Maybelline

Maybelline is a makeup brand based in the USA and is popular all over the world. This belongs to the French beauty business known as L’Oréal. In 1915, a young entrepreneur set up a business named Maybelline. He got the idea from his sister (Mabel), who used household things to make up creatively.

He used his knowledge of chemistry to develop beauty products and named the company after his sister to honor her. Maybelline was the first company to develop mascara, one of the first eye makeup products to be commercially produced. In 1996, the Maybelline company was sold to L’Oréal, a strategic decision to enter large markets.

4 Marketing Strategies of Maybelline

Digital influencers become brand ambassadors

While influencer marketing is now  a common place for cosmetics brands, Maybelline has gone one step further by embracing a new trend to use influencers as brand ambassadors. Rather than just charging them to share content on Instagram, this means getting influencers on mainstream and multi-channel promotions. 

Manny Gutierrez (or ‘Manny MUA’) was named the first male brand ambassador, exploiting his more than 4 million Instagram followers and 2.1 million YouTube subscribers.

Hyping product-releases

Maybelline also uses visual tools to generate excitement in leading up to new product launches. A new make-up line has recently been introduced in partnership with Gigi Hadid. The # GigixMaybelline has cleverly created an outlook of the event, with Gigi devoting much of her entire Instagram to it for the month of October.

Maybelline mainly focuses on making sites like Instagram, a place for interaction and engagement. The brand also asks questions or invites followers to add friends in order to create and develop real interaction.

Creating platform-specific content

In this 21th century, content is the king of every social media platform. Maybelline also produces high quality and personalized content for various platforms.

• Pinterest uses visual content to provide useful and insightful tips and make-up for how-to, with its ‘Get the Look’ feature proving to be popular.

• YouTube is another platform for influencer interaction, which is why Maybelline carry out content, plus a range of models to star in short videos to increase audiences.

Putting consumers center stage

Finally, Maybelline ensures that the engagement cycle continues by involving its online audience as much as possible, in particular by encouraging user-generated content. One way of doing so is by offering free samples of its products to customers in order to inspire them to post feedback or product-related material on social media.

Maybelline primarily produces this form of content by brand-related hashtags, which it often sets up in relation to events and occasions. For example, during New York Fashion Week and BeautyCon (a festival-like gathering for brands and beauty fans), # MNYFashionWeek and # MNYBeautyCon are used.