For Glow Recipe, it’s been a year marked by generating buzz on social media. The skin-care brand, which has been making its own branded products for six years — previously, its business model centered on curating products as a retailer — has accumulated over 727 million views of the hashtag #GlowRecipe on TikTok. According to vp of brand Mallory Goldberg, that resonance has come down to a few key factors, including strong influencer relationships, an obsessed community and thoughtful product development that takes community opinion into account. Below, she reflects on what’s worked over the past year.
On a multi-pronged strategy for sustaining buzz around a hero product
“The intention behind the brand’s first influencer trip in February was to [highlight] our Plum Cream, which was a huge launch for us last year. We love it; we love the formula; it has amazing clinical testing behind it. We wanted to have a moment to really speak to that. February is a big month, in terms of the moisturizer category. It’s a time where people are thinking about the seasonal shift and taking care of that part of their routine. Our investment was [not only in] this group of influencers and traveling with them, [but it was also in] having a 360-degree campaign at the right moment, to amplify a core SKU. We ran a full, challenge-focused campaign — the clinical claim we have around the product is that it is “clinically guaranteed to increase skin’s moisture 72 hours after use.” That included running a sampling challenge, where we gave six sachets of our product to 5,000 prospective new customers found via targeted social ads, so they could use it morning and night for three days straight and see those results. All of our organic social content at that time was around [the Plum Cream], too. And we also launched a product set at Sephora, with our Plum Cream and Plum Serum. So it felt like a groundswell of Plum going on at that moment, versus just the trip on its own.”
On attentive community engagement
“We truly pay attention to every single comment from our customers. We’re very aware that our customers are driving the business and that they’re spreading the word to their friends. That’s how people are learning about the brand. So, [we read] every review, every DM and every comment. We think about it: What does that mean for us? How do we respond? Is there an issue we should address? What do they want to see from us? We want our community to know that we’re learning, we’re growing and we’re building things together. And we’re figuring it out with them. At the same time, we’re sharing the things that are important to us: What are our values? What charities do we support? And what do we speak out about, using our platform accordingly?
The results, on a practical level, can include something as simple as making a change to a product. We just relaunched our Watermelon Body Cream, and it’s now in a tube. We first launched it in a pump, but there were so many [reported] issues with the pump. And it’s not easy to just change packaging; it takes time. But we did it — and we made sure to specifically reach out to customers who had complained about it to give them a heads-up about the launch. We wanted them to know: We heard you, and we took [your feedback] into account.”
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