Inside L'Oréal’s glamourous strategy to better reach audiences with Amazon Ads
January 24, 2022 | By Matt Miller, Sr. Copywriter
“Masstige.” That’s the term L'Oréal uses to describe the brands that make up its Consumer Product Division. “It's a mix between mass and prestige,” said Racha Assi, L'Oréal's Digital Manager for the Consumer Products Division in the Middle East. “Our mission is to offer accessible luxury beauty for all consumers.”
This is the idea that connects four different brands, under L'Oréal’s Consumer Product Division, that cater to a wide range of beauty needs. There's Garnier, which offers skincare, haircare, and hair coloration products, with a focus on green beauty and sustainability. L'Oréal Paris is a more premium brand that focuses on empowering women through luxury beauty products. Maybelline New York is a Gen Z and Millennial-focused brand that wants to offer trendy, innovative cosmetics to everyone. Then, finally, there's NYX Professional Make Up, which is a fun and dynamic brand that provides professional makeup at accessible prices.
“Each of these brands has a different identity and a different position in the industry today,“ Assi said.
L'Oréal Paris Hyaluron Expert serum
Going into 2021, L’Oréal wanted to find a way to help inform customers about the products across these individual brands using a multi-brand advertising strategy with Amazon Ads. “The common objective across all of these brands in the region was to increase our level of awareness for the brand, leading to a full-funnel journey that ends in engagement and conversion,“ Assi said.
This year, L’Oréal worked with Amazon Ads to tailor a holistic full-funnel media approach that harnessed a multi-brand advertising strategy, along with single-brand and multi-brand Stores.
With so many products across so many different brands, L'Oréal faced the difficult decision of deciding on the most relevant products to introduce to customers at the right time, while also standing out from competition. When customers navigate to Amazon to browse and purchase from the beauty category, how does L’Oréal decide which of their many products they want to inform their customers about?
“I have three brands that offer mascara,” Assi said. “How do I choose one? Why do I need to choose? I have so many different offerings for consumers, I want the consumers to choose.”
Garnier SkinActive Fast Bright Serum
Together with Amazon Ads, L'Oréal created a two-tiered strategy addressing the intricacies of the full-funnel.
L'Oréal worked with the Boston Consultancy Group Matrix to better understand their brand product positioning by classifying products based on performance. For example, with Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) that already had above average sales and above average traffic, L'Oréal would try to inform new-to-brand customers about these products—since they were already performing well and could grow by reaching new customers. On the other hand, for ASINs with below average sales and below average traffic, L'Oréal would try to re-connect with audiences who were loyal to the brand and might be interested in trying a new product from a brand they love.
Then, L'Oréal developed a multi-brand strategy that found a way to better inform customers about their products using Amazon’s first-party audience insights. For example, L’Oréal understood that new-to-beauty category customers tend to begin with ‘Eye’ related products followed by ‘Lips.’ Many customers were also browsing for products to enhance the brightness and glow of their skin.
With these strategic insights in mind, L’Oréal leveraged the Amazon DSP full-funnel proposition to deliver on upper-funnel brand building objectives, reaching audiences browsing across categories to drive mass awareness. This ultimately helped customers reach a multi-brand Store designed with a customer-first experience that allows shoppers to easily discover and select the most ideal products.
They also used an always-on approach to maintain a consistent presence with customers wherever they spend time. Previously, L'Oréal had chosen to be more tactical with its advertising, but “we realized we can't just be sometimes available to consumers” Assi said.
As Assi explained, this marketing strategy was all about putting customers first.
“At the end of the day, our objective is to reach customers in an effective way,” Assi said. “With this strategy we were able to use sponsored ads and Amazon DSP to be more relevant to customers today.”
Maybelline New York Falsies Lashlift
With this strategy, L'Oréal saw a 59% growth in their overall Amazon sales and an increase in return on ad spend, which was 54% higher than the beauty industry benchmark.1 The brand was also able to drive more than 50% of its total sales from non-branded queries, which helped them grow their segment share by reaching new audiences.2
“It was phenomenal,“ Assi said. ”Amazon DSP coupled with sponsored ads was the secret recipe for our success. What we did, and what I would advise, is to always put the customer first. With that in mind, make sure you leverage all the tools Amazon Ads has at your disposal that makes sense for the customer journey. Amazon Ads has a lot of tools that complement each other. And it’s very important to have a super solid long-term strategy.”
—Racha Assi, Middle East Consumer Products Digital Manager, L'OréalAmazon DSP coupled with sponsored ads was the secret recipe for our success. What we did, and what I would advise, is to always put the customer first.
1-2 Advertiser provided data, 2021