L’Oréal Social Media Marketing Strategy and Plan

Executive Summary

L’Oréal Paris is a well-known makeup brand with a massive presence in the total beauty care industry that comprises all modern technology and possesses the highest quality of luxury beauty. As the most prominent beauty brand, L’Oréal has the best commitment to technology, innovation, and massive breakthroughs. It has the highest-quality products for men, women, and kids, regardless of age and background. This Company is mainly subjected to celebrating the diversity of beauty because of the wide range of spokespeople worldwide. It is genuinely a worldwide beauty brand with huge products. The make-up brand has five main beauty categories: hair color, hair care, hairstyle, skincare, and cosmetics. This social media marketing plan aims to improve L’Oréal Paris’s beauty brand digital association, drive brand awareness, and increase customer trustworthiness. Via numerous targeted measures, the business plan will leverage countless social media platforms to reach the brand’s specific target market and outdo its competitors.

Overview

L’Oréal makeup brand was founded on 30^th July 1909, by Eugene Schueller. Its headquarters are in Clichy, France. It is one of the largest global cosmetics companies majoring in makeup, skincare, and hair color. L’Oréal Paris’s makeup brand holds an extensive social media presence. It has active Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest profiles. Beauty is rapidly enhancing in the market, and consumers play a crucial role. Thus, modern channels such as social media play a significant duty in promoting the brand. It is via the numerous canals that the L’Oréal brand expresses itself to consumers and allows them to share experiences and opinions. The brand can understand its users through the media platforms and reach them accordingly. However, with the increase in the number of consumers, the brand might face challenges while managing the rapid interaction among consumers. Thus, due to the modern social media channels, the brand might be forced to change its marketing, advertising, customer reach, care, and engagement. As a result, a competitive analysis will be carried out to identify the main L’Oréal Paris brand competitors and strategies to enact. The goals of this plan are increasing brand awareness, promoting product launches, and promoting user or customer care and engagement. The system will focus on content creation, influencer partnerships and customer association. The plan targets beauty enthusiasts, makeup artists, and people interested in giant quality cosmetics. Various tools like social media care and engagement platforms and analytics tools will highly uphold this plan’s application, monitoring, and budgeting.

Fig 1: L’Oréal Company Products

Social Media Audit

L’Oréal has one of the most significant social media presences of all the brands globally. Besides its media strategy, L’Oréal upholds social media profiles for many nations where the products are sold with the presence of various product pages. Its

From the above audit, L’Oréal brand products majorly did well on Facebook, followed by Instagram. Photos drive many interactions on Facebook. To determine which media platform had the most significance regarding individual care brands, this plan looked at various interactions of different posts across each network. The results were that all the interactions per post across the social networks were always high in Facebook. Having 71,000 interactions per post on the Facebook page, Durex generated approximately four hundred times more interactions compared to the average personal care brand. Neutrogena and Wella further generated 15 and 77 interactions per post. Per the audit, private care brands put two-thirds of their content into photos and the rest goes to video. For instance, in 2017, the video content was doubled from the 2016 (Ippalapelli, 2018). This indicated that the brands were taking various steps to embrace content.

Nevertheless, the audit found that photos took the bigger part when it came to interactions per post. There was a high number of interactions per post on Facebook. Most of the responses were positive, and the users commented on the effectiveness of the L’Oréal brand products. Most of the customers made inquiries for the products via the same platform and understood the platform. Facebook pages are said to be better gateways for brands to market their products to their users. Being a public presence similar to an individual profile, Facebook allows people to like a brand or a business. Many users or fans receive content updates from the Facebook platform on their current needs, and the brand is, therefore, able to promote its awareness, track advertisements, and interact with the users who enquire about customer services.

Fig 2: High user interaction on Facebook

However, most personal care brands need a vast range to ensure their information meets their target audience. Various brands mostly use social media to advertise, but over the last few years, the landscape has changed, and the bigger question is, where is the growth now? Individual care brands have the most followers on Facebook and will remain there for a while. Instagram at some time has outdone Twitter to host the second largest audience for the L’Oréal brand products. The growth continues to be heavy on Instagram for individual care brands, but it may take quite some time for the beverage audience sizes to attain the same levels as Facebook.

Fig 3: Audience growth by size and channel.

