look to online beauty bloggers and visual-based social platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube for makeup tips, cosmetics brands are following suit and beefing up their digital strategies in response, especially as younger audiences grow more willing to experiment with digital and social beauty innovations that were never previously available.
This ShareIQ study comes as cosmetic, beauty and fashion brands have begun to integrate more innovative tech into their marketing mix. Estée Lauder, L'Oréal and other brands rolled out augmented reality apps earlier this year that overlay a virtual image on a real background through a smartphone camera to let consumers try on new looks without having to use real makeup samples.
Leveraging social media to drive engagement and sales — both online and in brick-and-mortar stores — will only become more essential as the beauty and retail landscapes continue to be disrupted by e-commerce sites like Amazon. It's logical that cosmetics brands — particularly established ones with greater bandwidth like Maybelline — are beefing up their social presence to attract tech-savvy and young consumers.
