Content Marketing for Digital-first Brands – The Kylie Cosmetics Way
The idea for this post came from 2 sources really – the first input was an article by John Blust in 2019 (3 years ago which can be considered long ago in digital age terms) covering the success factors of Kylie Cosmetics phenomenal rise in the D2C brands space. And the second input was a digital-first marketing activation conversation with one of my friends running a fintech business. Both conversations allude to the importance of getting content ‘right’ and using it as the ‘central pillar’ of digital-first marketing – and thereby sales – push. Outside In tries to articulate the key takeaways from… The Kylie Cosmetics Way for pursuing Content Marketing for Digital-first Brands…
Context
Kylie Jenner became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2018-19 – courtesy her venture Kylie Cosmetics. She did it with no more than a Shopify store, a seven-person team, and super solid content marketing. She grew her cosmetics brand into a $900M business in three years without any paid traffic. She regularly sells out her cosmetics lines using an easy-to-replicate content marketing strategy. If done right, anyone can use this content marketing strategy to double their business (or more) with heavy organic traffic
The Kylie Jenner Content Marketing Strategy
Give birth to a brand you actually care about
Pin down audience that would actually care about your brand
Give them free goodies
Creating good content
Spread content everywhere
Flirt with them to build hype
Bag them and throw them in the van
1) Give Birth to a Brand You Actually Care About
It’s safe to say that most young people are a little insecure about what people think about them. That’s true whether you have a camera crew following you or not
Kylie Jenner understood how that felt. She wanted to make young girls feel more confident and powerful with her passion: makeup. Thus, a brand and a story were born with her at the center of it
Key Insight: Organizations have to create a humanized brand with a relatable mission. By putting a story and passion at the heart of the brand, they can create something people can get behind. Plus, this makes marketing the idea super easy
2) Pin Down Audience That Would Actually Care About Your Brand
Kylie Jenner had to find her tribe if she wanted to succeed. Luckily, she already had some data to work with from the reality show. According to Nielsen data, average viewership demographic was women aged 18 to 32 back when the show first aired. As the years went on, the demographic aged with it to include a broader audience. That being primarily women 18 to 49
In 2013, Kylie began to build her brand in modeling. She encouraged her fans to follow her. They would get an inside glimpse of the fashion and modeling industry through her socials. She used Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. As the years passed, the popularity of platforms shifted within her target audience. Her followers started to use Instagram almost exclusively, so she focused her efforts there
Key Insight: There’s another way brands can find their tribe. They just have to hunt them down. This is when they can use competitors, social listening tools, and stalk online communities to find where the brand tribe hangs out
Start with the biggest and most successful competitors first. Take a look at how they are interacting with their customers. What channels are they using? Are they more active on one than another? What about where they are paying for ads? Brands can get an idea of a general demographic based on the platforms they use
Find the online communities they frequent. Listen to the conversations they have and note the type of content they respond to
Use a service provider like Moz, Ahrefs, or SEMrush. These will allow you to track mentions of particular keywords
3) Give Them Free Goodies
Produce content that can grab eyeballs. Not in the click-bait kind of way, but in the consistently good kind of way
Kylie had been posting vlogs and tutorials for years on her YouTube channel (which has 11.9 million subscribers today): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWkYXtnAuu7VTLPwUcRSB6A
And, she’d been promoting her content from Instagram long before she started Kylie Cosmetics
Key Insight: Her content ticks off 2 boxes every piece of content should have – It has to be useful and it has to be unique. On top of those two major value points, there’s something more subtle that makes her videos great. It’s got a fairly low production budget. This gives it an impromptu and personal feel. It leaves an impression that she’s not going out of her way to make a video with a motive
And this content is promoted across all of her channels (at the time) for maximum reach
4) Creating Good Content
The first thing brands need to do is to think about their product or service. What does it do? What kind of problem does it solve? What are some related subjects to the domain?
