HonestBeautyFinalPaper (1)

DIGITAL MARKETING PLAN

Olivia Berrigan, Sonya Joshi, Colleen O’Meara, Micaela Metz, Megan Zart

Introduction We at Halcyon see Honest Beauty as a chic, up­and­coming cosmetics company dedicated to providing young, busy women with makeup and skincare products that bring out their natural beauty and are also good for them. The brand seems clearly established and focused toward a very relevant target market, but since Honest Beauty is such a new company, we think it would benefit from increased awareness. We consider Honest Beauty’s main competitors to be Birchbox and bareMinerals. Birchbox is a more established makeup company that also uses the subscription model, offering a monthly set of randomly chosen cosmetic samples for a set price. bareMinerals is not subscription based, but rather sold online and in stores; however, their products are all “mineral based” and really emphasize their use of healthy, pure ingredients, similar to Honest Beauty. According to Alexa.com, Honest Beauty’s website is ranked 17,652nd in the U.S., a value that is calculated “using a combination of average daily visitors to [the] site and page views on [the] site from users from that country over the past month” (2015). By comparison, Birchbox’s site is ranked 1,217th and bareMinerals’ site is ranked 4,072nd (Alexa, 2015). With these statistics in mind, we present to you the following recommendations to improve Honest Beauty’s digital presence and increase overall brand awareness. Budget Since Honest Beauty launched in September 2015, there is no reported yearly advertising spend. Halcyon estimated the digital marketing budget to be $343,000 based on the following information:

Beauty manufacturers spent $2.2 billion on advertising last year (Nielsen, 2015) According to the CMO Council, digital ads will lead the way for global media

growth in the next four years, accounting for 33% of total advertising revenue (2015)

In 2016, the average firm will allocate 30% of their marketing budget to online (Web Strategies Inc., 2015)

Birchbox, one of Honest Beauty’s primary competitors, spent $490,000 on advertising in 2013 (Statista, 2015)

Content Marketing Each team member created an account with Honest Beauty and received a “welcome” email with language that aligns extremely well with the brand image (see Appendix A). The email shows a photo of Jessica Alba, addresses the account member by first name and immediately states “we’re going to do beauty differently.” The email provides more support for the brand message by including language about “looks” and ends with

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Alba’s signature and a call to action “Start Shopping” button (see Appendix A). We’re confident that this initial email (one of the first messages that customers will see upon joining) is effective in communicating the intended brand promise. The latest version of the Honest Beauty site has content that is relevant to its target audience. The first page that the consumer views upon visiting the site contains an above­the­fold video of Jessica Alba’s “looks” (see Appendix A). The video (without sound) shows her using the beauty products in daily life ­ on­the­go walking to work, getting ready for an event, and spending time with her child. Upon further digging, the team found the extended version of this video. We suggest that the entire video is shown rather than the edited version ­ we feel the the full content could be more engaging than the few clips that are currently in place. The full­length reel shows Jessica Alba using popular products from interesting perspectives for each look. Each of these looks are relevant to the average consumer in Honest Beauty’s target audience ­ “girls night out,” “we almost woke up like this,” “like a boss,” etc. The team found an opportunity for more consistent branding in terms of videos and other rich media. While the brand message conveys soft, simple and clean with light colors and attractive fonts, the music in the background of some videos suggests otherwise. While this is a seemingly insignificant detail in the grand scheme of things, it all plays into the overall perception of a brand. Messages must be consistent to limit customer confusion about the brand and its products. The site also links to the Honestly Beautiful blog, which is full of engaging content. We commend Honest Beauty for having posts aren’t focused only on promoting products ­ they include suggested music playlists, makeup tips and advice from respected artists, various “looks,” tutorials, the latest trends and inspirational quotes. It’s important to extend the brand in order to infiltrate the message in all aspects of the consumers’ lives. The blog content is already engaging, but we suggest implementing a strategy to encourage more social sharing. There are currently small symbols in the top right corner of the site that link to the Honest Beauty pages (see Appendix A), but the user must scroll to the bottom of the page to a small link to share an individual blog post. We at Halcyon suggest that these buttons should be more prominent on the page to encourage sharing, which will drive more customers to the blog and hopefully the product website. The team suggests that Honest Beauty further promote its unique selling point, which is providing makeup products specific to various ethnicities and skin tones. This is what sets the brand apart from others in the cosmetics market; however it is not the primary message conveyed through digital marketing efforts currently in place. Rich media that clearly portrays this feature of the brand should be the first and foremost piece of content viewed by the consumer.

