Over the past few years, Vietnamese people have paid more attention to aesthetics and health care, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people spent most of their time at home. This has helped the Vietnamese cosmetic retail market gradually gain more attention, and also create greater competition.
According to data from Statista, Vietnam is one of the countries with the fastest-growing middle-class population in Southeast Asia. As people’s income increases, the demand for health care and self-beautification also increases, thereby helping the cosmetic retail market to develop more.
Data released by Statista shows that the revenue of the cosmetics retail market in Vietnam in 2022 will reach $2.2 billion, expected to reach $2.69 billion in 2027. In 2023, Statista predicts the revenue from the cosmetic retail market in Vietnam would reach 2.36 billion USD. The compound growth rate (CAGR) of the Vietnamese cosmetics retail market in the period of 2023 – 2027 is estimated at 3.32%.
If you’re planning to open a beauty business or launch your own line of beauty and self-care products in Vietnam, then this guide is for you. In this article, GMA will teach you 10 Marketing Strategies for beauty cosmetic brands to turn your existing beauty products from your best-kept secret into an engaging beauty brand your audience will know, like, trust, and purchase.
I. CONTACT DISTRIBUTORS – GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Your business volume will rise quickly if you are able to get some wholesale distributors interested in your beauty products. Many Vietnamese retailers prefer buying their inventories from wholesalers rather than purchasing directly from companies or individual manufacturers.
1) Highlight Market Potential
Provide a brief overview of the Vietnamese market for cosmetics and emphasize the potential for growth and demand. Present any market research or consumer insights that support the viability of your products in Vietnam. Demonstrating a clear understanding of the local market will make your brand more appealing to distributors.
2) Research Reputable Distributors
Conduct thorough research to identify reputable cosmetic distributors in Vietnam. Look for distributors that specialize in your product category or have experience working with international beauty brands. Consider factors such as their distribution network, market reputation, and existing partnerships with retailers.
3) Obtain Contact Information
Once you’ve identified potential distributors, gather their contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses, and websites. Some distributors may also provide an online inquiry form on their website that you can use to express your interest in collaboration.
II. GENERATE ONLINE SALES VIA YOUR WEBSITE
Another effective way to promote your cosmetics brand is to put it on the web. Almost all the potential consumers of your products are searching and shopping online.
1) Choose A Beautiful, Stylish Cosmetic Web Interface
If you open a cosmetic shop on the street, you will not only spend your budget on the cost of the space but also spend a lot of money on the decoration and furniture in the store.
However, with a website selling cosmetics, that cost is used to design the cosmetic website interface – a very low fee, even with many interfaces you can be used for free and still fully integrated. enough features.
2) Make It Easy To Navigate
After the initial impressions of the website design style from the beautiful cosmetic website interface, customers need to learn more about the website such as the category menu, and the detailed product page… before making a buying decision.
These indispensable main menus are About, Products, News, and Contact; along with other submenus such as: Terms of Service, Return Policy, Shipping Policy, and Buying Guide…
Besides, with the product category page clearly divided by product line or pricing, your website will help Vietnamese customers filter quickly and accurately to find the desired products.
3) Build Trust With Quality Content
For cosmetic products, customers often research and learn carefully before buying. Therefore, you need to focus on creating content that is educational, instructive, and inspirational.
This content will drive customers to interact more deeply with your brand. You can build Blog Reviews of products, skincare, cosmetic distinctions, etc. to help provide more useful knowledge about beauty for readers. Or you can also create makeup tutorial videos and Share them on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc.
4) SEO Digital Marketing
This is one of the most important digital marketing tools in the online cosmetic marketing strategy. Performing SEO for the website is a way to help promote products widely and increase brand awareness for businesses. SEO Marketing is one of the most economical online cosmetic marketing methods for all businesses. Knowing how to optimize SEO for Websites will help businesses achieve high rankings on search engines, high rankings lead to large traffic, so more people know the brand and products.
A website with high rankings, in the eyes of customers, is an indirect commitment to the prestige that the company’s cosmetics provide.
5) Your Website Should Have An E-Commerce Function
Customers should be able to make purchases directly on your website. Shopping on a brand website ensures customers of products’ originality and authenticity rather than buying on third-party platforms. Moreover, customers can also find the latest products updated on your website as well as their official prices.
Therefore, don’t forget to make the buying journey easy and convenient. Your website can be a very productive channel that generates sales for you day and night.
III. SELL ON THE MOST POPULAR E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS
Lazada and Shopee are the most popular e-commerce platforms in Vietnam nowadays.
Mostly every brand, big and small, local and foreign, has an official store on these 2 sites.
