At Octoly we’ve done extensive research on YouTube beauty brands and beauty gurus across owned, paid and earned media. Not surprisingly, most are young, innovative companies founded in the last six years, after YouTube was already well-entrenched. Who do we think is doing it best on YouTube? Here’s our list:
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1) Sigma Beauty
If you look at Sigma Beauty’s own YouTube channel, you could be deceived into thinking that the brand doesn’t have a very large footprint on YouTube. But you would be mistaken. Sigma has very strategical realized that beauty gurus are vastly more effective in selling its products than the company itself is. Sigma has developed an extensive network of affiliate members, heavily promoting the program’s benefits and offering a generous commission. Thus the company has well over 13,000 affiliates, aka salespeople, who advocate for them on YouTube. For each view on its own channel there are 180 views of videos created by fan/affiliate/salespeople on YouTube who help them sell brushes and specialty beauty products. Founded in 2009, the company grew to $25 million annual sales by 2013, almost entirely based on YouTube sales. More info: How YouTube Influencers Are Driving Sigma Beauty’s Success
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2) Memebox
Korean beauty products are hot, and Memebox (pronounced “mi-mi box”) is another brand that strategically partnered with YouTube influencers instead of focusing on its own YouTube channel. The “K-Beauty” company is less than two years old and started on a shoestring, but the Y Combinator startup has now raised $29M in funding. Memebox partners with YouTubers to create white label products for them. Last year one of these sold out all 20,000 units in just 40 minutes, grossing $400,000 for the day. The company has spent just a few hundred dollars in paid media.
3) BH Cosmetics
BH Cosmetics is one of the fastest growing private companies in America. The company was founded in 2009 without any outside funding and by 2013 had made $13.7 million in yearly revenue. BH celebrates its YouTube advocates by featuring them on its own YouTube channel, where you see two playlists prominently placed. One is called “YouTube Tutorials We Love,” and the other is, simply, “Liked Videos.” More than 98% of the YouTube views about BH cosmetics, to the tune of 382 million views, are from independent creators. And that’s in no small part due to the 15% commission that BH pays creators who send sales their way. As an online business, BH has outsourced their sales incentives to YouTube influencers. See more at Why BH Cosmetics Features Fan Vids On Its YouTube Channel.
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4) NYX
L’Oreal recently acquired NYX Cosmetics (NYX rhymes with “fix”), a $100 million company founded in 1999. The company had quickly become a fan-favorite on YouTube, far surpassing L’Oreal on the platform. NYX did this in large part by celebrating its biggest fans, the YouTube creators. The company created the FACE Awards, a competition where YouTubers went over the top to create incredible videos. During just one of phase of the competition last year, YouTubers participating in the contest got NYX 32 million earned media views in just two days. Yes, that’s right — 32 million views in two days, with zero paid media. See our piece on NYX How NYX Became A YouTube Leader in #BeautyGuru Fan Videos.
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5) ULTA
Beauty retailer Ulta has taken a hybrid approach to working with YouTube influencers. It begins by sponsoring hauls in its stores, where YouTubers select (or are sent) products that they feature in videos on their own channels. Then the company takes the best of these and promotes the videos as pre-roll ads to run before other highly-targeted and related YouTube beauty guru videos. The authenticity of the YouTuber’s product review has a much higher degree of resonance with the viewer. Finally, they embed those videos on their sales pages right next to the products so that shoppers can have contextual demonstrations or reviews. See our blog post Why ULTA Bought This Beauty Guru 200K Views.
Runner Up: Birchbox
Birchbox, founded in 2010, is the top beauty subscription box. In our study of the brand last year, we found that the Birchbox YouTube channel had 600,000 organic views and 2 million paid views. But their earned media views (videos created by influencers on their own channels) totaled 14.5 million, 85% of the brand footprint. Birchbox is getting the majority of its views from unboxings, which YouTubers can’t get enough of. Read more about Birchbox and other unboxings on our blog post How To Win The Beauty Unboxing Phenomenon.
It’s amazing how of these brands on our list, almost all are very young companies who understand the power of earned media and the strength of putting YouTubers in the driver’s seat when advocating for their products. They are challenging the largest brands by focusing on millennials and understanding which are the best strategies to adopt on social media and YouTube specifically, where engagement and time spent are the highest for shoppers who are passionate about beauty products.
Start a movement — connect with your YouTube Influencers today. We can help.
