The Objective
Understanding how to optimize content creation
Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty was founded with a mission to destigmatize mental health and celebrate individuality by redefining what “beautiful” means. The authentic, storytelling nature of TikTok makes it the perfect channel to communicate this message, and Rare Beauty joined the app in September 2020 alongside the brand’s launch. From the beginning, Rare Beauty took an approach that highlighted Selena’s personality, as well as those of creators on TikTok who love, and genuinely use its cosmetics. But the rapid pace and viral nature of the channel poses challenges for brands in terms of understanding what kind of content is working, and why.
The Solution
Driving video views and completion rates through a data-driven creator strategy
Having a famous founder as the face of the brand has been both a blessing and a challenge for the Rare Beauty team as they navigate finding a balance between creating content that features Selena, and showcasing the brand’s burgeoning creator community. In alignment with its organic strategy, the team works collaboratively with its advertising agency Booyah to share both Selena, and creator content as ads.
Just as in the organic strategy, the goals for these two types of videos differ. Dash Hudson's (Official TikTok Content Marketing Partner) TikTok Insights gives the team access to the performance metrics that matter most to the brand, like video views and avgerage time watched in order to understand how these different styles of content perform.
"Dash Hudson optimizes Rare Beauty's work flow by allowing the team to easily measure performance to inform our strategy and be agile," said Ashley Murphy, Senior Director, Consumer Marketing at Rare Beauty, "It’s also helpful in communication to leadership."
Metrics can be analyzed on a per post basis and via totals over time. This helps the team identify the optimal moments in which to feature Selena, and it’s working—videos featuring the brand’s founder receive on average, 211% more video views than the brand’s typical view rate.
Building community is an important part of Rare Beauty’s presence on social media, and one way the brand achieves this is by collaborating with creators from its TikTok community. The styles of creator content on the Rare Beauty account run the gamut from makeup tutorials, sharing favorite products and knowledge, to mental health wellness tips. Leveraging data in Your Posts helps the Rare Beauty team to understand which creators perform best on the brand’s TikTok, and which styles of content keep viewers tuned in.
The Results
Demonstrating the value of the TikTok creator community
On average, creator highlights on Rare Beauty’s account see a 16% longer watch time, indicating viewers find this mainly educational style of content valuable and engaging. The Rare Beauty team also sees impactful business results from their paid initiatives on TikTok. Ads featuring Selena are an important part of Rare Beauty’s awareness strategy, and drive 770% more average video views to completion per person than other ad content.
Creator content on the other hand, is highly effective in achieving Rare Beauty’s conversion goals. Though these videos achieve a lower view rate than videos featuring Selena, creator TikTok ads drove 97.5% of recent ad campaign conversions, indicating a high intent to buy from content viewers.
With Dash Hudson’s TikTok Insights, the team at Rare Beauty combines their media savviness with enhanced access to data to overcome the new challenges that the channel presents, and spread the brand’s positive messages of the love of makeup and of self, to its community on TikTok.
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