For a few years now, influencer marketing has become a must-have tool in the beauty industry, which is expected to be worth $511 billion by the end of 2021 (source: Kolsquare study, 2021). The importance of partnering with high-profile influencers is felt more than ever by brands, in an industry where nearly 86% of sales are made directly online. Today, we're going to analyse 5 of the best influencer campaigns in the beauty sector in 2021, to get inspiration and lessons for your future influencer marketing campaigns.
In 2021, Kolsquare launched a major study on marketing influence in the beauty sector in order to identify brand behaviour and highlight future trends. After analysing nearly 2 million Key Opinion Leaders over the whole of 2020, here are some of the lessons that have emerged from this study.
In 2020, more than one million beauty-related posts were counted on social networks, 90% of which were on Instagram. However, it is on TikTok that beauty-related posts get the most engagement, with an average engagement rate of 4.9%, compared to only 1.07% on Instagram.
Images are the most popular format, used in 85.9% of cases, compared to only 10.3% for video. Although we are seeing a strong increase in the use of Story and Reels on Instagram.
In 70% of the cases, the typical profile of a beauty influencer’s follower is a woman aged 25 to 34. Note that regardless of their demographic, nearly 90% of Instagram users follow a brand or company.
The biggest trend in the fashion industry is undoubtedly inclusivity, with more and more brands and influencers highlighting LGBT and vegan values, whether on TikTok or on Instagram.
Finally, it is important to note that it is very easy to measure the effectiveness of each influencer campaign, whether it is by giving a promo code to influencers, or placing a pixel in sponsored links. This way, brands can track sales and KPIs of their influencer campaign in order to measure their return on investment.
At the beginning of this year, Miguel Vilas, the former candidate of the Spanish reality show Gran Hermano, who has been converted into a beauty influencer, joined the #sephoracollectioncrew family, alongside other leading influencers in Spain such as @saraemdi and @sarabace. On the agenda: beauty tutorials and demonstrations of Sephora’s entire range of facial and hair care products!
With a multitude of publications advocating inclusion and being yourself, Sephora is partnering with one of Spain’s new beauty icons and reinforcing its brand image among Spanish youth. The cosmetics brand is identified in almost one out of three posts on the popular Instagram account of the influencer with the highest engagement rate in Spain (4.5%).
The numerous contests organised by Miguel have not only allowed Sephora’s Spanish branch to gain tens of thousands of followers on the networks, but also to sell large quantities of some of its flagship products, which are dear to the influencer-like here, with the “Cream Lip Stain N1” lipstick that helped Miguel to take on the world more than 10 years ago.
For its latest advert broadcast on the networks, the brand teamed up with TikTok star Charli D’amelio, with over 130 million followers, and three influencers specialised in skin products: a cosmetics enthusiast, @skincarebyhyram, with over 6.6 million followers, and two dermatologists, Dr. Shah, aka @dermdoctor, with over 11.5 million followers, and Dr. Howard, @dermbeautydoc, with 166,000 followers.
In a video that perfectly adopts the codes of TikTok-in particular thanks to the use of the collage function and the choreography specific to the network-the four KOLs highlight the benefits of Cerave’s moisturising cream.
The result: more than 132 million views for the video at the moment, and more than 300,000 followers on the brand’s TikTok account. And that’s not counting the many videos posted by each of the influencers on their respective accounts in praise of the brand!
Mikayla Nogueira has become the number one beauty influencer on TikTok this year. The 23-year-old American, who created a buzz during the lockdown with her make-up tutorials, found herself a few months later at the head of an audience of over 7 million fans.
After much hesitation, the Tiktokeuse finally decided to collaborate with the cosmetics brand Glamlite to offer her fans a 100% vegan make-up palette. As expected, the Mikayla makeup set sold out within hours of being released.
This influencer campaign resulted in an explosion of Glamlite’s sales, which was a huge return on investment for the cosmetics brand. Thanks to the numerous posts and stories from the influencer inviting her fans to subscribe to the brand, Glam Lite was able to benefit from a significant growth in the number of subscribers on Instagram and Tiktok, and also recorded a significant increase in traffic on its website for the year 2021.
Since the health crisis and the arrival of the first lock-down, Twitch has seen the arrival of a new kind of creator: beauty streamers. The phenomenon has grown so much on the platform that they now have their own category called “Beauty and Body Art“.
Benefit Cosmetics was one of the first brands to sniff out this new trend. At the end of 2020, the brand launched an influencer campaign on Twitch aimed at female gamers, entitled “Game Face“, with the slogan “Reveal your Game Face with Benefit”. The cosmetics company teamed up with more than 20 female gamers from around the world to broadcast non-stop content on its Twitch channel for a week. The French Leagues of Legends streamer Shynouh (35,000 subscribers) and the American streamers Sydeon (260,000 subscribers) and QuarterJade (795,000 subscribers) appeared.
With more than 5,000 hours of streaming viewed and an average of 3,000 viewers throughout the week, Benefit Cosmetics has succeeded in establishing a relationship of trust with its audience while establishing itself as the reference channel mixing video games and beauty products on Twitch.
Julia beautx became the 2nd most popular beauty influencer in Germany a few months ago.
For the release of its new make-up collection, Schwarzkopf teamed up with the German youtuber to celebrate Halloween in style. In a sponsored video on Instagram, the young woman demonstrates the extensive colour palette of the new Got2be cosmetic set, showing all the steps of her transformation into a killer clown.
With a promo code for a 10% discount in the influencer’s bio, the hair cosmetics brand was able to track the results of this influencer campaign in detail and judge its effectiveness by measuring, for example, the number of clicks, the conversion rate or the cost per action.
Beauty influencers have extremely diverse profiles, and each of them are reaching a unique audience with very specific needs.
Our solution helps you find the KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) relevant to your industry to maximize the returns of your influencer campaign. Thanks to our catalogue of over 2 millions French and international influencers, it has never been easier to identify the ideal profile to represent your company!
With our advanced, accurate and intuitive search engine, you can build your influencer address book in no time, and reach your core target audience today.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
