TRANSACTIONAL LINK BETWEEN PRODUCTS, SERVICES, PLATFORMS AND PERSONA

Transactional Link Between Products, Services, Platforms and Persona

The three digital platforms and two curated content sources were chosen with the representative buyer persona in mind, and these platforms best suited in accordance with its target audience, features, and advertising in-built tools to create the campaign. At the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, the consumer needs a solution for their problem – in this case, Jennie is looking for beauty products that are compatible with her skin and would not cause her to have an acne breakout. Useful information about products that will help her achieve this would be very valuable to her and be more six times more susceptible to “take further action” on an interesting post on Facebook and Instagram (Netzer, 2017). Tiktok on the other hand, is overlooked with 60% of its users below 24 years old (D’Souza, 2021), however, 60% of its audiences are also female and that the age bracket is gradually extending to older generations (2021) and with its popularity, impressionable individuals like Jennie will be reached through the platform. Nevertheless, its skewed audience range could potentially be beneficial in terms of appealing to wider audiences or other buyer personas. The chosen platforms also had suitable advertising options that matched the requirements to achieve the marketing objectives e.g., create website leads through a lead generation campaign or have measurement tools that allow tracking of progress e.g., insights provided to display percentage of engagement or conversions executed. Other platforms like Twitter and YouTube were not considered due to the susceptibility of content being ‘drowned’ on Twitter due to high visibility competition (Next Step Beauty, 2017) and that the risk of customers being driven away by alternate suggestions (Chilukuri, 2018) through YouTube’s algorithm would not effectively increase the website traffic, engagement, and brand awareness of Beauty Bliss. Although Pinterest has been selected as a content source, it was also not considered as a plausible digital platform due to its very specific type of audiences (Gaille, 2016) to a supposed inclusive brand. 

The target persona reflects the characteristics, attitudes, behaviours, and channels of a potential buyers of a business. Looking at the top social media channels the audiences of beauty industries use is Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook. This suggest that the marketing campaign should focus on these platforms as majority of Beauty Bliss’ target demographic are present in one, if not all. Based on a follower comparison, Beauty Bliss lags in both Facebook and Instagram against its big competitors, while also not having a presence on Tiktok. Both Sephora and Mecca are currently meeting and forming relationships with Jennie – the representative buyer persona in all three platforms, while Beauty Bliss only has two communicative channels. With low social media following and even lower social media engagement, using the chosen curated content sources to share product tutorials or recommendations to attract and appeal to audiences like Jennie will not only encourage website traffic, but also boost brand awareness and allow consumers in the awareness and consideration stage to learn more about Beauty Bliss’ products.

Figure i. Screenshots of Beauty Bliss, Sephora and Mecca Facebook Pages (Facebook, 2021)

Figure ii. Screenshots of Beauty Bliss, Sephora and Mecca Instagram Pages (Instagram, 2021)

Figure iii. Screenshots of Sephora and Mecca TikTok Accounts (TikTok, 2021)

The advertising tools on Facebook is categorised dependant on the campaign objective – in this case, Beauty Bliss will select ‘brand awareness’ as an aim during the awareness stage of the buyer; knowing that the target buyer persona is struggling to find easy ways to apply makeup, the beauty hacks video sourced from Pinterest will present the company as viable option. This will then be followed by increasing website traffic and engagement during the consideration stage, which at this stage desire to support a local business – according to Chen (2021), 66% of Facebook users visit business local pages weekly, suggesting that Beauty Bliss’ should market their stance to appeal to their target audience. The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is where the ‘store traffic’ tool in Facebook ads by providing relatable meme from either Buzzfeed or Pinterest to fully convince and reassure buyers that their beauty products will be of high-quality.

