8 Rules When It Comes to Skin Care Advertising

1. Follow a content calendar

No matter the size of your business, it can be easy to fall behind on projects, especially when it comes to promoting your brand. Creating content is essential to growing your skin care brand, which means you need to stay active on all platforms and post regularly. One of the best ways to do this is to create a content calendar.

To start, choose your goals for the year. Then, figure out a strategy of how and when you will launch new products, put existing products on sale, post to your blog, send out promotional emails, pin on Pinterest, and log your social media posts. You can keep your plans on a spreadsheet to track your progress, or you can use social media management tools that can publish posts for you at certain times of the day and week.

2. Harness the power of social media

Social media is an essential tool in skin care advertising. Here is what most advertisers forget:

You need the same "look" and "feel" on social media that you have on your site and in your paid advertising.

Customers may not remember your name at first, but they will remember your style, brand color scheme, and logo. Give customers a memory aid by making the look, sound, and feel of your Internet presence the same as your presence on social media.

Take a look at Instagram advertising, too. Sometimes, creating a successful ad on Instagram can be hard to pull off. Create content that is eye-catching and on-brand, geared for making sales to a broader audience. There are countless free and paid tools and apps you can leverage to make your social media accounts eye-catching and effective.

When it comes to social media marketing, you can’t forget influencer marketing. Through influencer marketing, you can promote your products through a user with a large following in a similar audience. When it comes to skincare, 67% of beauty shoppers seek information about beauty products from social media influencers.

In addition to creating quality content, it’s also important to engage with your audience. There are several ways you can combine skin care ads with engagement, such as replying to comments on your ads, partnering with an influencer marketer, or creating promotional campaigns like giveaways and contests.

3. Follow SEO best practices

SEO stands for search engine optimization and consists of a collection of techniques designed to make your pages and your site more likely to appear higher in the search results on search engines like Google and Bing.

Google is constantly updating its search algorithms, but there are a few secrets of success that have been stable throughout its many updates. When you are adding a page to your site, you need to consider:

• Keyword research: Keywords tell Google and site visitors what your page is about. It is important to identify keywords in your text—but your content should drive your selection of keywords, not the other way around. Keyword research tools tell you what Internet users are looking for. Your job is to conduct keyword research to match your content to the terms Internet users will recognize.
• Linking: Your web pages are crawled by Google robots. Internal links, which are links connecting two or more pages on your own site, have two important functions. They make sure Google bots find all of your pages, and the link itself and its corresponding anchor text tell Google and readers what the linked page is about. External links to pages that are not on your site can help your visitors find important information and boost the authority of your page. But don't place them too early in your content and use them with caution.
• Meta descriptions: A meta description is a snippet of up to 155 characters that describes the content of a page. Don't get long-winded with your meta descriptions, as Google tends to ignore them. While there is no direct benefit to your SEO from your meta descriptions, if Google chooses to display them and they get clicks, then they can move your page up through the Google rankings.
• Alt text: Alt text tells the search engines what your images are all about. It not only tells Google how to index your image but helps visually impaired visitors what an image is depicting. Give as much thought to alt text as you do to subheads and meta descriptions.
• Title tags: Google uses title tags to match your page to search queries. Without your keyword in your title tag, it is highly unlikely to display your page in search results when someone enters your keyword as a search term. Exact matches count in title tags, and it helps to use your keyword at the front of your title, too.
• Page speed. Nobody likes a slow-loading site, and Google recognizes this, which is why it penalizes websites that take a while to load. This is because slow page speeds result in fast bounce rates, which is when a user leaves your site for another.

SEO isn't just on-page search engine optimization. It is also what you do off-page. You can further enhance your search rankings with mentions of your brand name on other sites, even if they do not link to your site. Influencers are a form of off-page SEO. Discussion of your products and your brand (both favorable and unfavorable) in various forms affects your SEO. You can build off-page SEO by answering questions on other sites and by contributing content as a guest author on other sites. Additionally, you can build authority for your site by getting links from pages and sites Google ranks as authoritative.

