Marketers were once able to rely on one or two clearly delineated platforms–but the days of single-channel strategy are behind us. Today’s customers are no longer following a linear path from discovery to checkout; instead they’re jumping between a variety of platforms to discover, consider, and buy products.
This is especially true for beauty customers, who follow fast-moving trend cycles on social platforms and further refine consideration on retail media networks, in-store, and on DTC websites.
Beauty brands can’t win by putting all their eggs in one basket. Instead of risking overinvesting spend in any one platform, successful businesses need to diversify their media mix to reach their audiences wherever they’re searching and shopping.
Here’s how to create a winning multi-channel game plan.
The new customer experience journey
Historically, brands could draw clear lines between platforms based on time-tested understanding of exactly how shoppers used each one. But that traditional shopping journey is officially dead.
Consumer behavior, preferences, and the media platforms themselves have been evolving rapidly, collapsing the linear funnel and transforming the shopping journey. Today’s consumers don’t follow a linear path from discovery to checkout; instead, they move between many different platforms on the way to conversion—from DTC websites to social media to brick-and-mortar stores (and back again).
If the old way of making a purchase decision was a straightforward path, the new customer journey is more like a game of chutes and ladders: the customer can jump from discovery to purchase with a single click or even slide back down to consideration from checkout because they saw a viral dupe on social media.
For brands in the beauty industry, this process moves incredibly fast–especially for those serving Gen Z customers who follow ever-evolving social media trends and are often influenced by their favorite creators. Brands that target customers across multiple generations also need to address many different buying patterns and preferred platforms.
Consumers have more options than ever before in all aspects of the shopping journey, especially after layering in the recent rise of social commerce, a return to brick-and-mortar stores, and the retail media surge.
Creating a cross-channel marketing strategy
To engage today’s customers, brands must break down silos and unify measurement across channels to align marketing strategy with business outcomes. Rather than focusing on individual channels, it’s crucial to master the entire commerce ecosystem across the complex customer journey.
Sources: 9 Nift, 2024 Marketing Channel Diversification Report; 10 Wpromote, Polaris proprietary platform
Key Steps to Build a Winning Strategy:
- Invest Across Multiple Channels: Invest across channels and integrate different teams to support that investment. When multiple channels are fighting for budget and attention (not to mention every team wanting to attribute success to their specific channel), nobody wins.
- Unify Data for Cross-Platform Insights: Bring your data together so you can gather crucial insights across platforms and ensure you’re putting your budget into the most impactful places.
- Foster Cross-Department Communication: Make sure all teams and departments communicate efficiently around investment: if you have walls up between different channel teams or departments, you risk missing important updates or slowing down your response time.
- Optimize for Both Online and Offline Purchases: Understand and cater to the different places your customers might be buying your product. Depending on your brand’s distribution, your audience could have a wide range of places where they can purchase–for younger generations in particular, Brooks Bell found that the distinction between online and offline shopping has become blurred, making it key to invest across both online and brick-and-mortar conversion points.
An omnichannel strategy is crucial to make the experience seamless across all of those touchpoints. It’s also a good idea to incentivize customers to purchase directly from your retail site by giving them an extra-special experience or deal they can only get right from the source.
“Think about both direct and indirect effects. If TikTok disappears, everyone shifts somewhere else, and CPMs go through the roof.”
Your multi-channel game plan for beauty success
With the customer journey becoming ever more complex and seemingly endless channels and platforms to choose from, how do you decide where to spend your time and budget?
Start by testing into some of the most effective channels for today’s beauty brands:
- Try Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit: TikTok doesn’t corner the market on discovery–other social platforms offer unique ways to reach engaged beauty shoppers and drive conversions (and have the added benefit of protecting your brand from the threat of a TikTok ban).
- Make the Most of Paid Search: All eyes may be on social commerce, but don’t count out Google Shopping. Optimize your product feeds, bidding strategies, and keywords to capture high-intent beauty buyers.
- Remember Retail Media: Retail media networks like Amazon, Ulta, and Sephora are major players in the beauty space. Test them out to see where your audience is most likely to convert.
- Don’t Skip Shoppable Video: Shoppable video like reels, YouTube Shorts, and live streams provides a seamless experience that makes it easy for people to go from watching to buying in just a few clicks, regardless of which platform they’re on.
No matter which channels you decide to prioritize, it’s crucial to keep spend flexible and have an agile strategy so you can shift budgets and creative in real time to follow demand and capitalize on opportunities.
Plan in advance for how your team will adjust to changes both in your messaging and your spend. Make sure you have a quick process for time-sensitive approvals, so you’re ready for any potential future shifts.