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Social and Retargeting In terms of Honest Beauty’s online advertising and display ads, the team found several areas that would need improvement. The company needs to present their ads on websites after a viewer searches the company multiple times on Google. These display advertisements need to be implemented as soon as possible so customers can be re­directed to the company from other websites. The team felt it was best to use banner advertisements as well as rich media. This will serve as a search retargeting tactic which would help the company target identified users and unidentified users by using cookies. Honest Beauty will also earn more brand recognition, and the team believes the brand is more likely to get noticed. We had a difficult time finding keywords that would generate any search retargeting and in fact, we discovered Honest Beauty’s competitors, bareMinerals, showed up in paid search when searching “make up”. It would be a good idea to include paid search with relevant keywords so the brand can stand with their competitors and easily find Honest Beauty. Today, the use of social media is at an all time high. Social media advertising, whether it is paid or organic, is essential to implement for a brand. Honest Beauty does not include any Facebook advertisements, but the team noticed The Honest Company ads were displayed. Facebook ads would help Honest Beauty marketers understand their target market and demographics. They benefit from cheap advertising as low as $1 per click. In addition, the company has yet to break 50,000 likes, so in terms of organic search, more likes by a viewer’s friends and a wider audience will improve the brand’s online presence, and a viewer is more likely to see the ad on their News Feed. Facebook also allows you to test your ads and learn how people are engaging with your ad. The team applauds the brand content on the Instagram account, but would like to recommend sponsored posts by Honest Beauty. Instead of seeing sponsored posts by Honest Beauty, we saw posts from The Honest Company. Adding an Honest Beauty sponsored post will increase awareness and will immediately target millennials since a majority of millennials use Instagram, with 90% of users being under 35 years old (Smith, 2014). According to Anna Freier from businessapps.com, Instagram has higher engagement than Facebook and Twitter and it is the best platform for beauty products (2015). Although Honest Beauty has an active Twitter account, we believe that some of the tweets should link off to the blog. It will drive visits to the blog and give visitors more insight into the company. Furthermore, Honest Beauty needs a Google Plus account. This is important because Google Plus pages rank very high in search results and are linked to company phone

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numbers so customers can easily make inquires. In addition, the company also needs a LinkedIn page that sets them apart from another company page that also has the same name. With a LinkedIn page, they can reach a professional audience and target their demographic. Honest Beauty should also create simple square text link ads on LinkedIn to expand their viewership. We also think that Honest Beauty needs to be more visibly linked to The Honest Company. Since The Honest Company is Jessica Alba’s original company and has better overall awareness, it seems fitting to more visibly link the two sites to gain awareness for Honest Beauty, as well as potentially expand both customer bases. We suggest that The Honest Company’s website should have a prominent call to action encouraging visitors to visit the Honest Beauty website when they are done shopping. We also think The Honest Company’s Google Plus page should be updated to reflect that Honest Beauty is a subdivision in order to further raise awareness.

Customer Service Overall, Honest Beauty has a solid customer service platform, which can be seen in screenshots listed under Appendix A; however there are a few suggestions that we think would make this part of their brand identity even more effective. First, adding an OpinionLab to the webpage would provide customers who are interested in Honest Beauty a more accessible way to give feedback. OpinionLab is a third party company that is embedded right on the website as a way for the customer’s voice to be heard in a survey style and drive smarter business actions. Having this right on the website provides consumers with an easy pathway. It solves the problem of having to go elsewhere. In terms of customer service in general, the seamless customer journey should always be at the forefront of Honest Beauty’s position. As a fairly new brand, establishing that sort of journey for customers will only enhance the target audience’s view of how Honest Beauty functions. From a company perspective, having an OpinionLab on the Honest Beauty website will only serve to help them continue to improve their relationship with consumers. It will provide data on how customers are reacting to everything from the website to mobile platforms. It will also aid in preventing any negative feedback from going viral, and for a new brand in a competitive market this is essential. According to Opinionlab.com, the first time a client (in this case, Honest Beauty) starts utilizing OpinionLab to the fullest capacity, an instant shift in attitude occurs. Priorities are changed for the better and the mission statement has more of a focus on customer centricity. (OpinionLab, 2015) While Honest Beauty’s website is already very user­friendly, this would be taking it to the next step to achieve ultimate customer satisfaction and loyalty through the analysis that OpinionLab provides. Halcyon feels this would have an overall positive effect on Honest Beauty’s decisions and culture, as well as consumers’ experience.

