Interview
Tell me a bit about yourself and what you do.
I am a single mum of one. its essential for me to be able to work my work around family.
I freelance to a small local business called ‘Beautythings UK’; Assisting with their website, product design, and marketing.
I do this part time while also running my own business within the beauty sector. I find working this way enables me to be flexible.
Tell me a bit about what you do for Beautythings?
I work beside Jess, the owner, strategising on how we can continue to push the business forward and expand within the online beauty sector. My main job is ensuring the website is up to date with all new products, inclusive of all advertising that goes along side. For example 1 new top brand product launch will need, a homepage banner, product page banner, imagery for email and social media with videos and possible offers to support the launch.
I ensure the whole homepage is up to date and showcasing the relevant seasonal products, offers and information. making sure that we keep within the Beautythings brand colours and it all balances and flows correctly.
i create seasonal advertising and promotional emails to run alongside our new brand and product launches and offers.
Why is Social Media important to you and your work?
Social media is absolutely essential to keeping Beautythings as a brand current and fresh. These platforms enable us help connect with our customers, increase awareness about Beautythings as a brand, and boost our sales, it’s essentially free marketing. Our target audience, given the huge and diverse range of products we offer, is growing and changing all the time.
Beauty is changing constantly. what’s in what’s not, what’s working what’s not and social media helps us to keep fresh and current. Without social media we couldn’t be able to cover an International demographic of this size without being a major magazine or major international retailer. These social media platforms enable us to keep relevant and in contact with our target audience constantly.
Do you believe the growth of social media has had an impact on the growth of Beautythings?
Absolutely. As social media has grown so has our customer reach. For example when facebook used to have the market on social media we felt we were missing out on being able to target the 40+ age range and it was primarily the teens and young adults. Now with the addition of platforms such as twitter and instagram which appeals to the 35+ and more 40+ with twitter it has opened up our reach and now ensures we can target the right products to the right target audience.
It helps us to be able to tailor our marketing strategies more effectively, which in turn helps us drive our sales.
In addition to this, new tools like facebook business has been essential in assisting our marketing strategies, as we can now see what campaigns get more engagement and are more successful, what times are best to post to get maximum reach and engagement. With social media growing and constantly improving, we can now use social media work in our own perfect way for us.
How have you adapted the work you do for Beautythings as social media marketing has grown?
Apart from having to understand how each one works when a new one comes along and keeping up with their changing algorithms, i wouldn’t say i have had to adapt my work much as it has grown, only add another platform to the list when posting. Using multiple posting platforms takes away a lot of the stress of having to do each one individually. I can create one post to go out and either schedule it to go out at a certain time across all platforms. or choose to out it out on only two. It enables me to schedule my social media output for the month or more in one go so i don’t have log in and do a post separately each day for each individual platform.
Do you think your social media presence has an impact on brand loyalty?
I think it’s essential for any brand to have a social media presence. Unfortunately in our fickle world of online beauty and especially as a retailer there isn’t too much brand loyalty. Customers will search for the cheapest price and will go with that. We pride ourselves on being a small team 4 with great customer service with a personal touch you don’t see much of these days.
Things like online reviews are crucial for us as a brand to help us grow and endorse brand loyalty when and where it matters. Its the small things we find that counts.
Social media can help with that, but we have found its more ur price point and customer service has the biggest impact.
Reflection