Competitive Analysis

With L’Oréal being among the most prominent brand names in the worldwide cosmetics company, it faces continuous competition from various organizations. Its main competitors are MAC, Maybelline, Chanel, Dior and Clinique, among others. These companies are giant competitors of L’Oréal. As per the latest statistics, on 30^th June 2023, L’Oréal company sales amounted to 20.57 billion euros. Its annual income in 2022 was $6B., and its yearly gross profit for 2022 amounted to $29B. As of September 2023, L’Oréal net worth amounted to $235B. However, besides all these successes, the enterprise still faces stiff competition from other organizations (Hitesh Bhasin, 2018).

Top L’Oréal competitors

1. MAC

MAC is a famous cosmetics producer with headquarters in New York City in the United States of America. It is said to be the most significant professional makeup authority globally. It manufactures various products for all individuals regardless of their age. Their products meet the needs of the people and professional makeup specialists. The Company’s products are Prep + Prime, Lightful C, mineralize, and Pro Longwear. Its assets net worth is approximately 57 212 British pounds. Regarding the beauty and health of its users, brand awareness lies at 52% in America. As a result of its diverse products, MAC is categorized as one of the significant L’Oréal competitors

Fig 4: MAC products

2. Maybelline

Maybelline is among the leading beauty industry in America. It assists ladies in discovering modern looks and exhibiting their own skills and personality. The Company provides scientifically-updated formulas and radical fixtures to promote ladies’ beauty. It produces different products of lips, faces, and eyes. Its diverse products include eyeshadows, eyeliner, powders, blushes, lipstick, and lip color,. Its net worth is approximately $46 million. Hence, it is considered a major L’Oréal competitor due to its advanced products.

Fig 5: Maybelline Company and its products

3. Dior

Christian Dior founded this great company in 1946. The Company’s fashion stores are globally distributed. It is involved in the manufacturing and distribution of goods to the people. Its net worth is EUR 1756 B. It provides different face, eyes, nails, and lips products. As a result of the wide availability of its products, Dior is a top L’Oréal competitor.

Dior Company Products

4. Chanel

Chanel is a private company of French and is considered one of the major luxury brands globally. Its total brand value is $7 billion. It manufactures products such as ready-to-wear clothes, makeup, and fashion accessories. It further manufactures makeup products for nails, lips, eyes and face. Due to its brand values and global accessibility via online and offline markets, Chanel is said to be a significant L’Oréal competitor.

Fig 6: Chanel Company Products

5. Clinique

Clinique is a well-known United States brand, a personal care and cosmetic organization that manufactures toiletries, cosmetics, fragrances, and skin care products. Its different skincare products include masks, lip care, hand and body care, removers, and cleaners. The brand’s value is approximately 4.8 billion U.S. dollars. In terms of brand awareness, it is 74 % in America. Being the fastest-growing personal and cosmetic company, Clinique is a top L’Oréal competitor.

Fig 7: Clinique Company Products

The above cosmetic industries, among others, are rushing to attain their business goals and objectives.

Goals, Objectives, and Metrics

The main goal is to promote L’Oréal’s social media engagement and increase its brand visibility and awareness.

Resources, Roles, and Responsibilities

Beauty is the powerful force that drives the L’Oréal company forward. It gives confidence in who the Company is and what it wants to be in building its relationships with the people. The goal is to increase the Company’s media engagement, visibility, and awareness; the Company should aim at the best quality, efficacy, and responsibility in satisfying all the individual’s beauty needs and desires globally. Since beauty is permanent and elusive, the company should harness the power of innovation to enhance its performance in terms of production and distribution of its services. It should further value diversity and leverage its products to meet all the broad expressions of beauty.

It is being a large organization comprised of various divisions such as Administration and Finance, Digital, Human Resources, Communications, and Corporate responsibility. Thus, to ensure its development, all these divisions should work hand in hand to promote the organization’s media engagement, visibility, and awareness. It should empower all the teams and improve its relevance to its consumers. It should focus on developing a global network research, innovation, and marketing strategies. To achieve this goal, the organization should be responsible for all communications or advertisements of their products by building a solid communication team. Thus, with the availability of many resources such as electronic devices like tablets, laptops, and smartphones, L’Oréal Company should utilize this opportunity since consumers spend most of their time on the internet. Thus, the Company should put more effort into internet usage by strengthening its media networks to sell its products. Moreover, with the availability of other resources such as media platforms, the Company should strengthen its interaction with the consumers via texts and immediate responses to its users. Social media full engagement will ensure 100% love for their brands. Consumers engage in online platforms for trend and advice, searching for product look and recommendation.

