The holiday season represents both the biggest commercial opportunity and emotional connection point for beauty retailers. As consumers shop through a sea of glittering promotions, beauty brands must find ways to stand out through both compelling brand storytelling and effective performance marketing.
Beauty's unique holiday advantage
The beauty category enjoys distinct advantages during the holiday season that extend beyond traditional retail patterns.
Beauty products serve dual purposes during the holidays: They help consumers look their best for festive occasions while also functioning as ideal gifts, said our analyst Sky Canaves.
"A lot of the products are small, so they make great stocking stuffers, but there's also the aspect of care and looking good and feeling good that beauty really taps into," she said.
This gifting dynamic has evolved significantly in recent years. Analysts say younger consumers increasingly engage in "self-gifting" during the holidays, while the transition to the new year creates openness to discovery and transformation. It's a perfect opportunity for beauty brands to establish longer-term relationships.
"Beauty started to behave more like a fashion category," said Su, noting consumers are asking themselves, "'What do I want to look like today? How's my skin feeling today? What mood do I want to evoke today?'"
The blended funnel
Beauty brands face the challenge of creating cohesive experiences across touchpoints while still driving sales.
"It's really important to think about all the funnels together and how they are interacting with each other," said Su. "When we have full funnel tactics that diversify as much as you can to ensure they match consumer's behaviors nowadays, they're really everywhere."
This approach requires brands to recognize that consumers don't perceive separate channels, they expect consistent experiences regardless of where they engage.
Canaves points out that "the customer journey nowadays meanders across channels. So they see inspiration, they see content and the opportunity to purchase, and they might all be in one place or they might be dispersed."
For smaller brands competing against industry giants with massive holiday budgets, Su recommends focusing on cultivating relationships with core consumers rather than trying to match the reach of larger competitors.
"We don't have to be the blockbuster, but we definitely want to win with those who support us and those who share our mindsets," she said.
Creating emotional loyalty
The evolution of loyalty programs from transaction-based rewards to emotional connections represents a critical shift in beauty marketing, according to analysts.
"Loyalty programs really have to become a branded experience," said Canaves, underlining the importance of personalizing offers. "[It's not] just earn-and-burn, gain points, and get the same thing everyone else is getting."
For brands looking to maximize holiday impact, Canaves recommends leveraging creator partnerships beyond Gen Z audiences
"Understand that creators don't just appeal to Gen Z and millennials, but they can be relevant to everyone," she said.
- Almost 6 in 10 US consumers (58.4%) follow a personal care or beauty creator on social media, according to a June EMARKETER survey, and over half (54.2%) bought a product in the last year because a creator promoted it.
"Being agile and willing to adjust and be flexible in changing channel mix and constantly optimize during the holiday, probably get you the most return during the season," said Su. "Deals bring people in, but loyalty keeps them coming."
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This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.
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