Both Shopee and Lazada have marketing promotion strategies implemented in conjunction with seller-specific marketing tools on the site. These are useful methods to help sellers boost online sales. When comparing Shopee and Lazada in marketing strategy, Shopee has a distinct advantage thanks to its Google advertising support service. As a result, shops selling on Shopee can display not only on the Shopee page but also on Google search results.
- Shopee’s marketing strategy is more about entertainment activities. Shopee is ready to cooperate with singers and celebrities who are loved by young people. This creates a positive psychological impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions.
- Lazada, on the other hand, prioritizes using AI artificial intelligence and analytical data to optimize the user experience. Merchandise products displayed to shoppers are always in line with consumer trends. As a result, the purchase rate of users on Lazada is often more optimal.
However, selling on these crowded platforms is getting more and more competitive. You will not only compete with other similar brands but also with thousands and thousands of smaller independent sellers who can provide customers with better pricing and personal customer service.
Below we will notify some key points to succeed on these platforms, getting your brands to the top of the category and your products to become the best-sellers:
1) Regularly Update New Products
Customers always want to see a cosmetic store that is stocked with a wide variety of products. The same goes for online stores. You need to regularly update product information and post new products to be able to attract customers in Vietnam continuously, especially trendy products
If your cosmetics store on the e-commerce platform is just hanging around with a few old products, and you don’t even bother to pay attention to new trends, you will definitely fail. Vietnamese customers have just found your store boring and they don’t see that you are interested in selling. Meanwhile, competitors always update the products which are trendy and suitable for customers’ changing tastes.
2) Have Many Many Promotion, Free Gifts, And Discount Codes
a. Double day – the luck of sale hunting occasions 8/8, 9/9, 10/10,…
As the leading online shopping application and e-commerce exchanges in Vietnam, Shopee and Lazada always attract customers with super preferential sales programs. Including the big sale days in each month. If you are an avid purchaser on these 2 platforms, you will definitely not be able to miss these strong discount days. Sale every month usually takes place on the same day as sale 4.4, sale 5.5, sale 9.9, sale 10.10,…
Where is the luck of the event of “double day” from?
- Sales To Attract New Customers
By offering low prices, e-commerce platforms not only bring in more orders from patrons but also create curiosity for millions of other consumers, creating many opportunities for brands to expand their customer base, and helping to increase sales.
- Increase Frequency Of Purchases
Attractive discounts will make consumers open the app and visit the online store more often. At this time, the need to stock up on familiar products or new needs will arise to use the available incentives. Along with the increasing volume of traffic through each discount, each month, businesses have more rotating orders from previous customers.
- Capture Trends Through Consumer Data
Based on search volume, traffic, or type of products added to the cart, e-commerce sites can understand individual preferences to customize the product list displayed on the homepage accordingly. Personalization will make users want to spend a longer time on the app and likely make a purchase decision.
b) Xtra coin cashback package
Xtra Cashback is a special package that helps Sellers to push orders quickly and effectively attract Buyers:
- Effective Buyer Attraction
Every week, there will be Xtra Cashback codes sent directly to the Buyer’s Voucher Warehouse. During the time the Shop uses the Xtra Coin Cashback Package, the Buyer can use these codes to make purchases at the Shop and receive the corresponding Coin refund.
- Have A Chance To Be Prominently Displayed On Shopee Platform
3) Quick Responses, Friendly Attitude
The E-commerce platform is a channel that allows many cosmetic sellers to introduce their products to different customers. This is an advantage but also a challenge for those who are passionate about selling cosmetics because the competition is harsh
To stand out and win the fierce battle, you need to take advantage of online feedback. Just like online chat software on sales websites, this function helps store owners directly interact with shoppers when they have questions or need advice about skin or a particular cosmetic.
Customer inquiries can be sent directly below the product information page. As soon as you receive a notification that a customer has texted, you need to reply as quickly, accurately, and completely as possible. Pay attention to the way you talk. The more information you provide in a friendly manner, the more likely your customers will like you. From there they can make a purchase decision very quickly.
4) Store & Pack Goods Carefully To Show Respect To Customers
For any item, careful packaging is always an extremely important part of the requirement. Especially for products such as cosmetics that are small, fragile, and easily damaged, the more serious the packaging needs to be.
You can pack the goods with paper boxes, and shockproof bags to ensure safety, and reduce the risk of broken, damaged goods that make customers unhappy or even refuse to receive the goods. If customers write you negative reviews about the packaging, new customers will hesitate to buy from you.
In addition to careful packaging, you can choose eye-catching plastic bags or use your own bags with the store’s logo to increase brand awareness, reminding them of your products and services whenever they have a need.
5) Process Orders Quickly & In A Timely Manner
An attraction of e-commerce platforms that make customers want to buy here is the fast and guaranteed delivery time. They always want to receive products as soon as possible on e-commerce platforms. Please pay attention to this if you want to sell cosmetics effectively.