First, to attain these objectives, the Company should initiate a vision on their brands I.e., have strong communication with the people. It should encourage intrapreneurship within the organizations and allow the members to initiate innovative measures and award them accordingly. The Company should entertain its consumers with stories and other content at the right piece and meaningful time. Second, the organization, should have a large social media team of approximately a thousand people. The media has many online platforms, and many can attend to all the users across the various platforms compared to a small number. The Company should have around ten social media managers to control the whole team and ensure they play their roles to satisfaction. The managers should be well-skilled and trained to guide the members. The social media team should be well distributed across the different platforms, each having different roles. There should be a section of the team posting the products, another one responding to the user’s questions or inquiries via texts, another acting as customer care via calls, and the rest analyzing the progress of the whole media platform through updating the websites and allowing more consumers to access the services via easy registrations and logins to the Company’s websites. The Company should engage the whole team in different workshops to improve their skills and build entrepreneurship culture within the organization.

The Company should further work on its budget from the previous one to meet all the needs of the new social media marketing techniques.

Fig 8: L’Oréal’s advertising and promotion budget globally from 2007-2022 in billion euros.

Based on the above statistics, L’Oréal Company has consistently been increasing its budget. However, to meet the new goals with the increase in the social media team, the organization has to put more effort into increasing its budget by making it more sizable. To attain the best, more has to be spent. From the graph, in 2022, L’Oréal spent 12.1 billion euros on its advertising budget. Thus, from 2023 onwards, a sizeable budget of approximately 15 billion euros has to be improvised to meet the organization’s needs and cater to the increase in the advertisement team.

L’Oréal brand Tone of Voice

L’Oréal’s brand personality reflects the character of being competent and sophisticated. The Company has six values that drive its activities. They include passion, innovation, open-mindedness, entrepreneurial spirit, responsibility, and the quest for excellence. These values are shared by all the consumers of L’Oréal’s products globally. These values shape the mindset of the Company. The priority is to open various modern trends and ideals globally. The Company should uphold passion, which is associated with culture and humanity. Since manufacturing beauty products means understanding the needs of others, the organization should be passionate about anticipating the needs of consumers. Innovation is a significant value for any progress in a business. Since scientists founded the Company, innovation has always been a continuous quest and needs improvements and more performance. Listening to the people, knowing their culture, being open to them, and advancing from their differences should be a quest to attain the Company’s goals and objectives. A sense of responsibility is always crucial in an organization. The brand would further speak to its customers via social media monitoring. Monitoring would help the Company understand the demands of its customers and speak a similar language with them. The Company should conduct traditional research and ask questions directly to the people. It is also necessary for the Company to conduct SML research to find out what the consumers say about the brand and its products. The opinions of the customers will enable the Company to implement the results via communication.

If the brand can enact all these measures, the customers would see it as a unique organization that captures, understands, and respects the differences among people. L’Oréal’ Company acts as the future of beauty through bying the best science and technology, that i more ins by nature. The Company has both an inspiring and friendly character. Being part of the Company means becoming part and parcel of a team of talented and inspiring individuals. The Company believes in teamwork, and teams are the Company’s heroes. Teamwork build and strengthens friendship. L’Oréal’s brand aim is basically to engage, educate, sell, and delight. The organization aims to engage its people via innovative enterprise techniques and media campaigns. Moreover, it aims to educate people on measures to protect and care for their skin, hair, and other beauty needs via information. The Company also aims to sell good beauty products by distributing delightful products to the people and making them enjoy better experiences.

L’Oréal’s brand tone can be said to be personal, honest, and scientific. The Company aims to link with many people at an individual level by communicating openly and honestly with them. In 2014, L’Oréal brand company was listed among the top trusted brands globally. It is an ethical company that recognizes long-term commitment and applies ethical measures to its products, sales, and culture. The Company is also scientific because it emphasizes scientific innovation and technology for their goods. It uses the power of technology and innovation to manufacture and advertise their products in due time. It also discovers, develop and give ongoing feedback to the beauty necessities of the people. Moreover, the Company co-creates the future of beauty through open innovation and partnership with other companies. In addition, L’Oréal’ brand language can be cultured and serious and emphasizes on expertise and innovation. The Company focuses on communication via a sense of quality and luxury. Its language is complex and classy thus helping the Company resemble its position as a worldwide top beauty organization.

