What separates a good brand from an irresistible investment? While financial viability and growth potential are essential, a standout factor lies in a brand’s ability to build and sustain a thriving community. Differentiation, a compelling story, and an engaged audience don’t just win over customers—they drive long-term capital efficiency and scalability.
Investors increasingly evaluate the ecosystems brands create. A loyal, connected community lowers customer acquisition costs, boosts lifetime value, and propels organic growth. These elements have a direct impact on profitability, making community-centric brands highly attractive to investors focused on sustainable returns.
For this reason, building a tight-knit community is vital to being investor-ready. A strong, engaged audience reduces CAC through organic referrals and repeat purchases, decreasing reliance on costly advertising. Meanwhile, loyalty nurtured by emotional connections drives higher CLV, creating steady and predictable revenue streams that highlight your brand’s scalability and financial potential.
So, how do you cultivate this kind of community? It starts with strategic foundations designed to differentiate your brand and deepen its connections.
I recently spoke at the inaugural InStyle Beauty Summit, sharing my perspective on how beauty brands can tap into the biggest opportunities in the industry today. Joining a dynamic lineup, we engaged with an audience of brand owners and industry insiders, unpacking the trends and challenges shaping the beauty world.
In between fireside chats with Richard Christiansen, Founder of Flamingo Estate, and Celeste Barber, Founder of BOOIE Beauty, I joined Kate Blythe, Chief Marketing Officer at Mecca Brands, Doone Roisin, Founder of Female Startup Club and Paul Balbo, Industry Head at Meta.
Here are some highlights, from the perspective I shared on the night:
In this interview, Antonella Colella shares her expert insights on the legal challenges and strategies for indie beauty brands. Drawing from her extensive experience in the beauty industry's legal sector, Antonella emphasizes the importance of securing intellectual property (IP) protections early in the brand's development. She highlights common pitfalls indie brands face, particularly in trademarking and managing contracts, and offers practical advice for mitigating risks and ensuring legal compliance.
The perfect marketing calendar breaks down the year’s activities into actionable steps that support major objectives like strategic product launches, category growth priorities, and more. This calendar serves as a blueprint, aligning every initiative with the brand’s purpose, ensuring that each campaign contributes to both immediate wins and long-term success.
From our team's experience in previous career roles, working with best-in-class beauty brands and now supporting the next big players in the industry, we’ve noticed that some brands take a distinct approach to planning. That looks something like this...
In this interview, Lindsey Smolan shares her expertise on the evolving landscape of PR in the beauty industry. She delves into the significant trends impacting the field, the strategies beauty brands should adopt to stand out, and the increasing importance of authenticity and niche targeting. Lindsey emphasizes the need for beauty brands to be transparent and purpose-driven, particularly in an oversaturated market where standing out to both consumers and the media is crucial. She also highlights challenges in the shift from influencer-driven strategies to more personalized and community-oriented approaches.
Topics in Focus:
Shifts in the Beauty PR Landscape
Strategies for Brand Differentiation
Influencer Landscape Evolution
Celebrity and Expert Endorsements
Building Long-term Media Relationships
Interview Host: Effie Asafu-Adjaye
Effie Asafu-Adjaye is the Founder of Beautiful Sparks. Beautiful Sparks helps beauty and fashion businesses get more fanatics in love with their brands, by refining their brand strategy, messaging, branding, content storytelling, and community-building strategy. Read more about Effie here. Linkedin.
A cult beauty brand goes beyond just having loyal customers, it’s when a brand cultivates a following of fanatics who hang onto every word they say. Brands like these have their customers hooked. They're deeply invested, and back a brand, on its journey, every step of the way.
So what's the recipe for creating a cult following?
Some founders thrive on the bootstrapped path, maintaining complete control and navigating challenges on their terms. For many, it's enough to fuel their growth and vision. However, for others, partnering with the right beauty investors—whether beauty venture capital firms or angel investors in the beauty industry—could unlock new possibilities, forge strategic alliances, and accelerate growth in ways that might not be possible alone.
For those exploring external investment, one of the key steps is developing a compelling cosmetics pitch deck. A strong pitch not only showcases your brand's potential but also communicates your unique story, values, and vision to captivate the right beauty investors. Ultimately, it's not just about securing funding—it's about attracting partners who believe in your mission and align with your core values.
