Industry
Cosmetics
Services
Full Service Growth
The Brand
Indie beauty brand, ColourPop Cosmetics, was founded in 2014 by siblings Laura and John Nelson. From there, the business grew organically, beloved for its affordable color cosmetic products.
With strong traffic and conversions coming from its limited-edition collaborations, the digitally native brand was thriving on minimal marketing.
Until … organic wasn’t enough.
The Challenge
Available exclusively online and in Ulta, its focus was on catching customer’s attention on social media instead of market shelves. But, for a brand that was born organically on social media, it hadn’t paid any attention to paid social media efforts.
Neglecting this category in its business strategy meant missing out on new visitors and higher returns since it lacked in-store discoverability.
In order to grow and scale digitally, paid ads were the necessary next-step in its maturity.
The Solution
Boost visitors. Increase returns. Build ROAS.
To do so meant amplifying ColourPop’s message to new prospecting customers by running conversion objective campaigns on Facebook.
A focus on conversions rather than awareness was strategic — the creative showed why the product was valuable, while the buying methodology to get that creative in front of an audience encouraged customers to take action on site.
The product was self-explanatory. Finding a way to show that it was still high-quality relative to the lower price point, was the creative unlock for the brand.
One messaging angle involved running ads about duped colors to its competitor audiences, who were selling similar products at higher markups.
“The biggest contributor to success lay in our ability to make ColourPop stand out in a competitive market, without blatantly calling out the price of the product on the ad level,” said Growth Guide, Michelle Luo.
“Instead, we opted to show the product in use, so that you can really see the quality and color payoff of the products.”
Aside from price, the major wins were ads that highlighted product quality. Whether it was up-close videos of putting lipstick on and not seeing it crack or user-generated content – the advertising focused on the color payoff and how good the product looked.
“It didn’t matter if the ad was pretty,” said Luo. “It mattered that it showed real people using the product.”
A website optimized for conversion rate completed the holy grail. By capitalizing on its audience with new creative and running conversion campaigns to get them onsite, it was the perfect trifecta to ensure purchases.
This culminated with ColourPop’s collaboration with Disney. Each princess launched her own makeup collection featuring limited edition products.
Thumb-stopping creative run to a Disney audience, the ad campaign smashed, with a 15 ROAS on 1-day-view, 1-day-click.
It was so successful that it capitalized by following up with a Disney Villains make-up line, reaping in wicked returns once again.
The Results
In a competitive market, this indie beauty brand stood out against expensive rivals with ad creative that highlighted product quality.
The payoff?
- 5x return on prospecting campaigns
- 7.5x return on remarketing efforts
- 15x return on its social campaigns made in collaboration with Disney
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