Platform Selection

Even though L’Oréal’ brand is active in social media network, the various platforms its uses do not guarantee its success and worth for the audience. Regardless of the accounts created, the Company has to asses and select specific networks where their products will be highly active on. For the L’Oréal’ makeup bard company the best preferable selection for networking social media platforms are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the major social media platforms where most of people engage online (Thompson, 2020). They are also better sites for marketing of products and other goods. With approximately 11 million followers in Instagram, the Company should more target the young individuals. Having several Instagram accounts such as makeup, hair and skin, the Company should increase more accounts to attract the best people through the best products. Having the largest engagement on Facebook, the Company can still reach more people, including the young and the old.

Fig 9: L’Oreal Facebook Advert

Distribution and Content Strategy

This distribution strategy determines the network the, frequency of posts, and the type of content information that will be published on each network. On the other hand, the content strategy outlines the planning, development and management of the social media content. The world of beauty is continuously changing, and L’Oréal should seek to adapt and thrive. The presence of the business landscape gives chances to engage in the rising trend of online beauty market. As sustainable measures gain momentum, L’Oréal can well improve its efforts to attain the user’s needs through friendly products. In the presence of the many threats in the beauty industry, market saturation can hinder growth and navigating the various regulations and standard is always not easy. Thus, L’Oreal should remain agile and adapt quickly to the consumer preference.

L’Oréal’s distribution strategy should be composed of a comprehensive approach that can engage and reach the targeted people via different social media platforms. Firsts, L’Oréal Company should focus on its network selection. It should focus on the three main social media platforms Fa,cebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to ensure a wide reach to its audience. The three platforms should serve various duties based on the people or consumers. They should also focus on how the consumers take and adapt to the message. Secondly, the frequency of posts is a crucial part to consider. The posts should be posted continuously and in a responsible manner that cannot overwhelm the people. The posts should be motivative and entertaining to entice the consumers. The frequency of posting can differ depending on the platform used. For instance, Facebook may need a continuous posting compared to Instagram because of its capability to host a large number of people. Third, the type of content should also be considered keenly. L’Oréal Company should combine different content inclusive of informative, educative, entertaining and engaging material. It should make use of tutorials, users testimonies, the people content, the hidden scenes sight and the influencer partnerships. Besides, this, the Company should improvise highly quality images and videos that are attractive enough to describe and advertise the Company’s products effectively. The content should be more interactive to entertain and engage the people. It should comprise of questions, polls, virtual sessions and a united society to increase its awareness. Moreover, the Company should initiate a data-driven approach whose main aim is to analyze the performance of different content types and the distribution platforms. This technique can give more insight into the best things for the people and it will allow the organization to fit in the modern beauty technology effectively. Through enacting mixed distribution measures that focuses on the network selection, continuous posts and the content, the Company will cultivate and expand in this digital era.

On the other hand, L’Oréal should develop a content strategy to support its goals and objectives to engage the diverse targeted audience well. Ladies aged between twenty-five to forty-five years are mostly interested in skincare and can offer an expertise skincare advice to build the Company’s awareness. Most of the men and women seeking hair care tips highly benefit from L’Oréal products educative content. The content demonstrates how the products can be used and the different styles applicable. The Company should emphasize its bard status and sustainability measures via content that showcase their environmental initiatives. The Company should further showcase a good planning, development and management of the social media content. There are several ways in which L’Oréal can improve its content strategy for social media. They include planning, development and management of different contents like written posts, blogs, videos and infographics.

First, the Company should carry out an audience research and insight. It should carry a serious study to examine the preference and behaviours of the targeted people. The information collected can assist in creating content that matches the audience as a means of improving engagement. Secondly, to manage the content strategy, the Company should create a content calendar that will help in planning and organizing the media information well. Different topics, themes, and dates of content release should be well included in the calendar. This act will increase the anxiety among customers. Tools such as buffer and hoot suite will well help in managing the content more effectively. Thirdly, having a diversifying content formats will further assist in distributing the content globally. The Company should initiate better formats of content diversification like tutorials, advertise shows and videos. Content in the form of stories is highly applicable. L’Oréal brand should include stories and emotions that will help in linking with the people in an easy way. These stories can include the audience testimonials inclusive of emotions like joy to give a strong linkage with audience. Community engagement is also crucial in management of the content. This includes a two-way conversation via social media through chats and responding to comments as well as sharing the peoples content. Through enacting these techniques, L’Oréal makeup brand will be at a point of managing its content strategy, thus increasing the association and brand awareness. All these will lead to the accomplishment of the Company’s set goals and objectives.

