If you’re a manufacturer and retailer of beauty products, you’ve no doubt spent a lot of time and resources building your “brand” — both online and offline. And yes, your visual identity and eye-catching campaigns are integral to your brand, especially in the beauty space. 

But there are many more ways to cultivate and enhance your brand across the evolving e-commerce landscape. In our conversations with successful global brands, there are three key questions they must answer to ensure they’re meeting today’s evolving brand standards:

Does your brand appear everywhere your consumers shop? 

While strategies around exclusivity and scarcity might work for some luxury brands, when it comes to beauty, consumers still need convenience. They want to know that the products they’re looking for can easily be found on the channels where they prefer to search and shop.

Increasingly, that’s marketplaces. In research commissioned by ChannelAdvisor last year, we found that, when global consumers go online to buy a product, 54% begin their product search on Amazon or other marketplaces and 29% on search engines, as opposed to 13% who visit a brand website.

The marketplace model continues to grow and proliferate around the world, and there are literally hundreds of marketplaces and retail channel options — from small, niche sites to broad, multinational marketplaces. You can’t realistically list your products everywhere and remain profitable, so take time to learn your customers and build your channel mix based on their preferences. 

After you determine your specific retail channels, ensure that your products show up in search results and the digital shelf. For example, if your suncare products do not show up in search results on a retail site for “SPF 40 sunscreen,” what does it say about your brand?

Is your online execution on par with your brand standards?

Elements like prices, reviews and even stock availability play a big part in how consumers perceive your online brand. 

Prices help customers assess product value. High prices convey a higher value, but could hurt sales or even set unrealistic expectations if not regulated closely. Take time to build dynamic pricing strategies for your products and then work with your retail partners to establish pricing guidelines that put your brand in the best light while still maximizing revenue.

The same is true when it comes to reviews. Most online channels let customers post reviews, and shoppers trust them to evaluate products and brands ahead of a purchase. Learn what’s allowed on each of your retail sites and develop strategies to improve your reputation. 

And finally, brands with frequently out-of-stock products can appear unprofessional, so automate and synchronize your inventory levels across your various selling channels. 

Are your channels working in sync?  

One of the key challenges for brands expanding their multichannel efforts is maintaining that brand consistency across the entire buying journey. Providing a top-notch consumer experience at every digital touchpoint is essential to how your brand is perceived by potential customers. 

Your customers should never hit a dead end. Your digital and social ad campaigns should be shoppable and synced with your product detail pages, providing a seamless option for a consumer to buy a product at any time, whether it’s their first touchpoint or their thirtieth. 

In the end, you’ll also want to be able to track those journeys, so that you can actually tell what’s working, tweak your strategies and ensure that the brand you spent so much time and energy building is actually paying off. 

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