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Another recommendation we are proposing is the introduction of a customer service forum. As briefly mentioned above, for a new company like Honest Beauty, negative feedback is something that should constantly be monitored in order to maintain a positive image during its beginning stages. Implementing a forum where consumers will have the ability to go on and specifically address any concerns they might have will solve the problem of excess negative commentary on social media. This would also give consumers who may be having similar problems or concerns access to old posts by others. In addition, there would still be a focus on the seamless customer journey if this forum was able to be accessed directly from the Honest Beauty website, mobile site, or app. In this day and age, it is no longer enough to just have an FAQ page or a link to an email address that customers can click and contact. Direct interaction and consumer involvement is what matters to stand out as a company. By adding a customer service forum, this would also put Honest Beauty ahead of two main competitors, Birchbox and bareMinerals. In addition, having a personal forum would prevent consumers from posting opinions on external blogs. Halcyon suggests that Honest Beauty use My Starbucks Idea as an example when designing their forum. Putting elements such as OpinionLab and a customer service forum into place will only serve to better the culture and identity of Honest Beauty. They will both serve to benefit Honest Beauty’s understanding of the consumers, and the consumers will appreciate the attention to customer satisfaction. It is strategies like these that generate a positive brand image, and word of mouth will spread among consumers about the excellent customer service displayed by an up­and­coming business like Honest Beauty.

Keywords We at Halcyon highly suggest that Honest Beauty work to expand its search keywords in order to improve the site’s placement in Google search results. According to Alexa.com, all of the searches that send traffic to Honest Beauty’s website currently include the word ‘honest,’ which is very narrow and specific (see Appendix B) (2015). We also tried a variety of searches using words such as “makeup,” “natural makeup,” “honest,” “honest skin care,” and even “Jessica Alba,” and we found that Honest Beauty rarely appeared on the first page of results. Since Honest Beauty is such a new company, many potential customers still don’t know about its existence. These consumers will likely make broader searches such as those outlined above, and if Honest Beauty doesn’t show up, they might never find out about it. That being said, upon searching “organic makeup,” Honest Beauty’s paid search result is the first on the page, which is great. Now we just suggest expanding SEM and SEO efforts so that this is the case for even more relevant keywords. In order to accomplish this, one of the most important recommendations we have is to add keywords into the coding of the website. Adding words such as makeup, skincare and honest will help Honest Beauty show up higher in the search results for much more

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broad searches instead of only searches for Honest Beauty specifically. This a very simple fix that will go a long way toward gaining awareness for the company. Using Google AdWord’s Keyword Planner, we were able to find a complete list of the most frequently searched terms that are relevant to Honest Beauty; for example, “online makeup,” “makeup samples,” and “natural makeup” all ranked highly in average monthly searches (see Appendix B). This will be a great tool to use in deciding exactly which keywords would result in the most amount of traffic for Honest Beauty, as well as how expensive they will be to implement. Website Coding From our understanding, Honest Beauty currently utilizes several third party services on the back end of the website. Those third parties include Facebook Connect, Facebook Custom Advice, Google Adwords Conversion, Google Analytics, Google Dynamic Remarketing, Google Tag Manager, and Optimizely. Honest Beauty also utilizes enhanced search results on Google. We have analyzed the website and its current optimization and have put careful thought into several other third party services that will benefit the website and the user’s customer experience. The following are suggestions to optimize website functionality for Honest Beauty. First, we would like to optimize site search by utilizing the Google Search Appliance. This will provide document indexing functionality. Adding this code into the back end will result in a search bar being added on Honest Beauty’s homepage. That way, if the customer knows exactly what product they want or wants to do a search in general, they will be able to easily do so. This is common on most retailer’s websites, but does not currently exist on Honest Beauty’s site. This search bar will also help to create a seamless customer journey. Next, we suggest that Honest Beauty utilize a third party called Bazaarvoice. This company will help Honest Beauty share the power of authentic, word­of­mouth marketing. The company is designed to connect brands and retailers to authentic voices of people who shop there ultimately maximizing ecommerce purchases. Additionally, this will also allow customers to share their either positive or negative feedback on the products. This kind of feedback will help modify products to the desire of the core customer and provide authentic feedback to fellow customers. Many retail companies offer free shipping and fast, two­day shipping. In order to be competitive with other beauty retailers, we suggest that Honest Beauty utilize ShopRunner. This third party will allow customers to obtain free and fast two­day shipping putting the company ahead of competing retailers such as Birchbox, bareMinerals, and Macy’s.

