ASE Beauty -
Social Media Marketing
Created and implemented a strategy for increasing organic following and engagement for a clean beauty brand
The Brief
ASE Beauty is a clean beauty brand based in Washington, DC, created with women of color at the forefront. Careful Feet Digital (CFD) was retained to create and implement a strategy for increasing organic following and engagement on Instagram. Our management services included posting up to four times a week in the feed, sharing Stories each month, and responding to comments and direct messages. The main KPI was to grow the account by 20-40 new followers a week.
APPROACH
Our knowledge of industry leaders and the type of content they share, teamed with fresh research into industry at the beginning of our collaboration, ensured we knew where ASE Beauty fit into the competitive landscape and where gaps were to gain an advantage. We found that user-generated content (UGC) intertwined with brand imagery was the status quo for beauty and make-up brands, and videos were used occasionally to break up the static photography on the feed. Overall, the content focused on high-quality visuals, and the captions were light-hearted and informal. Following this analysis, we were able to make informed decisions as to the type of content we would do well to emulate.
We worked with the ASE Beauty team to build a content library of UGC to share on social media, as well as incorporate their professional product imagery into the feed. We utilized videos and made use of Instagram Reels content created by the ASE Beauty team in order to add variety. This part of our strategy was crucial for tapping into Instagram’s Reels feature (rather than posting standard videos on the feed) as the algorithm has shown that high-performing Reels are prioritized on the platform, which made it easier to attract new followers.
As for the captions, we kept the voice witty, friendly and fun, and used plenty of popular cultural references to appeal to the target demographic. It goes without saying that we created specific seasonal content to celebrate key dates, such as Christmas, Women’s History Month and LGBT History Month. We also commemorated important events that aligned strongly to the brand, such as the appointment of Vice President Kamala Harris (the highest ranking female and woman of color in U.S. history).
In order to increase the following on the account and build a loyal community, we interacted with make-up, beauty and skincare gurus with strong similarities to ASE Beauty. Our focus was predominantly on micro-influencers (users with less than 10k followers on Instagram), as we not only found that they were more likely to respond to our comments, but also because we were able to tap into an existing audience of users whose interests aligned with the ASE Beauty brand.
Results
After eleven months of collaboration, we increased followers by 203.95%, saw a 32.02% increase in the number of impressions (12,705 vs 16,774), illustrating that more Instagram users became aware of the brand, and grew traffic to the website from Instagram (posts and Stories) by 283%. Users were also more engaged, spending 62.22% more time browsing the site.
Asan increasing number of people were viewing the IG posts and being directed to the website, brand awareness for ASE Beauty inevitably grew. This is also clear as the number of transactions rose from 0 to 25 in less than a year with an average order value of $31.20.