4. Set SMART goals

You know the old truism that you will never hit your target unless you take aim first. Successful skincare ads are SMART skin care ads. They are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. But what do these metrics mean? Here’s how to set SMART goals:

• Specific: Specific goals answer the questions who, what, where, when, and why. Who is my target customer? What do I want to accomplish with this ad campaign? Where is my target market? When will I reach my sales goals, after how many ad buys and how many backlinks? Why am I taking this approach instead of pitching my sales campaign another way? Asking yourself questions like these can help you set specific goals you can measure.
• Measurable: If you don't have a target, you won't know if you have hit it. With ads for skincare, the metric of success can be new customers, total sales, customer retention, or sales of a particular product. Regardless, you need to settle on a way of measuring your success before you run your skincare ads.
• Achievable: Achievable goals balance risk and opportunity. Your sales campaigns may in fact exceed all expectations, but you should spend your ad dollars on strategies for which you have objective reasons to expect success. Conversion rates of similar ad campaigns are a good place to start.
• Realistic: Realistic goals offer a rational return on the time and resources you have, not the time and resources you wish you had. Goals are realistic only if you are willing to commit to them.
• Timely: Your skincare ads need to be in sync with consumer preferences and influencer actions. Careful attention to Google trends and your website metrics give you insights into the "next big thing," so you can catch the wave of consumer interest.

5. Leverage email advertisements

Another great way to promote skin care ads is through email marketing. Email marketing can offer an enormous return on investment, which means you can reach more leads that turn into customers at a lower cost. But successfully leveraging email advertising requires advertisers to keep the most important email marketing principle in mind: Consumers want personalized promotions for brands they know.

When creating email campaigns, put your customers first and grab their attention by speaking directly to them. This means addressing them by their name and talking in a friendly, conversational manner that they can relate to.

From there, you can start marketing your skin care products in a way that captures their attention. For example, if you have a new facial moisturizer with added SPF, relate to them about spending summer days at the beach with family and staying protected with a moisturizer that blocks the sun’s harmful rays. Relatable skincare ads are more likely to be clicked on and direct readers to your site.

6. Use Google Ads

Google ads are probably the most familiar form of digital advertising. Google uses all of the information it collects on each Internet user to match the intent of a potential customer to the content of a page.

For instance, an Internet user's search history may be full of queries about adapalene, tea tree oil, and steroid injections for problem pimples. When they go back to the search page and enter "skin care," Google will infer that they are really looking for acne care. If your ad matches their intent, Google will display it. Google displays it higher or lower based on their algorithm's calculation of the likelihood the user will click on it and how much you paid.

But what can you do to make your Google ads more clickable?

Getting discounts or freebies is a strong reason for people to click on your ads. So are product testimonials in your ad. Enhance the click-through rate on your Google ads by adding extensions and descriptions that identify your products as desirable or unique, such as cruelty-free, eco-friendly, or a unique active ingredient that customers can't find anywhere else.

7. Use display ads

What is display advertising? One way of understanding display ads is as proof that your product works. Display ads present testimonials, before and after photos, videos, and product images. But display advertising isn't always paid advertising.

One way to make display ads work for you is to post them on social media. Let them reach new customers organically, following your progress with analysis tools that provide data on accounts reached and engagement. It’s also worth noting that 85% of shoppers will choose a brand or retailer to buy from based on their product information and pictures. This means you should take careful consideration when creating your display ads to ensure you grab viewers’ attention.

But be sure your display ads are honest and transparent. The skin care industry can have a bad reputation for some due to the deceptive use of Photoshop in altering images and creating before and after photos. Maintain the integrity of your ad by avoiding any kind of fake photo or video.

8. Make print ads

Here is one of the most frequently overlooked small business advertising tips: Print ads make a difference, too!

Most marketers assume that print advertising has lost its effectiveness, but print ads on billboards, magazines, newspapers, and other print media still make a difference, even if a consumer doesn't directly interact with it. For example, drive down your main street and count every logo or brand image you see. You’d be surprised at how many advertisements you see on a daily basis. While they may seem like a fleeting thought, print ads still make an impression.

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