Four tips to ensure your message is heard by the beauty industry

Miami/London- With in-cosmetics Global taking place in Amsterdam in just over a month, hitting the right communications note is make or break for suppliers to the beauty and personal care industry.

Emma Reinhold, Pitman Comms Beauty Industry Expert

To give you some pointers on how to get that right, Pitman Comms beauty industry expert Emma Reinhold has come up with four top tips to ensure that your communications stand out.

Ingredients companies are setting the pace for beauty brands, demonstrating how their solutions can help give products the type of competitive advantage that will really speak to consumers.

So let’s take a look at Emma’s take on the four main areas ingredients companies should be hitting on if they want to get beauty brands on board by ensuring the end consumer gets what they really want.

Tip One: Take the lead with transparent and honest messaging

Transparency and honesty play an integral part of communicating in the beauty industry. Consumers have been inundated with messaging since the advent of social media and that has imbued a heightened sense of being able to determine what is truly authentic. 

“Today’s beauty consumers are the most informed and influenced in history,” said Emma. “They have access to unprecedented amounts of information, which is not always true, making building trust between BPC companies and consumers more challenging than ever."

"Social media has become a key channel for finding information on products and ingredients so companies need to take the lead in ensuring their message reaches and resonates with their consumers, building communities and groups that enable consumers to feel that trust. From deep dives into ingredient safety and product efficacy, to highlighting the true environmental footprint of a product, being transparent and truthful about your products, even if they are not ‘perfect’ is the best route forward.”

Tip Two: Provide a great story rooted in authenticity

While it might seem painfully obvious that messaging needs to include a compelling and authentic story, it is still an element that is often overlooked. Failing to provide a decent hook to a story could mean all the hard work put into a campaign will be overlooked, simply because the audience won't be engaged. This holds particularly true of valued scientific data, which can be used to platform a message and amplify it if conveyed in the right way.

“A great story and the provenance to back it up can really help make a product stand out from the crowd,” said Emma. “Great results from clinical trials can also make a difference in a marketplace crowded with claims.”  

Tip Three: Keep claims simple and relatable

While scientific claims can be a powerful weapon, there is a careful path to tread in an effort to make it both credible and still relatable. Cosmetic chemists are obviously going to be the target audience at big industry events like in-cosmetics Global, but messaging should also factor in the end consumer as beauty companies will want to get an idea of how to connect with them too.

"Keep it simple, keep it real," said Emma. "Claims need to be relatable and relevant - no-one wants to be bamboozled by the science. Before and after images can be a really effective tool for communicating claims and keeping messaging concise avoids losing your consumer."

Tip Four: Know your consumer and engage them

Who is your consumer? In the fast-evolving world of uber-personalised beauty and personal care solutions, providing messaging that targets very specific groups of consumers is what beauty companies are looking for. Have a very specific idea of who your target consumer is and craft communications around that.

“Knowing your consumer is the best starting point.” said Emma. “Tailoring content to your consumer’s specific needs will make it relevant and engaging. Don’t be afraid to use multiple content platforms to push the message out.”

If you want to know more about how Pitman Comms can support your marketing and communications efforts with the beauty, food and natural product industries, please contact us by emailing simon@pitmancomms.com