Sometimes, a beauty company’s fans have insights and preferences that the company founders may not be aware of. Through crowdsourcing, growing brands can extract that information from the masses and deliver better products that more people will want to purchase.
Beauty brands can utilize social media platforms to collect just that type of feedback from customers. Through Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, these brands strike up open dialogues about their products that help to nurture and grow loyal customer bases. By engaging with followers and seeking their input, you can improve your marketing and innovation strategies while cultivating a community of strong brand advocates.
The Beauty of Crowdsourcing
With the right audience and engagement tools, you can crowdsource everything from a brand name to a logo to an entirely new product.
In 2012, Bobbi Brown got the nostalgia bug and decided to revive some of its most popular lip colors that it had stopped producing. The company’s namesake and CEO posted a video on the brand’s Facebook page and invited its 250,000 followers to vote on which shades they’d like to see restocked from a list of the 10 most frequently requested. The chosen colors were eventually sold directly and exclusively through the company’s Facebook page.
This is just one example of a brand that leveraged crowdsourcing techniques to deepen its follower connections and advance its internal goals. By following these strategies, rising beauty brands can emulate this example and start getting more from follower feedback:
- Identify Consumer Desires
The best way to understand what consumers want is to ask them. By crowdsourcing feedback, you can figure out which products customers prefer and give them more of what they want.
ColourPop Cosmetics relies almost exclusively on social media feedback to drive new product launches. Combining influencers with community comments, ColourPop quickly identifies highly desired products and then moves from concept to delivered product in less than a week.
Several brands, including nCg Skincare and Ayana Beauty, crowdsourced their latest marketing initiatives. Each reached out to consumers on ideas for new graphics and designs, getting a feel for the type of messaging that would resonate while receiving free creative input they otherwise would have missed.
- Discover New Problems to Solve
What skincare problems do your followers have? By asking the right questions, you can discover new information and provide targeted solutions your customers will love you for.
When Anuradha Koli submitted an idea for a turmeric product that exfoliated both the face and body to beauty product crowdsourcing platform Volition, she didn’t expect to hear back. Three weeks after she sent in the concept, Volition informed Koli that the idea would move forward.
Eventually, the exfoliant garnered enough votes to move into production as Koli and Volition worked to make sure the turmeric didn’t stain and that it’d be effective on both the face and the body. In September, Koli’s creation debuted in Sephora’s stores.
Koli broached a problem that hadn’t been on Volition’s radar and helped turn it into a viable, valuable product. Some customers want natural ingredients, while others may seek more powerful products. Either way, ask the market what it needs, then provide the solutions it craves.
- Hone Your Tone
Followers of different brands prefer different tones of voice. Is your brand clinical, edgy, sassy, minimalist, or something else? By asking followers what they think of the brand and how they view themselves, you can create marketing content that speaks to your target audiences without losing sight of your brand’s trademark tone.
Crowdsourcing is a big reason Richelieu Dennis has been able to take beauty company Sundial Brands to more than $200 million in annual revenue. For instance, female customers told Sundial they wanted Jamaican Black Castor Oil but couldn’t find it or any substitutes, and Sundial created products around that need, resulting in one of its largest collections. And when Sundial created a product with rosemary as a primary ingredient and heard from a customer that rosemary could pose problems for pregnant buyers, it quickly swapped out the herb and used peppermint instead.
Dennis, Sundial’s CEO, believes a willingness to crowdsource helps the company stay customer-centric and authentic. Rather than positioning Sundial as just another brand trying to beat the competition, Dennis prefers it be a company solely concerned with surpassing the expectations of its customer base.
The next time you face a major decision or product launch, don’t keep discussions behind locked doors. Follow these steps to crowdsource information, increase follower engagement, and provide better products to an increasingly happy fan base.