For example, according to Lazada’s policy, customers have the right to cancel orders or not receive goods. So if your delivery takes too long, many customers will use this benefit. The best way to avoid this is as soon as you receive an order from Lazada, you need to process it quickly and accurately, then pass it on to the delivery department.
IV. LIVESTREAMING SELLS COSMETICS WITH HIGH EFFICIENCY
1) Post Announcements About Livestream
To attract viewers and remind customers not to miss their livestream. Before recording, you should announce about 2-3 times a day to help viewers arrange a time to join their live stream.
2) The Content Is Extremely Important
You need to differentiate your product by its use or price and quality so that customers can feel the benefits that the product brings. You need to describe the product in detail, from the packaging to the quality inside and especially the effect it brings. From here, viewers can visualize your products specifically and increase your brand recognition.
Evidence that the product is safe and effective should be presented. As well as the commitment after purchasing the product to help create trust from consumers.
You can offer new products at super special prices with extremely limited quantities. This will stimulate consumers to close more orders. Or you can also organize mini-games, and give gifts right in the live to increase interaction.
Livestream is a form of sales as well as answering consumer questions about your product. Therefore, you need to answer the question in the most professional and coherent way. You can combine with a dermatologist who has a stable knowledge of cosmetics and beauty experience.
Besides providing product information, you should interact with viewers to create a friendly atmosphere feeling as well as keep customers watching until the end of the session.
V. COSMETIC MARKETING THROUGH FACEBOOK
Facebook is clearly an online trading market that is not strange to Vietnamese people. This is the most popular Vietnamese social networking site today.
How to build content for a cosmetic Facebook page:
- Use simple, easy-to-understand words.
- The content of the product introduction should be brief.
- The content of the product review needs to be authentic.
- Need to design beautiful and attractive images.
- Sharing videos about beauty secrets is not a bad idea.
Focus on videos, especially before-after videos. Branding videos with too much investment, though, seem fake and no longer interest customers. They now put trust in videos of normal-looking people using the products and enjoying their surprising effectiveness.
Setting up a fan page for marketing cosmetics is not difficult, but marketing it and running ads effectively is a headache. Businesses should learn from previous brands, or outsource Marketing companies and learn from them.
VI. RUN ADS ON GOOGLE, FACEBOOK
SEO Marketing is often effective in the long run while running Google and Facebook ads will bring immediate results.
Running Google ads is highly effective, but the budget is also very large, to optimize advertising costs better businesses need to orient keywords from the beginning. Please choose the right keywords that target the target customer segment of the business, and limit the choice of keywords that are difficult to compete with. Moreover, subtly integrating one main keyword and many secondary keywords will make it easier for Google to read and understand your article, so the article ranking will also be higher.
Marketing cosmetics with Facebook ads is the same, an article that is run with ads will often get a much higher amount of interaction than a normal article. Businesses need to focus on choosing a few forms of Facebook ads to test, and allocate budget and goals for each type of advertising very clearly, thereby choosing the most optimal form of Facebook advertising for cosmetic brands.
VII. USE INFLUENCERS-KOL-KOC
Influencers – KOL- KOC are all influencers and celebrities, and they influence large-small. These people can be famous artists, inspirational people, social activists, bloggers, and YouTubers, or simply they are just reputable consumers… They have a significant impact on their followers online
However, for KOC, the focus is more on activities such as sales and customer service than on branding. Most KOCs don’t have a high following like Influencers or KOLs.
KOC are just consumers. They use the products and review the products that interest them. They give a product review and get the commission that the brand pays based on the agreement. For KOCs, businesses can send cosmetic products to them to experience, try and give objective and criticism evaluation according to their personal feelings.
VIII. THINK OF WAYS TO COLLECT MORE ONLINE REVIEWS FROM CUSTOMERS
Asking for opinions, evaluations, and comments from customers is a very important thing that businesses must consider when implementing cosmetic marketing because cosmetic quality is perceived by the reviews of customers. However, collecting customer feedback is a difficult job.
Think of a gifting mechanism to encourage customers to leave reviews. Gifting can be free samples or discount codes or a chance to be featured on your social media pages.
You can publish positive reviews on all your marketing channels. Bad reviews can be hidden on your pages actually, but don’t make too many bad reviews. Unhappy customers can review you badly on many other platforms without your control. Vietnamese people have big mouths, so be careful not to upset them.
IX. IN CONCLUSION
By gaining a deep understanding of cosmetics marketing in Vietnam and embracing them, any brand can effectively introduce its products and establish a prominent brand image in the country. Nonetheless, international brands aiming to enter the Vietnamese beauty market must undertake thorough preparations, particularly by engaging in partnerships with local distributors or experts.
Need help to market your beauty products in Vietnam? Contact us!
