This article written by Beautiful Sparks first appeared in Cosmetics Business Magazine
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 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 brand building 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 consultancies has risen up, helping emerging brands to master their storytelling and much more.
Working hand-in-hand with Founders, Beautiful Sparks create a cohesive brand presence, 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.
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
