Driving Sampling & Authentic Reviews With Community - How Hero Cosmetics Did It
We could go on and on about the benefits of online brand communities. But we know how much more powerful personal testimonials and authentic reviews can be. So we thought we'd let one of the many brands that are reaping the benefits of an online brand community tell you about the impact and ROI themselves. Read on to learn how one of our clients, Hero Cosmetics, has turned their community into their marketing superpower, driving soaring advocacy, consumer acquisition, and loyalty.
Who is Hero Cosmetics?
Hero Cosmetics is a fast-growing, premium beauty brand that empowers people with acne-prone skin. Their first product was Mighty Patch—an acne patch that minimizes pimples without stripping or agitation. Since then, the brand has been on a meteoric rise, adding over 30 products to their line. The primary focus of Hero Cosmetics products is ingredients. Hero believes in restricting all of the ingredients that could cause irritation, understanding that customers with sensitive skin have trouble trusting new skin care products.
A Hero's Journey
As with all hero's journeys, Hero Cosmetics has faced challenges along the way, fighting to get their voice heard in the highly competitive beauty and skincare space. As a true skin champion, they had a passionate consumer base but no way to cultivate and harness those relationships.They also wanted to take their product sampling to the next level, driving influential, authentic reviews and valuable insights that they could use in future marketing campaigns. In their search for solutions, Hero Cosmetics determined that an online brand community would enable them to quickly and efficiently scale up their sampling and relationship-building efforts, providing an engaging destination where they could nurture and mobilize their fans to drive advocacy and insights.
The Hero Skin Squad
With the help of TrueLoyal, Hero Cosmetics established an online brand community: The Hero Skin Squad. The community's mission is to provide a space where people can connect and communicate about their skincare journey, helping consumers find the skin they want and the confidence boost that comes with it. In addition to fun interactive brand experiences such as discussions, polls, and promotional offers, the Hero Skin Squad offers consumer activations, which harness community members as a guerilla marketing team to generate brand awareness, in-store traffic, high-quality ratings and reviews, and user-generated content. For example, when their new Clear Collective line launched at Target, the brand ran a shopper marketing campaign to elevate in-store traffic and sell-through and generate brand buzz. Community members were mobilized to head to their local Target and share a photo or video of themselves with the new products for a chance to win a stocked swag bag from the brand. Hero supported its launch at Ulta Beauty in a similar fashion. These activities help Hero Cosmetics to increase awareness surrounding both new and old products by generating authentic video and photo reviews. It also helps create high-quality UGC for the brand to use. Hero was able to tap into TrueLoyal's in-platform survey tools to immediately begin gathering zero-party data to drive segmentation and personalization, supercharging its sampling efforts by hyper targeting members with the right skin tone and type. It also helped the brand team get a read on emerging skincare trends, such as “slugging” (check out this article from Elle if you're curious).In addition to rewarding Community members with opportunities to win product and branded swag, Hero awards points for every action and contribution to the community. These points are converted to coins in Hero's rewards program, allowing more ways for the brand to foster brand affinity and loyalty from its biggest fans.
The Results
“We are incredibly excited to see the immediate impact our community is having on our brand. The Hero Skin Squad is actively sharing their positive experiences with our products, participating in product development, and helping us spread the word about our new launches. The activities and insights coming out of our community are creating great value for Hero” - Amy Calhoun Robb, VP of Marketing, Hero Cosmetics With the help of their online brand community, Hero Cosmetics has quickly racked up amazing results. In just one year, the community has managed to generate 690 high-quality product reviews and over 7,500 pieces of user-generated content, supplying invaluable social proof. Hero Cosmetics also saw a 23% increase in Net Promoter Score. With more people likely to spread the positive word about their brand, they're able to organically raise brand awareness and reach. And Hero Cosmetics drove powerful sales growth, increasing average spend per community member by 25%, as well as achieving a 67% increase in members who have 3+ Hero products stocked in their homes.
Drive Product Sampling, Authentic Reviews, and More With An Online Brand Community
The results that Hero Cosmetics saw with their online brand community speak for themselves. From increased word-of-mouth and reviews to elevated sales and increased basket size, there's no doubt that an online brand community is one of the most effective marketing channels for increasing awareness, acquisition, and growth. If you want to see results like Hero Cosmetics, an online brand community is the superpower you need. Your audience is waiting.
Questions About Online Brand Communities?
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