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Next, our team analyzed Honest Beauty’s email marketing tactics. We feel the right amount of email marketing is being used currently. We have observed that Honest Beauty is careful to tailor the amount of emails to each customer’s preference. For example, when a customer signs up for Honest Beauty, they are prompted with a question regarding what emails they would like to receive from Honest Beauty. The customer can check the box for monthly emails or marketing emails. The customer can also sign up for marketing emails. Honest Beauty is also clear about informing the customer that they will still receive transactional emails. In order to avoid blacklisting and unsubscribing, it’s key to allow customers to choose how many emails they receive. Something else our company would like to implement is adobe marketing cloud in order to analyze big data. This kind of customer understanding will provide relevant product recommendations, make the customer feel like they are receiving a more personalized service, and ultimately better target certain customers for the products they would actually be interested in purchasing. Mobile App After careful analysis of Honest Beauty’s mobile app, our team found that overall, the app functions well. There are, however, are a few opportunities we would like to suggest. The first thing we loved about the app is that it is cohesive aesthetically with the desktop website. All of the colors, fonts, products, and images are the same and this helps to create a strong, consistent brand DNA. For someone who does not have the app and does a mobile search on a cell phone or tablet, the mobile website also looks the same. Honest Beauty is already utilizing the good practice of suggesting opening the website in the app, but does not insist and still allows the customer to shop on the mobile website. An opportunity our team discovered is creating a seamless customer journey in the basket and checkout part of the app. A few of our team members engaged with the “try on this look” part of the app and found that all of the beauty products were going into our checkout carts and they were difficult to remove. This is a small coding glitch in the app, but can create frustration for the customer. Furthermore, our team is particularly fond of the “try on the look” feature of the app. We think this is a very innovative, fun way for customers to engage with the app and makes the app seem more sophisticated thus reflecting a professional image on this new company. One suggestion we have is to switch up the looks for different occasions during the year. For example, creating a “holiday” look for December, a “Valentine’s Day” look for February, etc.

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Finally, we love that the app sends relevant push notifications. For example, Honest Beauty sends a notification about new products such as Lip Crayons to get the customer back on the app and shopping. We also love that the customer can opt out of push notifications. This is a good practice. (See Appendix A for screenshot).

Analysis Plan Campaign Goals Our overall campaign goals include increasing brand awareness. We will drive audience engagement through social sharing and increase macro and micro conversions. For macro conversions we will increase sales transactions through revenue and increase the average order value. With micro conversions, we will increase the number of blog visits, email sign ups, social shares by channel, and website clicks. Measures

Macro and micro conversions (with attribution) Unique Users; Total Users New visitors via organic search New visitors via paid search Pageviews Time Spent on Site Bounce Rate

Reporting In order to report all of the above measurements of our campaign goals, we will utilize the graphs created by the data stored on our Google Analytics dashboard (see Appendix A for example). We will also create tables and comparative graphs in Excel when further elaboration and reporting is relevant. All graphs and tables will also be accompanied by a written summary. We plan to create a PowerPoint presentation to showcase these visual representations of the changes in each metric throughout the course of the campaign. Assessing Success In order to assess the success of the campaign, our team will take a critical look at our key performance indicators (KPIS). We will take a look at our data to be sure we reached and ideally exceeded these KPIS. The first assessment of success we will look at is if there is an increase in market share for Honest Beauty. Through this IMC approach, we can track the progress of our

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recommendations and Honest Beauty’s growth in the marketplace compared to its competitors. The second way we will assess success is by looking at Honest Beauty’s increase in profits and overall bottom line sales in correlation with the recommendations. Next, we will be looking at the change in the number of unique users and hits on Honest Beauty’s website as well as the conversion to sales. Finally, we will be assessing the change in social media following and interaction.

