As the saying goes, "the heart of love for beauty, everyone has it", people's yearning for beauty runs through the entire social development process, and also shapes various aesthetic trends. It can be said that beauty fashion has always been the forefront of mass consumption upgrading.
Today, on the one hand, people have higher consumption ability, a higher and more personalized pursuit of the quality of life, which naturally stimulates the rapid growth of beauty consumption, and also gives birth to the outbreak of domestic products and cutting-edge brands such as Nature Hall, Polaria, Marumei, Rares Collection, Dr. Ling, HBN and so on.
On the other hand, mass users have become more professional under the long-term beauty market education, in today's beauty consumption decisions, users will not only pay attention to the brand's marketing publicity, but also pay attention to product information such as ingredient formulas, and the rise of professional user groups such as "ingredient party" has also challenged the user behavior insight of traditional beauty brand marketing.
In addition, the outbreak of online new media channels, especially the emergence of short videos and live e-commerce, has further changed the marketing methodology of the beauty industry. Compared with traditional online graphic display, such new channels have a stronger interactivity and a richer sense of experience, making beauty consumption more enjoyable.
It can be found that while the beauty industry is ushering in golden development opportunities, it is also ushering in a reshuffle and reconstruction of the industry. If beauty brands want to seize the opportunities in the industry, they need to have a panoramic insight into the development of emerging users and cutting-edge brands.
Recently, Douyin E-commerce and Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute under Judian Arithmetic and 36Kr Research Institute officially released the "2022 Douyin E-commerce New Beauty Brand White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"), which made a detailed investigation and analysis of the breakthrough rise, growth methodology, user behavior habits and consumption preferences of the cutting-edge beauty brands on Douyin, helping beauty brands and related practitioners better understand the current consumer preferences and future development trends of the beauty industry.
"E-commerce" has become a decisive scene in the beauty industry
The beauty industry is a fairly old and mature industry, offline attributes are very obvious, in the face of traditional beauty giant enterprises, it is theoretically difficult to break out a large number of cutting-edge brands, but in recent years, the batch rise of cutting-edge brands tells us that the logic of the beauty industry is changing.
One of the biggest variables is in the "e-commerce", according to the "White Paper" data, China's cosmetics retail sales throughout the year the cumulative value of 402.6 billion yuan, since 2018, the beauty industry e-commerce channels surpassed the supermarket to become the first major channel, in 2021 the e-commerce channel penetration rate is expected to further increase to 40%, and the gap with other channels is further widened.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
E-commerce channels have brought more market increments to the beauty industry, from the macro environment point of view, this is caused by the overall digital development of society and the home dividend brought about by the epidemic in the past two years, but from the perspective of subdivision channels, it is obvious that a large part of the reason is driven by the rise of the interest e-commerce model represented by Douyin e-commerce.
Similarly, it is also the opening up of a new model of interest in e-commerce, so that a large number of cutting-edge beauty brands and traditional beauty have stood on the same running line, thus obtaining rare development opportunities. According to the data of the "White Paper", in 2021, the playback of cutting-edge beauty-related content on Douyin increased by 42.6% year-on-year, significantly exceeding the number of other beauty content broadcasts year-on-year.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
According to the data of the "White Paper" from March to December 2021, the GMV of the new beauty increased by more than 8 times year-on-year, while the overall GMV of the beauty increased by more than 4 times, and the vibrato e-commerce has become an important growth position of the new beauty brand.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
It is not difficult to speculate that the cutting-edge beauty brand born in the Internet era has more advantages in the operation of Douyin e-commerce, because it does not have the burden of traditional channels, and its marketing model is more suitable for the interest e-commerce scene.
"Ingredients" have become the focus of beauty brands
In the beauty industry, the ultimate purpose of user consumption is of course to become more beautiful, but in the early years of the "industry popularization stage", users usually only believe in the brand's advertising and do not know how beauty products can help them become beautiful.
But today, with the high penetration rate of beauty products, things are obviously changing, many users already have the attribute of "professional", and they are also helping the entire consumer group to carry out professional science, and the importance of "ingredients" is displayed. Nowadays, a large number of users are already familiar with professional terms such as "hyaluronic acid" and "niacinamide", and this trend is continuing, and affecting the direction of beauty brand building.
