Lessons Learned from Beauty Gurus

[lyannastark]

I've followed quite a few beauty gurus in my day, and to be honest, some of these ladies are killer internet marketers. Since having my eyes opened by the IM industry I've started looking at their techniques, how is it that they manage to get thousands of subscribers, some of them doing very repetitive content (topics that have been done again and again). Some of them don't even have very good videos. It blew my mind.

I think sometimes as IMers we get so caught up in the technical side of things, (can someone say mito tags? )We forget that we're just dealing with people. People like you and me, that wanna spend their money on cool things. At the end of the day, internet marketing is like, well regular marketing. Think about how you'd get someone to buy your product IRL and apply the same techniques to the internet.

Anyway, here goes:

1) Lots of Giveaways: The first thing I noticed is that 90% of them have giveways. Extensions, makeup, jewelry, clothes, shoes you name it.It doesn't have to even be expensive. People go crazy for give-aways. It might seem obvious, but giving away a tangible object is a serious motivator. And it helps to kick off ALOT of youtube channels. Share their blog, follow their instagram etc etc. I've never seen a beauty guru give away a free eBook. No-one REALLY wants ebooks. (Except IMers)

EDIT: think about your prizes as an investment in your marketing. People are willing to shell out thousands on ad campaigns and forget that your best ads are your customers. Generally the bigger the reward, the more crazy things people are willing to do for you. If you're in the beauty niche, most women will do practically anything to compete for a designer bag that costs around 500-1000 bucks. If you're selling to gamers, maybe some gaming equipment. "Get x amount of people to comment "why i love gaming" on this blog post and mention you" is a good strategy. Until you've established your own authority you can't really use your own products as prizes cause people won't see why it's worth the effort. If your niche doesn't have a particular product, think about the TYPE of audience you have and offer something they might like.

2)Personality: Alot of people forget that your personality is super important for developing a strong community. At the end of the day, sharing valuable, informative content isn't enough.People want to "get" you. And feel like you "get" them too. Especially if it's anywhere near lifestyle, weight loss or any other "personal" topic. It doesn't have to be YOUR face *wink wink* but people love feeling like they're connecting with a real person. This is why ordering content isn't good enough for me... People just don't get passionate about that flat robotic tone that alot of content providers use. IMHO, ten people that love you and are passionate about you is way more valuable than 100 who couldn't care less.

3) Interaction: Most of them interact with their followers. They retweet them, they reply to their comments and so on, PROMPTLY. It's no use for someone to comment today, and you reply in 2 weeks or in a month. By that time, the person's moved on. You have to capture people's hearts by making them feel important. People love to be coddled. It's a fact. It's hard to explain the feeling you get when someone you like or respect in the internet world takes the time to acknowledge you. It's a great feeling. So if someone takes the time to reach out to you via comment, tweet, share etc. You should acknowledge them, and make them feel special.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou



4) Challenges: This one is pretty huge in the beauty industry and it can go a long way elsewhere. Challenges are a fun way to reach out to your audience and get them to share, typically, when someone get's a public challenge hey feel obligated to comply. Why? I don't know. I'm not talking about just a random "I challenge everyone in my list to do something" I mean pick one person, preferably someone influential and challenge them to do something. It works. I've seen churches increase their membership base with facebook "Why I love Jesus" challenges. It doesn't have to be anything big like the Ice Bucket Challenge.

5) Alliances. I don't really think there's anything more to say about this.

6) Skype Chats. It's not only for internet forums.

I know this type of thing won't work for EVERYONE, but If you're interested in building a community, like I am, this might be helpful.

 

[Bubbles]

Great post that can be applied to so many different niches and projects. Thanks for sharing!!

 

[red_devil010]

Challenges is a Good one! Challenging readers to follow along with you and other blog readers will get them to buy into the community and participate more. I've seen this in the fashion industry as well.

For anyone in the fashion industry, this method worked really well for my wife when she was starting out her blog. It garnered tons of followers and people commenting non-stop.

20 Outfits in 20 Days (or whatever number you want)-
The only rule is to look in your closet for clothing that you ALREADY OWN and wear it with other clothes you already own that are different and put together outfits as you see fit. Take photos of your outfits every day for those 20 days (or however long) and post to your blog. Anyone can post pics of the New outfits they just bought, but how many people get creative enough to go through old cloths and use them to create new outfits and trends?

This method worked wonders for my wife, not saying it will for you, just an idea - Also gave her tons of backlinks, shares on social media, etc etc.