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About the Team Olivia Berrigan is a research strategist at Halcyon. She has 4 years of experience working in market research. Olivia has spent a great amount of time in the fashion and beauty marketing industry. Before joining Halcyon, Olivia worked on accounts such as Tiffany & Co., PINK, and Dove. Berrigan graduated from Ithaca College where she studied Theatre Studies and Integrated Marketing Communications. Olivia’s favorite Honest Beauty look is “Fresh.” Micaela Metz is an account manager at Halcyon. She has 4 years of experience in the advertising industry and working in New York City. Metz has a wide array of beauty marketing experience. She has worked on the Macy’s, L’oreal Paris, and Mac Cosmetics accounts previously. Furthermore, at her previous agency, Ogilvy, Metz worked on the Corona and Coca Cola accounts. Metz attended Ithaca College where she studied Integrated Marketing Communications. Micaela’s favorite Honest Beauty look is “daring.”

Colleen O’Meara is a digital strategist at Halcyon. She has 3 years of experience in digital marketing. Prior to her current position at Halcyon, Colleen worked for MEC, an agency under GroupM in New York City. Accounts she has worked on include Marriott Hotels and Lululemon Athletica. O’Meara graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications. Colleen’s favorite Honest Beauty look is “Sunny.”

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Sonya Joshi is a digital strategist at Halcyon. She has 2 years of experience working in digital marketing in New York City and 2 years of experience in San Francisco. Previously, she has worked for DeepFocus Agency and has worked on accounts including Nike, Warby Parker, and Airbnb. Joshi graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications. Sonya’s favorite Honest Beauty look is “Daring”. Megan Zart is an account manager at Halcyon. She has 3 years of experience working in the advertising industry, 2 of which were in the digital marketing sphere. Previously, Megan worked at R&R Partners in Los Angeles, where she worked on accounts such as Western Digital, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Boeing. She graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications. Megan’s favorite Honest Beauty look is “Fresh.”

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Appendices Appendix A: Screenshots

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Appendix B: Keyword Reports

When typed into Google Adwords, these were the suggested keywords that may trigger an ad to appear next to search results:

1. beauty products online 2. best skin care products 3. top skin care products 4. best skin care 5. best face products 6. best facial products 7. cindy crawford skin care 8. skin care brands 9. good skin care brands 10.korean skin care brands 11. face care products 12. facial products 13. the best skin care products 14.cosmetics online 15.beauty care products

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According to Alexa.com, the following keywords send traffic to the site:

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Appendix C: Site Traffic Reports Using Alexa.com, we were able to gather the following information about honestbeauty.com:

According to Alexa.com, the website ranks globally at 80,098 80.6% of visitors of from the United States, ranking 17,652

Bounce rate is 36.30% There are 3.97 pageviews per visitor The daily time on site is 4:07 10.30% of visits come from a search engine There are 58 total sites linking to honestbeauty.com:

Only 8.14% of visitors go to blog.honestbeauty.com 78% of sites load faster than honestbeauty.com’s rate of 2.691 seconds The following charts display audience demographic:

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Appendix D: Competitive Information Birchbox:

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BareMinerals:

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References Birchbox: Ad spend in the U.S. 2013 | Statistic. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.statista.com/statistics/302612/ad­spend­birchbox­usa/ Competitive Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bareescentuals.com Competitive Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/birchbox.com Competitive Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/honestbeauty.com Facts & Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from https://www.cmocouncil.org/facts­stats­categories.php?view=all&category=marketing­spend Freier, A. (2015, August 11). Instagram is winning the brand engagement race ­ stats and figures ­ Business of Apps. Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://www.businessofapps.com/instagram­is­winning­the­brand­engagement­race­stats­and­figures/

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How Much Should I Budget for Marketing in 2016? ­ WebStrategies Inc. (2015, October 15). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/how­much­budget­for­online­marketing­in­2014 Keyword Planner. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from Google AdWords website:

https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home?__u=3330362953&__c=227409

1153&authuser=0#search

Newswire. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/age­before­beauty­treating­generations­with­a­personal­touch­in­beauty­advertising.html OpinionLab. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://www.opinionlab.com/ Smith, C. (2014, March 6). 150 Amazing Instagram Statistics. Retrieved December 9, 2015, from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/important­instagram­stats/2/

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