According to the data of the Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute, in the second half of 2021 compared with the first half of the year, the content search volume of the beauty industry on Douyin increased by 135% month-on-month, of which the growth rate of beauty ingredient content was 184%, exceeding the industry market, indicating that the content about "ingredients" was more actively concerned by users.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
The same trend can also be seen from the GMV and sales volume of beauty products, in the second half of 2021, the GMV of beauty ingredient products increased by 366% month-on-month, and the sales volume of beauty ingredient products increased by 367% month-on-month, which greatly exceeded the overall month-on-month growth level of the beauty industry.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
From the perspective of user scale, the scale of beauty ingredient users on Douyin has increased significantly, and it is worth noting that the scale of beauty ingredient users over 50 years old has the highest year-on-year growth rate of 136%, followed by 31-40 years old, 24-30 years old groups, 116% and 114% respectively. It can be found that the rise of the "ingredient party" is all ages, and compared with the school students (18-23 years old are mostly student groups), social people (24 years old and above) pay more attention to the efficacy of the ingredient.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
The user's emphasis on beauty ingredients makes the beauty industry go to segmentation, and perhaps each active ingredient is worth the brand to seize the user's mind, so as to achieve the positioning and card position of brand value. In other words, the logic of the segmentation of the beauty category may be based on the efficacy of the ingredients.
So now let's take a closer look at what kind of "ingredient" is the hottest ingredient at the moment, and what kind of "ingredient" has more potential for development in the future. The Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute under Judian Arithmetic combines the data in Douyin station and Ipsos social media data (including four dimensions of marketing, content, commercialization and user interest), and indexes the data through scientific statistical algorithms, and generates the beauty ingredient popularity list and potential list respectively.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute "2022 Beauty Ingredient Trend Insight Report"
Through the data, it can be found that amino acids, hyaluronic acid, rose, niacinamide, etc. are the beauty ingredients with high heat at present; and the most potential beauty ingredients such as green thorn fruit, olive oil, almond acid, matsutake mushrooms, etc., are often not widely tapped, and these potential ingredients may also be the product opportunity points of cutting-edge brands, which deserve the brand's attention.
Who's consuming cutting-edge beauty brands?
In the face of the "siege" of the strong resource capabilities of established beauty brands, the breakthrough strategy of cutting-edge brands has obviously become crucial, but before deciding on the brand breakthrough strategy, cutting-edge beauty brands should first clarify a key question - who will consume cutting-edge beauty brands, and what are their consumer behavior preferences?
The emergence of emerging consumer groups such as "Generation Z" will undoubtedly change the past beauty consumption behavior, taking a step back, even if the same consumer, in different scenarios such as online and offline, the performance of consumer behavior will be completely different. Therefore, we may wish to look at the behavior of beauty users on Douyin.
According to the "White Paper" data, beauty brands account for the majority of interest groups, women, young people aged 18-23 and second-, third- and fourth-tier cities.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
It is worth noting that although women account for more than two-thirds of the proportion, men's skin care and makeup awareness is rapidly awakening, which may be an important growth point in the future beauty industry. According to the data of the "White Paper", among the male users surveyed, 39.4% of male users took care of their skin on time every morning and evening, and 47.4% of men who had makeup experience accounted for 47.4%, of which 23.5% of men said that they would wear makeup on important occasions.
However, male and female users have a more obvious difference in beauty content preferences, according to the results of the "White Paper", male users prefer the video content of the good things recommendation class, and the overall bias is "result-oriented" and "rational", while female users prefer the video content of beauty tutorials and promotional activities, and are more inclined to "experience-oriented" and "perception".
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
On the whole, about 40% of users do not have a special preference for beauty brands, no longer blindly pursue big brands, pay more attention to practicality, which also matches the rise of the "ingredient party" pointed out earlier, only choose brands that suit them, more than 30% of users are more inclined to choose cutting-edge brands, and young users aged 18-25 have the highest acceptance of domestic cutting-edge brands, much higher than foreign cutting-edge brands.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
From the price point of view, 49.3% of the purchase of domestic cutting-edge beauty products users monthly budget in the range of 201-400 yuan, 201-400 yuan has also become the main target price band of new beauty brands; from the category point of view, lotion, mask, sunscreen is the most commonly purchased domestic cutting-edge brand skin care products, lip makeup, eye makeup, makeup is the most commonly purchased domestic cutting-edge brand makeup products.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
Judging from the final results, most of the cutting-edge beauty brands have been recognized by users. According to the "White Paper" survey data, more than half of users said that they would buy back cutting-edge beauty products, and only 3% of consumers clearly said that they would not buy back. It can be seen that the new beauty brands already have strong user repurchase stickiness and brand loyalty.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
How can cutting-edge beauty brands achieve market breakthrough?
