Beauty Brands on Instagram: Challenges and Opportunities

With 500 million active monthly users, up-and-coming social platform Instagram is a leading channel for beauty brands to reach customers. What are the challenges and opportunities facing such brands on the platform?

The beauty industry, with its vibrant visuals and colorful characteristics, is doing well and represents the third leading industry on Instagram, based on the average number of interactions.

Instagram has often been labelled the “shopping channel”, which can be seen both from conversion rates and from the comments section of many popular beauty brands where users frequently ask questions around where they can buy something or what the shipping costs are. Instagram introduced ads and direct sales through the 'Shop now' button in 2015 and more recently, Instagram also started testing with 20 US retailers the possibility of enabling users to buy products through organic photos, without leaving the platform itself.

A significant factor that has enabled beauty brands to gain exponential growth on Instagram is represented by their frequent collaboration with industry influencers. The collaboration between beauty brands and a vast number of beauty bloggers and makeup artists around the world has enabled many brands to gain enormous visibility across social media. Millennials continuously seek out new products and beauty inspiration on Instagram and are keen to engage with professionals to gain advice on how to use products in real life, trends, secrets and events.  

Just to look at some figures, one of the most popular beauty brands receives over two hundred and fifty thousands of comments per month. Users love to engage with the fashion, cosmetics, perfumes or accessories companies on Instagram, more than on any other social media platform.

Other facts about users on Instagram:

• They engage at higher rates and spend more money than the Facebook users
• They are the most loyal and active users.

It’s clear that there are a lot of opportunities on Instagram, but what are the common challenges that beauty brands face on Instagram? How do beauty brands tackle them? What are the best practices for dealing with the challenges and what is the best advice for optimizing performance and keeping fans loyal?

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