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.

Insights and Key Learnings

Q: What did you learn about your consumers from this campaign? What should other marketers consider when working with influencers across a franchise?
A: From a product standpoint, this campaign provided insight into consumers’ questions about our offering. From the services we provide, to the longevity of eyelash extension wear, it was clear that we needed to do more to distinguish our brand over other types of eyelash enhancement products. Generally speaking, it was a great way to hear what our customers care about and prioritize accordingly.

However, we recognized that the beauty space is ever-evolving, and is emotionally rich. The insights we gained weren’t just about our product, but also about how our customers felt once they applied the lashes, and how our brand could continue to meet the expectations of their daily beauty regimens. Everything from tutorials to future services, we got inspiration about how we could be more connected to our customers.

The beauty services industry is driven by personal customer preference, and beauty studios tend to be a hyper-local industry, reflective of local trends and lifestyle. As a result, we found that aesthetic preferences varied regionally throughout our brand, and that style preferences can differ from franchise to franchise. It’s important to understand the nuances of the different customer segments, especially when it comes to such a visually-forward cosmetic enhancement (eyes are arguably the most noticeable feature of one’s face).

In a franchise service model, delivering a consistent experience and in this case “look,” can be a challenge. Each of our locations each could have between 15 to 30 stylists on staff, all with different backgrounds and educations. As such, it’s imperative not to just alert the franchise location and their teams to the campaign promotion, but also to make sure they understand the objective,are well-informed, and are properly equipped to meet consumer expectations coming out of the influencer content.

Q: When it comes to the beauty space and working with influencers, what’s your biggest learning?
A: The biggest learning is understanding the value of planning for an influencer content series over an extended period of time. With more posts, we were able to gain access to more consumer data including social media engagement, comments for qualitative analysis, and promotion analytics. The extended length of the campaign allowed the audience more time to learn about our brand, and in turn, became more entwined with our product and story, which was clearly reflected in the growth of the engagement in each post.

Further, while engagement and sales are important, this data indicated that personal style preference is key in the beauty space–it is what determines engagement on social and purchase intent. This paved the way for us to optimize future campaigns and actually drive more ROI by focusing our creative efforts on style-specific content. And, of course, since there were more posts driving to the website there were more opportunities to grow our online presence and drive consumption at the store-level.

The key takeaway here, I believe, is that a one-and-done approach isn’t an effective way to utilize influencers. It’s important to increase the longevity of the partnership to get the most out of it, and become a trusted advisor to your customers.

Q: What do you think is the most important element to building relationships with influencers?
A: Transparency is the most important element–primarily for the brand to share their objectives, obstacles and expectations with the influencer openly, but also for the influencer to be upfront about their preconceived notions and their expectations. Finding an influencer who embodies the lifestyle or traits reflective of those you seek in prospective consumers is also imperative to ensure a more genuine audience response and a more qualified lead overall.

For more from Dawn, you can follow her on LinkedIn and visit her at www.markonnect.com.