According to the analysis and summary of the "White Paper", cutting-edge beauty brands often achieve breakthrough growth through three strategies - track breakthrough, category breakthrough and brand breakthrough.
To put it simply, the "track breakout" is usually achieved through customization, gift boxes, highlighting health and personalized attributes, etc.; "category breakout" has focused more on the three emerging categories of perfume, sunscreen, and efficacy skin care in the past; and "brand breakout" needs to develop different marketing strategies according to the brand's own development stage.
It should be noted that these three breakout strategies are not either/or, but may be adopted by the same cutting-edge brand at the same time, and the new brand achieves the final market breakthrough through the combination of strategies.
For example, in terms of functional ingredients, it is associated with snow plants with antioxidant abilities such as snow ginseng, cedar, gentian flowers, and minerals such as red salt and green mud, and focuses on the theme of national tide joint name and women's growth in content customization. At the same time, because Nature Hall already has a strong brand foundation, in terms of brand operation, it continues to achieve exposure with the help of a set of matrix ecology methods such as live broadcasting, cargo masters, and traffic stars, and strengthens the brand value and user mentality.
Similarly, Polaria has achieved professional and warm brand recognition strengthening through "marine ingredient innovative raw materials + technology IP content customization + belt goods experts and popular science big V word-of-mouth planting grass"; Marumei has deeply rooted the scientific research patent and anti-aging value through "anti-aging patent ingredient + eye anti-aging content + spokesperson and KOL comprehensive layout".
Enterprises such as Nature Hall, Polaria, and Marumei, which already have strong brands, pay more attention to the advanced growth of "from 1 to N", while emerging brands such as HBN, Rares Collection, and Dr. Ling, which have just been registered and established, need to solve the challenge of "from 0 to 1" in the market breakthrough.
As a specialized anti-aging domestic brand, HBN has grasped the innovative ingredient synthesized by the exclusive technology of "double true A alcohol", and has revolved around this innovative ingredient in content dissemination, such as confirming the efficacy of ingredients through a large number of professional evaluation agencies, and exporting the public perception and transformation of ingredients through talents and celebrities planting grass with goods.
It is not difficult to see that for newly established emerging brands, behind the market breakthrough is usually to concentrate on achieving a single point of cognitive breakthrough. In addition to HBN's focus on "double true A alcohol", the rare collection breaks through the market around "rare matsutake ingredients", and Dr. Ling takes "4 generations of frozen Ling hyaluronic acid" as the core, while strengthening Dr. Ling's own professional IP image for market promotion.
It can be found that most of these cutting-edge beauty brands emphasize their own professional scientific and technological attributes, and with the help of the "functional ingredients" of popular science content customization, and finally seize the user's mind, which is also the result of the current user's consumption behavior preferences to "specialization".
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
Through a large number of case studies, the White Paper summarizes and sorts out the general growth paths and marketing methods of cutting-edge beauty brands. Simply put, it is through the "STEP" (Surge-Touch-Expand-Persist) growth path to take root in The Douyin e-commerce, and at the same time, with the help of the combination of brand self-broadcasting, talent matrix, and platform activities, to achieve marketing and consolidate the market position.
Source: Douyin E-commerce & Arithmetic E-commerce Research Institute &36Kr Research Institute "2022 Douyin E-commerce Cutting-edge Beauty Brand White Paper"
Through the "White Paper", it is not difficult to find that although the outbreak of cutting-edge beauty brands has shown a trend of "a hundred flowers blooming", there are also commonalities in methodology and brand strategy behind it. From the perspective of industry development trends, the user's emphasis on beauty ingredients has been an irreversible trend, and the mining of potential ingredients has just begun, and there is still a lot of innovation and growth space in the ancient beauty industry waiting for brands to tap.