5 Proven Strategies For Beauty Brands To Create Impactful Livestream Content

For Beauty Brands, video content is a natural progression from the services that your in-store staff provide. Customers of skincare and beauty brands spend a lot of time viewing content, doing research, and reading reviews, and your live shopping events can provide all this, from the comfort of their homes. By creating helpful meaningful livestream content, you can build long-lasting relationships and a steady income stream. Here are our Top Tips.

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In every city, at beauty and skincare counters within brick-and-mortar stores, customers will find dedicated sales assistants available to assist them. These knowledgeable staff members are equipped with the latest product range and are ready to provide guidance, answer queries, demonstrate the products, offer tutorials, and accompany customers throughout their journey from research to purchase.

In the digital realm, beauty brands, especially new ones or those with recent product launches, often lack the valuable customer engagement that sales staff can offer. This is where a livestream ecommerce strategy specifically tailored for beauty brands can help bridge that gap.

Who Else Is Jumping Onto The Live Shopping Bandwagon?

This TechCrunch article covers the fast-growing trend of beauty brands like Sephora, Dermalogica and Bobbi Brown making live shopping available to customers through Facebook’s Live Shopping Fridays. Luxury beauty brands like Clinique, Shiseido, and Estee Lauder offer regular livestreams that offer a mix of how-to demos, behind-the-scenes looks, and influencer videos to boost engagement and interact with customers to increase livestream ecommerce sales.

‍The New Face Of Beauty Brands 

The beauty market is changing. The evolving tastes of customers now mean that brands must display transparency, diversity, inclusion, and multi-purpose products. 

Although customer loyalty is still strong, even established brands like L’Oreal have tweaked their product range and brand messaging to remain relevant. According to this Forbes article, customer loyalty means that it is harder for new brands to break through. For both established and emerging brands, therefore, livestream shopping becomes an impactful way to make direct contact with customers. 

Five Ways Beauty Brands Can Make Effective Livestream eCommerce Content

In a competitive market like this, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of the customer behind the camera. This knowledge is essential in creating compelling content that leads to increased revenue through video shopping. Here are Swirl's top recommendations:

1. Capitalize On The Personal Connection Of Your Brand  

Few things are as personal as beauty and skincare products. Customers rely on your brand to enhance their confidence, keep up with trends, improve their appearance, and address specific concerns. This means that your brand becomes a presence in their homes, and bathrooms, and becomes a topic of conversation among their family and friends. 

By understanding this, your brand can create meaningful livestream eCommerce content that allows the viewer to develop a deeper connection with the product and imagine it on their dressing tables. 

Recommendations:  ‍

• Unbox and show off the products. Let viewers see the colors and texture for themselves.
• Give them a how-to guide to showcase the before-and-after results of using the product.
• Let them know how versatile the product is and can be used in different ways, for different looks, in any weather, etc. 
• Show how easy it is to take on the go by highlighting the packaging.
• Offer expert recommendations on what other products pair well with it from your range.

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Read our blog on creating livestreams that bridge the gap between offline and online retail. 

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2. Leverage Peer Reviews And Customer Testimonials

When it comes to influencing buying decisions in the beauty industry, it's not just brands, but the people closest to the shoppers who have the most impact. Friends, mothers, sisters, and family members play a significant role in shaping your customers' purchasing choices. They are followed by magazines, online videos, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

While celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing have a powerful effect on brand adoption, today's customers perceive "real people" as more authentic and trustworthy. In the realm of video shopping, this preference for genuine interactions becomes even more pronounced.

Recommendations:  

• Your video shopping content should showcase reviews by happy customers. 
• Avoid photoshopped, air-brushed models for live content. 
• Use celebrities judiciously, and in combination with regular people.   
• Offer coupons or discounts for recommendations and referrals.

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Read our blog about inspiring customer confidence through livestream content. 

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3. Provide Diverse, Inclusive Content

Body positivity is a significant trend in the beauty industry that skincare and grooming brands must embrace. Modern beauty shoppers seek out brands that promote self-acceptance and prioritize their comfort in their own skin, rather than pressuring them into purchasing products.

A marketing survey conducted by Google and Ipsos in partnership with The Female Quotient examined the impact of positive and inclusive marketing on 3000 consumers. The findings of the study provided compelling evidence: 64% of consumers reported taking some form of action after encountering an inclusive ad. 

Recommendations:

• Livestream ecommerce content should be scripted with positive messaging: not fixing flaws but focusing on body positivity, taking care of oneself, being confident, and enjoying one’s beauty rituals. 
• If possible, select hosts from different backgrounds, sexual orientations, and body/skin types.
• Wherever possible, be transparent and honest about the products, offering brand promises when true, to provide the most authentic message. Behind-the-scenes footage, staff and crew presence in the videos and real customer footage are great ways to build trust during video shopping. 

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Read our blog about the video-first livestream trends that retail brands are using to engage with customers. 

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4. Set Up A Sophisticated, Seamless Experience

When producing livestream content for beauty brands, the main goal is to enhance customer engagement and drive sales. A crucial aspect of achieving this is ensuring a seamless and efficient shopping process for viewers during the livestream.

Moreover, it's essential to create a branded video shopping experience that closely mirrors the in-store customer experience. Make sure to prominently showcase your branding, logo, and products throughout the livestream, allowing viewers to easily identify and connect with your brand.

Recommendations:

• Always assume viewers are new. Explain at the start of the livestream how to message/live chat, how to find links to products, how to see more, and how to shop.
• Ensure that the host takes time to answer questions and respond to viewers during the livestream. 
• Provide easy live shopping processes with secure payment options, return/refund information, and prompt customer service.

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Read our blog on Things to Do Before Your Livestream to ensure a successful event. 

5. Be Relevant And Up-to-Date With Technology

To maximize the effectiveness of your livestream ecommerce strategy, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of your target audience and identify the online platforms they frequent. By ensuring your live content is available on the platforms most popular among your customer demographic, you can effectively reach and engage with them.

Remaining open to new technologies and platforms enables you to create seamless and sophisticated live shopping experiences for your customers. This approach eliminates the need for substantial investments in hosting platforms, payment gateways, ecommerce sites, and other infrastructure requirements.

Find out how Swirl can help you create your own livestreams. 

Recommendations:

• Prioritize sharing your content initially on the most relevant platform for your target audience.
• Capture a wider audience by recording all live video shopping sessions and making them available on other platforms.
• Offer diverse payment options to facilitate easy and convenient purchases for your customers.
• Ensure that clickable shopping links direct customers to the correct products and maintain sufficient stock levels to fulfil livestream ecommerce orders.
• Prevent viewer drop-offs by ensuring a smooth and high-quality livestream experience. Before starting, allocate sufficient time to check audio, video, and recording settings, and make any necessary adjustments.

The Future of Beauty Livestream eCommerce

In 2020, Toby Zhang, one of the earliest investors in TikTok, launched a livestream shopping platform, after monitoring the stellar rise of livestream shopping in China. As someone who has successfully predicted the global success of trends originating in China, he believes that livestream video shopping is the future. 

“Social shopping, especially live shopping, is here to stay,” says Zhang in an interview with Glossy, a media brand with a strong focus on the beauty, wellness, and fashion industry. “Pandemic or not, consumers want to have more information about their products. They want to know more before they buy, they want to get their products quicker, and they want to have a personalized experience.”