Employee Advocacy Program

A suitable employee advocacy program for L’Oréal company would need to meet the organization’s values, culture, and objectives. To meet the needs of the targeted audience, the program should first have training and guidelines. Employees should receive good training, such as social media best practices and guidance on the company messaging. The program should also have recognition and incentives. The Company should be able to appreciate employees who work for the betterment of the organization. Employees should also have a content exchange platform where they can access and verify the pre-approved social media content. Moreover, the program should monitor and give responses. L’Oréal brand should implement ways of monitoring the advocacy program as well as tracking the worker’s performance. By using these elements in the employees’ program, the Company will create a brand that is well-known and it will further strengthen and motivate the employee engagement.

Social Media Policy and Crisis Response Plan

In all unprecedented crisis, it is the responsibility of the L’Oréal Company to contribute collective efforts in all means possible. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company made efforts to contribute and conquer the crisis in all ways possible. The availability of all brands product types distribution calls for a better way of allowing the Company to offer its services efficiently as per the customer’s privileges. The department concerned anticipates to adapt to the different changes to have a good development of online sales inclusive of different partnerships.

Social Media Policy

This social media policy applies to all the workers of the L’Oréal Company inclusive of all those responsible for controlling and managing the media accounts and those who use individual media accounts related to the Company. All the professional in the Company are expected to uphold a respectful tone on all technology platforms. They should refrain themselves from taking part in inflammatory conversations that can express the organization negatively to the people. Moreover, when advertising the Company’s products, all workers should incorporate official branding and messaging as per the guidelines set. The use of Logos and trademarks should align with the Company’s branding measures. Workers should also adhere to the best safety practices. They should not share sensitive company information via social media or to other competitors.

Crisis Response Plan

To manage or overcome different crisis that may occur, the Company should well identify all possible issues on social media that may negatively portray the Company. It should also focus on handling the customers complaints and handle any misinformation. To ensure effective handling of these problems, all workers should be well trained. The organization should well manage both internal and external communication in the occurrence of a social media crisis. For the case of internal communication. The organizations should initiate a crisis response team that will give the desired feedbacks on the levels of crisis. On the other hand, for the case of external communication, the Company should have a spokesperson who is responsible for giving public statements and feedbacks to the social media questions in case of crisis. The Company should further employ monitoring tools that can detect potential barriers that can lead to crises.

L’Oreal Influencer Program

The objective of this L’Oréal program is to initiate partnerships via influential voices within the beauty industry with the aim of showcasing the Company’s products as well as expanding audience engagement. First, the program should begin with an influencer identification where influencers having strong character within the makeup sector can be identified. The influencers values should go hand in hand with L’Oréal’s terms and regulations. Second, the programs should include a partnership outreach where the Company can reach capable influencers to have conversations on the business opportunities as well as majoring on the benefit of the partnerships. Third, the influencer program should focus on content creation in order to create genuine content that portrays the real Company’s products and their nature. Lastly, the Company should focus on creating long-term relationships with the top performing influencers. This will showcase continuous unity and advocacy of the organization’s products.

Advertising strategy

L’Oréal Company should utilize paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to strengthen its content, improve product launches and reach a large audience. Since the Company’s segmentation is based on demographic factors, the consumers mostly belong to the middle and upper class. Thus, it advertising strategy should target the middle, upper-middle-class and high-income people for them to outdo their competitors.

Results and Recommendation

The social media plan targets at meeting the audience needs. The desired results are to bring up an organization that is unique and able to satisfy all the customers in the beauty industry. It further aims to enhance digital engagement and brand awareness to improve customers’ loyalty. Through the above strategies of leveraging the social media platforms, the Company will attain it targets and outdo its main competitors. I therefore recommend the L’Oréal Company to put this plan into action and consider all the strategies in order to enhance natural beauty, initiate self-confidence and empower the customers in unique ways. With strong focus on this plan, the Company will enhance social media engagement and increase the brand’s visibility and awareness.

Reference

Hitesh Bhasin. (2018, July 22). Top 14 L’Oreal Competitors Explain – L’Oreal competitor analysis. Marketing91. https://www.marketing91.com/loreal-competitors/

Ippalapelli, P. (2018, November 25). L’Oréal’s Social Media Presence. L’Oréal’s Social Media Presence. https://lorealmedia.home./#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20Instagram%2C%20L

L’Oréal Finance. (2020). Cosmetics market. L’Oréal Finance: Annual Report

L’Oréal. (2020, January 23). L’Oréal group: Strategy & model.

Thompson, V. (2020). Influence of Advertisement on Women & the Attitude Toward Cosmetics. CHRON