Figure iv. Screenshot of Facebook Ad Manager (Facebook, 2021)

As for Instagram, ad goals can be selected that is also specific to the current marketing objective. Referring back to the buyer persona and objectives mentioned before, selecting the ‘more website views’ option during the buyer’s awareness stage will enable Beauty Bliss to create more traffic and connect business-to-customer (B2C) where the consumer has the problem that the business has a solution to. The buyer persona wants to learn more information about the products she uses (or wants to use) and gain inspiration from media content gathered from Pinterest. During the consideration stage, the buyer is being conscious on the types of products bought e.g., values cruelty free makeup and can be nurtured by entertaining blogs from Buzzfeed regarding the matter. Buzzfeed is the better source for these types of information as they have a “unique way of storytelling” (Li, 2021) and interactive content that encourage audiences’ participation. Instagram is a perfect platform to display makeup looks and/or tutorials due to its “visual nature” (Hubspot, 2017). The action button (CTA) can be incorporated with appropriate keywords e.g., Watch More. The insights feature also allows businesses to track and measure engagement percentages of each post or advertisement.

Figure v. Screenshots of Instagram Ad Tool and Analytics (Instagram, 2021)

During the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, Tiktok can create brand awareness through reaching a certain number of audiences based on a chosen budget. At this point, the buyer is aware or semi-aware of a beauty crisis e.g., acne problems in which the material sourced from curated content channels like Pinterest a product overview of best items to use to avoid an acne breakout will link up Beauty Bliss to its buyer. User engagement is very high on Tiktok (Info Empire, 2021) in comparison to other platforms, thus, engaging content is the key for the algorithm to increase awareness and attract audiences at the consideration stage where the potential buyer is doubtful of the company’s products. They can be nurtured by product reviews and testimonials to encourage video engagement and website traffic to check out the products mentioned. Using Pinterest as the main curated content source leading up to the decision stage will be effective as it “creates brand awareness and facilitate website leads” (Meng, 2019) which interlinks to the main marketing objectives of the Beauty Bliss campaign.

Figure vi. Screenshot of Tiktok Advertising Objectives from the Ad Manager (Tiktok, 2021)

Reference:

Chen, J. (2021). 20 Facebook stats to guide your 2021 Facebook strategy. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-stats-for-marketers/ 

Chilukuri, S. (2018). Why YouTube Is Not Business Friendly for Video Marketing?. Hippovideo.io. https://www.hippovideo.io/blog/youtube-business-video-marketing/ 

D’Souza, D. (2021). What Is TikTok?. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-tiktok-4588933  

Gaille, B. (2016). 16 Pros and Cons of Pinterest for Business. BrandonGaille.com. https://brandongaille.com/16-pros-and-cons-of-pinterest-for-business/ ‌ 

HubSpot. (2017). Instagram Marketing: The Ultimate Guide. https://www.hubspot.com/instagram-marketing ‌ 

Info Empire. (2021). How to Use TikTok to Increase Brand Awareness and Market Your Business. https://infoempire.com/blog-how-to-use-tiktok-to-increase-brand-awareness-and-market-your-business-139 

Klaver, R. (2021). Here’s why your business should get a TikTok account. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/prosper/300365696/heres-why-your-business-should-get-a-tiktok-account 

Launch Metrics. Beauty Marketing Tips I: Choose the right social channels for your strategy. (2021).  https://www.launchmetrics.com/resources/blog/beauty-marketing-tips 

Li, Y. (2021). Buzzfeed: Interaction is the primary productivity of growth! Medium; Marketing in the Age of Digital. https://medium.com/marketing-in-the-age-of-digital/buzzfeed-interaction-is-the-primary-productivity-of-growth-972505236e0 

Meng, A. (2019). What is Pinterest? How does Pinterest work? Getting Started. Infront Webworks. https://www.infront.com/blog/what-is-pinterest-and-how-does-it-work/ 

Netzer, J. (2017). 8 Social Statistics on Beauty Buyers to Shape Your Strategy Now. Khoros.com. https://khoros.com/blog/8-social-statistics-beauty-buyers-shape-your-strategy-now 

Next Step Beauty. (2017). Twitter, Should I Use it For My Beauty Business?. Next Step Beauty. https://www.nextstepbeauty.co.uk/blog/insights/twitter-i-use-beauty-business/ ‌

Image List:

Figure vi. Tiktok Ad Manager (https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=9535)