After there are a ton of content ideas, it’s time to organize them. Use a ranking system, like Ahrefs. They rank their content ideas based on three categories: Keyword Competition, Traffic Potential and Business Value
Publish the content to the site on a consistent schedule. Try not to wait any longer than two weeks to release each piece. Then, sit back and watch all that organic, straight-from-the-farm traffic stroll onto the website. If the content is truly useful, they’ll worship your brand
5) Spread Content Everywhere
The technical term is content syndication. Content syndication is when a website republishes a duplicate piece of content or excerpt. This is a win-win
Publishers like to syndicate pieces because it exposes their readers to new content. This is good for the original author/brand, too. It exposes a much larger audience to their brand. The publisher will give the authorship/brand credit for the piece and a contributing brand page. This helps build the credibility as a brand
Key Insight: Kylie Jenner gets her ‘Cosmetics’ content syndicated everywhere. And, their content performs incredibly well. This attracts lots of visitors to the brand channels, and publishers want a piece of the action. Often, these syndication networks syndicate the content naturally without asking. As long as they attribute credit, it’s fair game and the publisher gets to enjoy some clicks
An example Kylie’s syndicated content was her YouTube video for Allure – where she gave them a tour of the “Very Pink” Kylie Cosmetics HQ. This wasn’t the only publisher that picked up the video, either. Tons of websites wrote articles that summarize the video and then link to it
6) Flirt with them to Build Hype
You have to bring their customers along for a journey that leaves their mouths watering for more. Kylie Jenner knew how to do this. She did it so well that she sold out of her entire inventory, 15,000 lip kits, in one minute
She dropped the first hint of a product line as far back as three months in advance in August 2015. She left breadcrumb after breadcrumb. Finally, in November 2015, she opened the floodgates and the site crashed. But not before selling all of her product. She began the cycle again. Teasing the next release until the restock in mid-December
Key Insight: The content produced up to this point has made your leads warm and toasty. It is then time to push them over the edge. Brands need some good copy, and they need messaging and words that romanticize the product and promote conversion. Here’s the general outline present in Kylie Cosmetics promotions:
Problem: The problem her business is confronting is feeling insecure about the way you look
Solution-based content with a Catch: She taught her fans about hair styling, outfit styling, eyebrows, and foundation. But she would only give a couple of quick tips about lips here and there. She gave her fans the tools to glam everything but Kylie’s most sought after asset—her lips. This left her fans hungry for more
Product-focused Solution: Finally, she officially revealed her lip kits. She made a big video about the lip kits as the launch approached
Create real Urgency based on Scarcity: She’s had a reactionary approach to production output. Going through her Instagram history, you’ll see posts referring to restock often. This creates real urgency. Her fans feel like they need to jump on her products. This is actual scarcity. This makes shopping for and successfully purchasing her products an experience that makes the buyer feel like they are part of an exclusive club
7) Bag them and throw them in the Van
When you open purchases for your product, your fans should go crazy. To pull this off, you need to use all the channels you’ve built and a damn good copywriter to flip their switches
When Kylie Jenner announced her release, she took an omnichannel approach. She hit them through Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Email, and her app. She even opened a couple of pop-up locations. You simply couldn’t escape her. She was persuading you to buy her lip kits everywhere you turned
Key Insight: Brands need to take the same approach. They need to leverage all the channels and use some pretty persuasive language. Then, when customers buy, brands need to make them feel like they are awesome and remind them they made the right decision
In Conclusion
The most important theme that emerges from this edition of Outside In is this – Brands must nurture an audience long before they ever ask for the sale. The content Kylie was creating (eventually for Kylie Cosmetics end outcome) wasn’t selling anything. Instead, it was establishing her as an expert in fashion and beauty. That doesn’t mean brands should close shop and become full-time content writers only. But before they spend all this money on huge promotional campaigns, they need people to be listening and trusting them…
References and Sources
1) The Content Marketing Strategy Kylie Jenner Used to Build a $900M Business in 3 Years – Article by John Blust: https://bettermarketing.pub/the-content-marketing-strategy-kylie-jenner-used-to-build-a-900m-business-in-3-years-61d3d787ccb2
2) My Notes with a Fintech Business