To ensure a campaign’s success it is important to make sure it resonates with your audience. This blog post aims to help you take the guesswork out and apply structure to conceptualisation by applying the top tips that I have acquired in fifteen years of content creation for the hair and beauty industry.
You can refer back to this checklist when building your brief for any size campaign or shoot, big-scale productions or small in-house content creation. Use alongside “ The Ultimate Checklist To Build Your Creative Brief”
Tip 1: Your Audience
Every content related blog will tell you ‘Know Your Audience’ and ‘Buyer Personas. While demographic is important, there is much more information you need to create for a successful campaign that will resonate with your audience when making hair and beauty content. Most customer personas don't really advise you exactly what to say and demonstrate.
Here is an example: Marketing Maddy is a mother in her late thirties who lives in the suburbs of greater London. She's married with two kids, markets £77,000 a year and drives to work every day. At work, she manages a small team of three marketeers and reports to head of marketing.
If you want to sell her hair and beauty products or services, how would you do it? Even though there is “information” about the “Marketing Maddy” persona, there is no information about her hair, what she likes or the challenges in her hair and beauty routine, however, I'm not disregarding demographics, we will come to them later.
Here are some tips on what you need to consider about your audience to begin conceptualising your campaign:
What are the challenges your audience struggle with day to day in their hair, skin, and make-up routine that makes them feel less confident?
What does your audience dislike about their hair?
What area of styling does your customer find challenging?
Do they travel?
What would your audience like to know more about regarding hair/skin care, hair styling and make-up?
What are their misconceptions of some hair/skin/make-up processes?
Do you know exactly what to demonstrate in your content?
Does what you are demonstrating genuinely work at home?
Before you keep reading, take a moment to ask yourself if you know exactly what to focus on and show in your content?
There are so many answerable questions that can be solved through your content — the list is endless.
Tip 2: Conceptualisation
When you have identified the problem you are going to focus on solving, here are some points to consider and include in your content.
How does your product or service solve the problem?
Are you demonstrating the use of your product clearly and concisely?
Are you showing easy to follow demonstrations/techniques?
Are you being authentic?
When the audience sees your content will they feel it can be achievable at home?
Is the look commercially on-trend? This is very important within hair and beauty content, as ask any hairdresser or make-up artist the most common question is “What is in fashion” but also keep the look realistic, you don’t want to hear those dreaded words “but who wears that in real life” the look needs to be on-trend and desirable
Avoid storyboards going back and forth and wasting time on shoots figuring out steps and camera angles. We all know time is money on shoots. Establish steps and techniques so the Director is aware. I like to create a storyboard and collaborate with the production team.
Tip 3: Keep It Real:
Keep in mind why social media disrupted. It was everyday people sharing, connecting, and communicating within their everyday lifestyle. As much as the quality of content creation has evolved, this ethos remains within content creation. With this in mind consider adding a lifestyle focus to your campaign.
Here is a campaign I worked on for a launch of a new hairbrush that speeds up drying time and reduces the usage of heat on the hair while still creating a smooth finish. This new product was suitable for various demographics. To ensure the campaign resonated with various age groups we created different life scenarios where time is of the essence, such as friends in their twenties hurrying to get ready to go out, late for date night, Thirties: post-workout in the gym, a male spending five mins to get ready. Multi Demographic campaign
Tip 4: If Your Brand Is Product-Based:
Show unique details that set you apart from the rest. This is my favourite element of a campaign as this is how you stand out from other brands, there are so many useful tips that an audience needs to know to get the best out of their routine that is so often missed within content
Keep it accurate, realistic and easy to follow usage of the product
Spend time with your talent/models to show them the steps, and how to hold and apply the product, you’d be surprised how much time is wasted on set if there has not been any preparation
There is still room for long-form content as YouTube is 70% plus consumers and where consumers go to solve their problems, meaning there is an opportunity to maximise your shoot
Is your product suitable for various hair/skin types? If so you need to show that
Use ten-second edits for e-commerce.
Tip 5: Aesthetically Pleasing Content:
Aesthetically pleasing content will attract your audience, help capture their attention and build engagement.
Pictures aren’t dominating, but they’re also not going anywhere any time soon. Pictures have the ability to develop your brand aesthetic which helps define brand identity. While video will have more engagement, pictures still benefit your brand visibility and are useful to fill your content calendar in between your video posts, also some markets such as the professional market print are still quite relevant.
What makes your content a high quality visual:
With hair and beauty content looks need to be on-trend
Be unique
The editing style should be aligned with editing trends, visuals and relevant to the platform
When capturing in-house content ensure your lighting is good, make sure your background is neat and styled or clear of any distractions.
Tip 6 Tutorials:
While short-form content is favoured there is still a need for long-form content in professional markets. If your brand also has a professional market, tutorials are relevant to educate the professional with more technical detail. The professional market is also another avenue to reach your audience — if a professional is talking about your product this endorses your product further. I will be writing a blog dedicated to this topic, however, here are some tips to resonate with the professional:
Have a professional in your content demonstrating your product to create the look on the talent/model
Be on-trend with the look
Be educational
Be unique
A professional will also be time-poor in a busy salon environment or backstage at a show, travelling from client to client or shoot to shoot
Capture the content in a professional environment or include a set design
Capture content in a backstage environment. When I worked backstage at fashion week capturing artists using the products and the process for preparing the models, is a great way to maximise an opportunity and create content that is authentic, inspirational and informative.
Tip 7. You Audience Needs To See Someone That Looks Like Them:
This is where the basic demographic is very important and where you will also capture engagement. Your audience needs to relate to culture, age group, hair and skin type.
If you are in global markets book inclusive models/talent
Make sure the hair type and texture are relevant to the market?
Are you sure the talent you have booked for the shoot has the correct hair type for your product?
Will the hair type be suitable for the look you want to create?
Have you checked the hair condition?
Include a variation of hair lengths, and hair textures (if applicable)?
Spend time with the models/talent before being on set to show them the steps, and how they should be demonstrating the product this will save time when filming.
While this may increase the budget to book more models/talent it will be more cost-effective to maximise the opportunity of the shoot.
Tip 8. Behind The Scenes:
Behind the scenes automatically humanises your brand and team. It is effective because it is an authentic way to connect with your audience.
Create an edit to share on socials and live events
Take the audience on the shoot with you, share the energy of the day
Audiences love to see reality and the team.
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