Emerging media has increased opportunities to assess value and benefits of social media marketing. Research provided by L2 indicated the beauty industry reveals relationships between companies’ commitments to digital/social strategies and shareholder value. In its latest Digital IQ Index, L2 compares the digital and social media initiatives of key companies in the growing beauty products industry — Estée Lauder, Sephora, Limited Brands and others — with their activities a year ago. The findings have relevance for companies in all sectors. The L2 Digital IQ Index measures brand performance across four categories — website, digital marketing, social media and mobile. Top scoring brands are labeled genius, indicating their digital competence is a competitive differentiation. Scoring scales down from genius to gifted, average, challenged and feeble.
Click below to find out what beauty brands made the list.
Levels of ‘Genuis’ Brands:
- Origins included “surprise-and-delight” in their Facebook sampling campaign
- CoverGirl is replicating the beauty counter experience on its website
- Estée Lauder brands M•A•C and Smashbox have interactive social shopping, where users can invite up to five friends via Facebook, Twitter, email or IM to shop together
- F-commerce is being used by a number of brands, such as Olay
- L’Oréal is partnering with Demand Media to deliver original, curated content to consumers seeking online beauty advice
- Clinique and several other brands are installing iPads in their brick-and-mortar stores to enhance shopping with social media, diagnostic tools and educational videos and tips.
Additional Key Findings:
- Digital IQ is significantly related to year-over-year change in stock price, suggesting that digitally competent organizations are driving shareholder value.
- Estée Lauder is an emerging digital powerhouse. The eight Estée Lauder brands in the Index registered an average Digital IQ of 122, 18 points higher than any other multi-brand organization.
- Thirty-five percent of brands have mobile sites; almost triple the number from 2010. Beyond mobile sites, there has been limited additional investment in mobile over the past year.
- Site sophistication has increased considerably over the last year, with 70 percent of brands having Facebook sharing capabilities and 69 percent incorporating user reviews versus just 10 percent and 41 percent, respectively a year ago. Both tactics register a correlation with site traffic growth.
- Dior, Smashbox, Origins, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido were the biggest winners year on year, demonstrating the greatest increase in Digital IQ on the heels of significant e-commerce, social media, and mobile launches.
- Amazon is playing an increasing role in beauty’s online ecosystem. While beauty brands are registering less traffic to and from their brand sites from Sephora.com, the traffic to and from Amazon has increased considerably.
Scott Galloway research evaluation indicated the growing number of correlation between beauty and online marketing. “While beauty pay lip service to ‘going digital’. Magazine advertising spend is up 16 percent year-on-year in the cosmetic industry. Digital channels provide beauty brands an opportunity to establish direct relationships with their consumers, dis-intermediating publishers and retailers.”