In this interview, Maggie Spicer, an expert in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) strategies for the beauty industry, shares her insights on the growing importance of ESG practices. She discusses the critical need for beauty brands to integrate ESG into their business operations, emphasizing how these factors can influence a brand's long-term success. Spicer highlights key trends, challenges, and opportunities in the beauty industry, particularly the importance of transparency in a rapidly evolving market.
Topics in Focus:
- ESG’s Growing Importance in the Beauty Industry - Balancing ESG Initiatives with Business Growth - Triggers for Developing ESG Strategies - The Role of B Corp Certification - Emerging Trends: Transparency
Interview Host: Effie Asafu-Adjaye
Effie Asafu-Adjaye’s profile is an experienced professional in the beauty industry with a deep understanding of the intersection between sustainability and brand strategy. She has a strong background in marketing and communications, particularly in guiding beauty brands through the complexities of implementing ESG initiatives. Effie's expertise allows her to engage in meaningful dialogues with industry leaders, providing valuable insights to help brands navigate the evolving demands of sustainability and governance in the beauty sector.
As a beauty brand founder, the journey from emerging brand to industry icon is filled with both challenges and incredible opportunities. While the path may be demanding, laying the right foundations empowers brands to not only navigate the ups and downs but also can help them build a lasting presence for a brand that can stand the test of time.
1. Get your Brand Value Proposition Right
The cornerstone of an iconic brand’s strategy is crystal clear positioning, consistency in brand messages, creative expression, and community experiences. Iconic brands master their positioning and infuse their essence into everything they do. For emerging brands, a clear indication that there’s work to be done here, often plays out when Founders find their teams, agencies, and brand partners struggling to grasp the brand essence, leading to repeated reworks and returning to the drawing board on marketing endeavors. Taking a long-term perspective and investing in strategy and brand DNA frameworks from the get-go, that bring clarity and a true north, can prevent brand dilution over time. This work also helps create powerful brand differentiation critical for cutting through. Beauty brands should court a balance between investing in strategies for long-term beauty brand strategy and short-term sales.
2. Know your Best Customers by Name
Protecting the intimacy that a brand has with its customer base in its early days will be the secret sauce as a brand begins to scale. Many direct-to-consumer brands establish customer advisory panels ahead of expanding their retail presence. By fostering a strong connection with your customer base, you can actively listen to their ideas, inspiring co-creation, driving future growth. The impact of this approach is evident in the growth trajectories of fast-growing beauty brands like Topicals that has a private customer Slack group, and Truly Beauty with a private, customer-led Facebook group. By creating a space for deeper interaction and dialogue, they've nurtured a community that’s become a hotbed of ideas that can fuel innovation.
3. Tell Creative Stories that Connect
With customer insights in tow, brand content can be even more meaningful. So, an effective social presence delivers more than a cohort of messages about a brand's product, features and benefits, and the latest memes. It should be a curated tapestry of brand-building content, campaigns, and storytelling that brings a brand’s DNA to life.
Stories possess the remarkable ability to forge an emotional bond with audiences, yet many emerging beauty brands fail to tap fully into this potential. A new breed of beauty brand consultancy has risen up, helping emerging brands to master their storytelling and much more.
Working hand-in-hand with Founders, Beautiful Sparks create a cohesive beauty brand identity, irresistible differentiation, and compelling brand stories that resonate. Beautiful Sparks blend timeless brand building principles with digital-first content strategies, to get beauty brands on the path to becoming a household name.
If you're interested to discover more ways to make your beauty brand shine, you're welcome to request a free, personalized brand roadmap designed to elevate your brand, sharpen your positioning, and set you on the path for success.merging brands to master their storytelling and much more.
Author: Effie Asafu-Adjaye Effie Asafu-Adjaye is the Founder of Beautiful Sparks. Beautiful Sparks helps beauty and fashion businesses get more fanatics in love with their brands, by refining their brand strategy, messaging, branding, content storytelling, and community-building strategy. Read more about Effie here. Linkedin
If you’re on the path of growing your brand to the next level, when was the last time you turned to your brand community for their take? From the brands we’ve worked with, we’ve seen how many teams are sitting on a treasure trove of customer insights, but often don’t find the time and head space to piece them all together to be their guiding light.
Whether refreshing existing customer personas or creating them for the first time, work like this is crucial for tapping into insights that could give your brand a fresh edge. Nothing’s more powerful than having certainty about your customers' needs, preferences, behaviors and most importantly understanding what draws people to your brand.
About us: We're a branding and marketing agency based in Sydney, Australia and serve an international client base. Our team of beauty, fashion and luxury strategists and designers are based in the US, UK, Australia & Asia.
