Working With Influencers For A Franchised Beauty Brand, Part 1

Dawn Weiss is a marketing veteran with nearly two decades of experience building innovative brands that thrive and is an expert in the retail, wellness, beauty, and fitness sectors. As the CMO of Amazing Lash Studio, a leading eyelash extension beauty franchise, Dawn worked with influencers to support the business–Julius caught up with her to discover how she found success.

Campaign Strategic Approach

Q: What were your objectives? How did you measure success?
A: Our objective, like many marketing campaigns, was to inform and educate our target consumers about our brands and products. We wanted to reach new customers, specifically to schedule an introductory lash service at one of our 190+ locations nationwide–no small feat! In order to accomplish our task, we had to first generate content that would resonate. From there, we would measure services booked (quantitative sales), and reviews on site (qualitative assessment).

Q: As a nationwide brand with local franchises, what was your strategic approach?
A: We knew that we had to deliver high impact content at a national level. The best way to do that was to give influencers exceptional quality service, but we also knew that we were going to have to rely on franchisees in order to have a successful campaign at scale.

Including franchise owners at the core of our processes was essential to having them onboard. We guided them so that once the influencer content was live, they would provide continued amplification, effectively turning our franchisees into a nationwide social media amplification network. At the corporate level, we sourced the influencer, so the local franchisee didn’t have to do the legwork, but would still reap the benefits by generating traffic to their own locations. That earned their buy-in and campaign support for execution at the local level, which was the key to our success.

Influencers & Bringing It To Life

Q: What was your influencer criteria?
A: Primarily, we wanted an influencer who was credible and respected in the lifestyle/beauty/fashion space. Because of this, we sought a blogger with at least 500K Instagram followers. With this established following, this influencer would be authentic, detailed, and exhibit high editorial engagement which would resonate with our primary demographic: women aged 35-54. From a creative standpoint, we sought someone whose imagery was aligned with our brand’s modern, stylish standards, and who we felt would be a strong, positive representative of our brand and ideal consumer–someone who is beauty-conscious, seeking confidence and convenience from a beauty regimen.

Q: Who did you work with and what did you ask the influencers to do?
A: For this campaign we ended up working with one influencer, Adaleta Avdic. We felt that her credibility in the space and her reach would be enough to carry the effort for the (limited) budget we had. We specifically chose Ada because she presents a more practical approach to beauty on-the-go and could illustrate the effortless beauty of our lash extension services, but could also candidly share her experience. Her look is more natural, so her expertise, plus her style, and of course her audience demographics, made her a great fit to help introduce our products and services to prospective customers.

Our campaign partnership with Ada lasted five months, and during that time we asked her to visit one of our locations. During each visit, she tried a different style of lash (we had four signature styles we featured). After, she wrote a blog post and shared it on her respective social media channels. Her blog posts covered a different element of her experience, namely, her experience at the location and its environment, comfort of the lash application service, look and feel of the featured style, and ease and durability of the product. We felt if she covered each of these topics, she would paint a clear picture of what our brand had to offer guests. We believed that editorial coverage would be the best medium to get a detailed view of her experience.

Q: Was there a social media component to the campaign? If so, what channels did the influencer share on, how much did they share, and how was it received?
A: Yes, the campaign was primarily featured on her blog, but the visual content was then reshared to her Instagram and Facebook pages. Additionally, every time she tried a new lash style, she teased out the look on her Instagram Stories, driving to her blog content for the full picture of her experience. Since her blog is really the heart of her digital presence and community, it made sense to drive there.

Although the blog posts detailed the visits in full, the Instagram posts were highly visual, and robust enough to tell a story and invite engagement. I think this is in part because her reviews were so honest and transparent, and we gave her creative freedom. Another big part of the campaign was driving increased engagement through an exclusive offer within each of her posts. This created a win-win opportunity for us and for her, as it provided additional value to her audience.

Q: Did you contract your influencers? Did you pay them?
A: We did contract, however compensation was always in exchange for services rendered. The value exchange of the product itself and services associated with them, plus a short-term membership, quickly added up to be a bundle most influencers found enticing enough in lieu of monetary compensation. We found this to be the case with many influencers we worked with, since stand-out lashes are a coveted beauty essential for those who live their lives in front of the camera. Amazing Lash Studio was the leading brand and well-known among franchise beauty brands for the quality service they provide. That of course worked to our advantage, as we were able to build relationships with influencers through their experience without a looming paycheck to hang over their heads, resulting in authentic and honest content.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this Q&A, coming to the blog soon!