Australian Beauty Bloggers Compete with the Beauty Counter for Expert Advice

With 85 beauty bloggers converging on Sydney for the inaugural Australian Beauty Bloggers Weekend  and more than 500 expected for the follow-up in 2012, it’s a good time to ask “What can they do for my brand?”

The answer is: A lot!

Online searches for editorial and blogger mentions are invaluable to a brand. However, a google search for any given month limited to an Australian only beauty brand can land you with over 30,000 hits. Specialised knowledge and bespoke analysis is now vital to filter through the clutter, to separate what is valuable from what’s not.

With more and more specialised beauty bloggers setting up sites each week in Australia alone, they are becoming as powerful as the beauty counters of the fashion world. No longer do buyers rely on the trained staff found in major department stores, they just google it.

One in four women surveyed by BlogHer (a community of female bloggers) preferred buying cosmetics online. Those surveyed were 2.5 times more likely to be inspired to purchase a product because of a favourable review from a trusted blogger rather than one from a magazine or a beauty website.

While word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising, with bloggers out there posting about dozens of products a week, the question is: How do you make your product stand out?

Free gifts may get you a review and a few extra followers but digging deeper is the key to real success. If you analyse a blog’s statistics (hits, bounce rates, etc.) to check their reach and then engage the blogger and their followers in an event, launch or innovation the exposure has a much better chance of winning over large numbers of potential customers to your brand.

Illamasqua recently launched their Theatre of the Nameless collection with global blogger events from Brisbane to Soho, inundating blog readers with image upon image of the collection and the event (which featured some very colourful styling!)

This launch definitely caught my attention. When you are scrolling through countless lipstick swatches or different nail colours, the type of content Illamasqua generated stood out as interesting, engaging and memorable – made all the more successful by their effective use of beauty bloggers.