Glossier

About Glossier

In 2010, Emily Weiss launched her blog, Into the Gloss. An employee at Vogue, Emily was no stranger to the fashion and makeup industries (Berger, 2019), and her blog amassed a large following. Her no-nonsense approach to makeup and skincare appealed to many, and just four years later, Weiss launched her line of skincare products, dubbed Glossier. A play off the word “dossier”, the brand launched with just four products. Now, in 2021, the brand has grown considerably with over 40 products, although it is still a relatively small company (Danziger, 2018). 

With only 3 retail locations in New York, Los Angeles, and London, Glossier relies primarily on e-commerce sales (Skincare and beauty, n.d.). Glossier doesn’t sell its products at Sephora or Ulta, but instead has hosted popup “mini-shops” at Nordstrom locations in the U.S. (Davis, 2019). As such, it’s important for Glossier to employ a strong marketing strategy in order to help the brand succeed. While Glossier is known for its social media strategy, where they rely heavily on user-generated content and compelling images, they also have impressive brand awareness that is visible through their top keywords (Danziger, 2018).  In 2018, the brand made $100 million. Since they have very few storefronts and don’t sell anywhere else, this means that the brand is making the majority of its profits online (Dennis, 2020).  

Glossier and Data 

Glossier collects data through its website, as all eCommerce websites do. However, Glossier’s approach is a little more unique. First, they offer a skincare quiz where they can suggest products to quiz-takers. After taking the quiz, Glossier has now collected some data on your skincare needs, giving the brand the ability to target potential customers with ads for their products. They also have an email list that you can sign up for on their website. 

Glossier also collects data through its blog, Into the Gloss. Before one of the original Glossier products, The Milky Jelly Cleanser was launched, Weiss asked her followers to list properties of their ideal cleanser. The team at Glossier sorted through the responses, and The Milky Jelly Cleanser was born (Milnes, 2017). 

Is On-Page SEO Set up to Facilitate Better Data Collection? 

One of the biggest standouts to me on Glossier’s product pages isn’t just their content, it’s the number of reviews. Reviews are an important part of the buying process for many, and Glossier has a lot of them. These reviews show up as search results on Google in the form of star ratings. Here, we can see the star rating of the Milky Jelly Cleanser. This addition of unique content to product pages decreases the likelihood of duplicate content across pages, allowing pages to rank higher in search results.

The importance of Glossier’s review system also allows for the brand to collect additional data from reviews. 

Glossier and SEO

I plugged Glossier.com into SEMrush to find out more about the brand’s top keywords, where I found that 8/10 of them are branded. While this doesn’t indicate that they have a strong SEO strategy, Glossier has an impressive amount of volume, even for these keywords. This indicates that Glossier has a high level of brand awareness, something that all companies try to achieve (looking at you, Nike Swoosh). 

How can Glossier Improve Data Collection? 

1. One thing that surprised me about Glossier is that they do not offer a birthday club or a rewards program. This is something that so many beauty brands now offer, and would allow Glossier to collect more data about the demographics of their customers. 

2. It also surprises me that Glossier doesn’t rank higher for other keywords, like “Face Cleanser” or “Natural Makeup”. I believe that the brand should put more emphasis on its SEO efforts to improve its rankings on other, non-branded, keywords. 

Conclusion

All in all, I think Glossier’s marketing strategy is impressive. The brand was born from a blog, which must have used a very impressive keyword strategy to break through the clutter of beauty blogs to then grow into a beauty behemoth like Glossier. While I believe that Glossier has an incredible social media strategy, and some of their SEO and data collection strategies are unique and forward-thinking, I also believe that the brand is relying heavily on clout and brand awareness, and should put more into strategizing for keyword rankings. 

References: 

Berger, S. (2019, March 20). Glossier: How This 33-YEAR-OLD turned her BEAUTY blog to a $1 billion brand. Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/how-emily-weiss-took-glossier-from-beauty-blog-to-1-billion-brand.html

Danziger, P. (2018, November 07). 5 reasons That GLOSSIER is so successful. Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/11/07/5-keys-to-beauty-brand-glossiers-success/?sh=161ac47f417d

Davis, D. (2019, December 06). Glossier is coming TO Nordstrom, with 7 'MINI-SHOPS' opening in locations around the US. Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://www.businessinsider.com/glossier-opens-pop-up-shops-in-nordstrom-stores-across-us-2019-12

Dennis. (2020, September 16). The google ads strategy of glossier (case study). Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://www.storegrowers.com/glossier-google-ads/

Milnes, H. (2017, June 13). How glossier uses data to make content and commerce work. Retrieved March 01, 2021, from https://digiday.com/marketing/glossier-uses-data-make-content-commerce-work/

        Skincare & beauty products inspired by real life. (n.d.). Retrieved March 01, 2021, from                  https://www.glossier.com/locations