The Objective
Shifting from in-store to digital
Research shows that how consumers discover, research, and buy beauty products has fundamentally shifted. The cosmetics industry, which built its foundation on in-store experiences, is now dominating social commerce — ranging from influencer collaborations, VR filters, subscription boxes, and apps.
Faced with a dynamic proliferation of digital channels and increasing complexities of social marketing, COSMEDIX, a luxury skincare brand and pioneer of clean, cosmeceutical skincare, wanted to find a way to bring its consumer community together while effectively raising brand awareness and making its customers' experience more rewarding.
The Solution
Leveraging the COSMEDIX community
The best influencer endorsement today is the one that comes from your customers. And an influential consumer can take different forms. These personas range from brand advocates — with a few hundred friends or followers — to expert reviewers and social media influencers — those most often associated with influencer marketing, typically with a lot of fans and followers.
The content they create can also become different dimensions of social proof — from Instagram photos to long-form reviews or consumer insight surveys. The combinations are infinite.
But when it comes to influencer marketing, most marketers today only focus on a single influence persona. COSMEDIX decided to flip the traditional influencer model on its head.
The COSMEDIX Crowd program
COSMEDIX saw the opportunity to not only create its social community but to also leverage that community as the foundation to deliver a new, personalized consumer experience that integrates the multidimensions of influencer marketing and social proof that consumers trust today.
With zero spend on media or influencer activations, the brand wanted to partner with relevant influencers, advocates, referrers, and loyalists to power their COSMEDIX Crowd program. By leveraging multiple persona types within its program, COSMEDIX was able to develop an integrated, unified strategy to achieve its marketing objectives.
How Later's influencer platform helped
COSMEDIX used Later's influencer marketing platform to identify and recruit all COSMEDIX Crowd members and activate them across three core content use cases:
- Micro-influencers created original content on Instagram that could be repurposed across digital touchpoints
- Advocates and referrers amplified COSMEDIX brand content across their social channels
- All members provided brand and product feedback by submitting reviews
COSMEDIX Crowd members across the various influencer persona types were provided valuable insights about key products and categories. These reviews were then repurposed on COSMEDIX.com and linked to product pages, enabling online consumers to purchase the products featured.
The Results
An award-winning program
527%
ROI from Review & Activation Purchases
3M
Total Impressions
34K
Total Engagements
Key results from the COSMEDIX Crowd included:
- A 527% ROI from purchases made with the support of reviews and other COSMEDIX Crowd activations;
- 3.7M total impressions from influencer-generated content; and
- 34K total engagements on influencer-generated content.
The program proved so successful that COSMEDIX and Later won a Shorty Award in the 'Best in Beauty' category for its COSMEDIX Crowd influencer marketing strategy at the 10th annual Shorty Awards.