GOOD post - keep them coming

 

[lyannastark]

@red_devil010 Nice going on your wife's part! C'mon guys, we can all get our creative juices going and post ideas as to how these principles can be applied to lots of niches

 

[Napolean]

@red_devil010 C'mon guys, we can all get our creative juices going and post ideas as to how these principles can be applied to lots of niches

Sounds like a challenge! I don't know the beauty niche at all but it sounds like everything mentioned above would work well in fitness and other areas of health too. That being the obvious answer. But how do we adapt this for things like lawyer leads, payday, medical leads? I'm curious to hear from some of the marketing/seo agency people too because this all seems very prevalent there as well.

 

[red_devil010]

@Napolean
I have a good one for Health/Fitness too; which I did with a local specialty gym (kettle bells)
The gym called it: 60 Day Challenge

This gym was different from normal gyms, but it can be applied to any type of health gym, niche, etc. This gym had instructors for each class. Classes we 1 hr long, throughout the day. Different level's of classes for different intensity levels. So you could choose how hard you wanted to go. The instructor would write on the mirrors what exercises and how many reps (think HIIT) and he would walk around as we were going through them and fix our form, push us harder, etc etc. Normal gym dude stuff. It was very focused, so everyone was continually competing w/ each other.

here's the break down of the challenge:
- it costs $100 to participate in the challenge on top of your monthly dues.
- Everyone who wanted to participate in the challenge would meet at the gym on Tuesday night after the last session.
- The first week, everyone was asked what their goals where and gym instructors wrote everything down. We took Before Pictures and Weighed In. Everyone was there, so it gave a sense of accountability. The following week the instructors handed out Meal plans to everyone according to what they wanted to accomplish. Lose weight, bulk up, etc.
- Everyone HAD to attend at least 4 days a week to one session a day. (really pushed sign-up's for the gym)
- Every Tuesday everyone would show up and "Weigh-In" again to track their progress. This was the Accountability step mentioned above and would also motivate others around you.
- Also, the Tuesday weekly meeting had a quick round up with the gym instructors speaking about great tips for bulking, cutting weight and obviously, Buying Supplements.
- at the end of the 60 days, After pictures were taken and Weight was taken.

FINAL: In 60 Days, believe it or not, i was down 24lbs. It really motivated everyone to get serious about it because they were competing with others in the group. People would always try to compete with those who were in the sessions with them. Lifting heavier, finishing first, etc etc etc.

We did it with my wife's company - that's another great angle to work for more signup's.

This was all 2 yrs ago now. From what I heard, they are now offering Online live workouts with the same 60 Day challenge.

These are just ideas for those in the Health and fitness niche.

 

[lyannastark]

Sounds like a challenge! I don't know the beauty niche at all but it sounds like everything mentioned above would work well in fitness and other areas of health too. That being the obvious answer. But how do we adapt this for things like lawyer leads, payday, medical leads? I'm curious to hear from some of the marketing/seo agency people too because this all seems very prevalent there as well.

Well, to be honest I have no idea how to adapt this to lawyer leads... 30 day No Crime Challenge lol. I kid. But seriously, i have no idea. Anyone with experience in the Lawyer niche care to chime in? For financial niches, you could always have one of those "Debt Free in X days Challenges" ? Although you don't want people to be debt free cause then they might not want payday loans anymore... lol this is tough. Maybe instead of the challenges you could try the give-aways. Try to partner with one of the firms you sell leads to and offer a free lawyer consultancy/ medical consultancy/ interest free loan? I have zero experience with any of these niches... sorry

 

[ColdHardCash87]

Any of the "female blogger" niches, like fitness, parenting, beauty, fashion... they absolutely kill it with the legit marketing. They are NOT lazy about things at all.

One thing I've seen in the fashion niche is to take a photo of a celebrity and then re-create their outfit cheaper, and then link to where you can buy those pieces, using affiliate links where you can. Where you can't, oh well, because you're still getting links, shares, and return traffic.

 

[Hitman-Zone]

Using celebrities in their advertisement or get approvals from bigger fishes in that field to make sure crowds will follow you, you can test that on twitter, pay a celebrity to advertise your product on twitter and see how many followers you will reach also high rate of sales, main while you need a good budget to do so. It works in any field or niche you're on.

 

[Pacman]

The one thing that shows here is its all about thinking outside the box and doing things differ to the norm. One Niche that am associated in draws so much traffic from Twitter down to just doing giveaways then our followers see were are reputable business and buy from us over the competition...

 

[chaddicus.]

Don't know how I'm just finding this now, but great post op.

I have a buddy who married a chick who runs a fashion blog. At first it was a hobby, but now they're living off the income. We're talking mid 6 figs. It's absolutely insane to me looking at her site and her content. She basically follows everything you point out here though. And its down right impressive. Now major brands approach her to do reviews of clothes they give her for a few links pointing back to their site. She gets a base+commissions from them.

She's got my respect.