Beauty Influencer Marketing: How It Works 

Influencers have moved from being the stars of social media to also being the stars of the marketing world. This is especially true in the beauty industry where beauty influencer marketing is becoming the dominant channel for brands to reach their customers.

These influencers can come from all walks of life and backgrounds and each has their own highly dedicated audience that eagerly awaits each new tutorial or product review.

The power these influencers have to make or break new products has led to the explosion of new cosmetic startup brands that look to social media as their primary and only marketing channel.

The beauty niche has a style all its own and there can be a lot to understand and decipher for brands looking to get into the space.

In this guide, we’ll take you through the benefits of beauty influencer marketing along with strategies brands are using to leverage this channel to the fullest.

What Is Beauty Influencer Marketing?

Beauty influence marketing is when new or established cosmetic brands partner with influencers who exclusively create beauty-related content. 

Within the beauty niche, influencers can exist in sub-niches such as nail-related content, makeup tutorials, and other areas.

Each of these areas and influencers can have different audiences that each react differently to content. For example, makeup tutorials and nail-related content can have drastically different engagement rates on platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

Part of beauty influencer brand marketing is to understand these variances and choose the right influencers to fit your product category and campaign goals.

Benefits Of Beauty Influencer Marketing For Brands

Brands are moving toward beauty influencers as their primary marketing channel for the following key benefits it brings to their campaigns.

Trust

Trust is a key brand-building goal with any campaign, especially for startups or brands just entering a new market. Popular Influencers already have a very close and authentic relationship with their audience. This means when an influencer mentions or reviews a product, a significant amount of trust and credibility is transferred to the brand during that partnership.

Targeting Opportunities

With so many beauty influencers, brands have a wide variety of choices when it comes to partnerships. Whether it’s nano influencers or large VIP accounts, you can find partnerships to fit any campaign type, goal, and budget.

Enhance Existing Marketing Efforts

While many brands exclusively use influencers as their only marketing channel, influencer partnerships also work well to round existing strategies that include paid ads and other forms of marketing.

Beauty influencer marketing is a key part of any 360 marketing strategy and works synergistically with almost any broader campaign goals.

Different Types Of Beauty Influencer Campaigns

When brands partner with beauty influencers, they generally produce one of several types of content to go along with the campaign.

These have become standard across the industry and they perform well when paired with the right campaign goals.

Tutorial & Educational Content

Tutorials are a staple with beauty influencers and it’s a great way to introduce new audiences to the unique selling points of your product.

Tutorial-style content is beneficial when it addresses a specific problem or issue that your product solves. It’s a perfect way to introduce your product to an audience that is actively seeking out the exact solution you provide.

Giveaways

Giveaways are always popular across social media and they perform well in the beauty niche. These campaigns can also increase engagement depending on what the customers are required to enter the giveaway.

A giveaway can also be combined with many other campaign types to boost performance and drive brand mentions across a social media platform.

Product Collaborations

These campaigns are more complex to create but provide the closest relationship with the brand and the influencer. With these, you’ll partner with the influencer to create an exclusive product that the influencer helped develop specifically for their audience.

A simpler version of this campaign type is to use exclusive offers only available through the influencer. This is less expensive and requires less effort while still providing some of the benefits of a full collaboration.

Live Event Coverage

Partnering with an influencer during a live event can bring attention to your brand on a specific social media platform. If the event is trending on social media, your brand influencer can help you attract a larger share of the mentions and views related to that event.

Product Mentions & Sponsored Posts

These campaigns are the most straightforward and they also tend to cost less than other more involved campaign types. But despite their simplicity, they perform well and are a cost-effective option for newer brands looking to quickly reach new audiences.

With these campaigns, the influencer will simply mention your brand at some point during their post. They may also state that a certain piece of content is sponsored by your brand along with buying information or a way to learn more.

To increase engagement, these are generally combined with some type of exclusive offer, such as a discount when using the influencer’s private code.

For beauty brands on a budget, this is generally the go-to campaign type using smaller influencers.

Partnering With The Right Beauty Influencer 

There is no shortage of choices when it comes to finding the right influencer in the beauty niche.

However, all those choices can make finding the right influencer a little more difficult.

To narrow down your search, you want to follow a few best practices to ensure the highest ROI from your partnership.

Audience Overlap

The most significant contributor to beauty influencer marketing success is the amount of audience overlap between the creator and your brand’s target customer.

The more overlap there is, the more successful your campaign will be along with higher returns.

With beauty influencers, one area to be aware of is the average age of their audience. Across all beauty niches, the average age skews younger on social media. If your beauty product or brand is targeted toward older audiences, a different channel or different niche of influencers may yield better results.

Niche

The beauty niche that the influencer specializes in should be at the top of your list when choosing an influencer to partner with. The specific niche you choose can vary depending on the type of campaign and the campaign goals.

For example, a campaign using sponsored posts may use a variety of influencers in slightly different niches and still get strong results. However, a sponsored tutorial post would perform better with a tighter focus on a niche related to your product.

If you require a tighter niche focus for your brand and campaign strategy, try to work with smaller influencers.

Influencer & Brand Alignment

The next step is to ensure the influencer’s style and existing content matches your brand’s voice. There are many great influencers out there but their content isn’t a great match for every brand.

Whatever your brand’s voice is, try to match that with influencer and their past content.

The Best Platform For Beauty Influencer Marketing

The two most prominent platforms for beauty brand partnerships are Instagram and TikTok. TikTok generally has higher engagement which can be important for many campaigns. But Instagram has more total beauty influencers, which provides more opportunities to find the influencer that fits your target audience the closest.

YouTube is a little less popular for brands but the longer video format and slightly older average audience age can make it attractive to many brands.

Conclusion

Today, you can launch a new beauty brand entirely on social media using nothing but influencer partnerships. This shows the power that beauty influencer marketing has and the central part it plays in the industry.