Sephora Marketing Strategy
- Define the target market
The target market of Sephora Company is mostly people who have a higher disposable income with high regard for quality beauty products. However, the stores have been cleverly designed to divide the target market into smaller fragments. Therefore, the best definition of its target market is, therefore, women and men who value quality and can willingly pay for it. Such people value high-quality beauty products and are open to the price ranges. Furthermore, the company also appeals to young women by offering products that are richly decorative to fit the teens’ adventure, curiosity, and playfulness. The company goes further and has a set of sedately decorated beauty and skincare products for men that want to have a different look and those who want to polish some aspects of their masculinity look.
- Define customer value
Customer value is the satisfaction experienced by a consumer after purchasing a good with a cost that is relative to its expected quality. Sephora has a relatively higher price of cosmetics than most cosmetic stores. However, the prices of its products are justified by their exemplary quality. Its customers, therefore, end up receiving a higher benefit and outlook from the products hence exceeding the products’ high cost. Furthermore, to ensure that a customer is impressed by the purchase, Sephora ensures that the customer tests the products to see their quality and whether it is worth it. Sephora does that through the use of a virtual artist. The customers can, therefore, virtually try out different shades and categories of products and find the ones that look great on them at the comfort of their mobile phones. In addition to that, Sephora holds free makeup demonstrations to demonstrate to its customers the different blends and which beauty products look great when used together. It also gives out free samples to its customers to enable them to experience their products as they advertise them.
- Products, attributes, competitors
Sephora offers a wide variety of beauty and personal care products. They deal with nail color, body fragrance, haircare, skincare, and beauty tools. It features more than 200 brands, including Makeup For Ever, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Too Faced Cosmetics, Benefit Cosmetics, Philosophy, Urban Decay, and Atelier Cologne, among others. Under makeup, for instance, it offers facial, lip, eye, and cheek makeup. For facial makeup, it offers foundation, setting powder and spray, highlighter, contour, concealer, face primer, color correct, tinted moisturizer, and face sets. It sells cheek highlighter, blusher, bronzer, palettes, and contour. It also sells lip treatment, sets, liner, plumper, stain, gloss, and liquid lipstick. For eye makeup, it avails false eyelashes, eye primer, eye sets, mascara, eye palettes, eye shadow, and concealer. For accessories, it sells eyelash curlers, makeup bags, makeup removers, blotting papers, brushes, and applicators. Under skincare, it offers lip treatment and lip balms, body and facial self-tanners, eye care masks and creams, face and sheet masks, acne and blemishes treatments, cleansers, and sun care. Under bath and body, it sells, body moisturizers, exfoliators, shower gel, body wash, anti-aging tools, hair removal, and cleansing tools. Under hair, it sells shampoos and conditioners, hair straighteners, hair styling, and hair treatment products. Under fragrances, it offers both male and female lotions, oils, mists, sprays, perfumes, rollerballs, and colognes.
Philosophy purity made is a natural facial cleanser that can be used daily in cleansing both the face and eyes. Briogeo is a deep conditioning mask that repairs the skin and is popular because it contains no sulfates, silicones, or parabens. Fenty beauty bomb is a lip luminizer that can be used universally on different types of lips for a pure natural outlook. FAB (First Aid Beauty) is a repair cream that hydrates dry and patched skin relieves minor irritation and itching, and protects the skin through its richness in antioxidants. Modern Renaissance is an eye shadow palette that contains eye shadows of different colors provided in mixes that can enhance the outlook of any of its users. Bare minerals powder is Sephora’s most famous foundation that is made originally from skin-friendly minerals. These products are few among the many products that have had perfect customer reviews.
The main competitors of Sephora are Lush, Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom, and Macy’s. Each of its competitors has its strengths and weaknesses. Ulta Beauty, for instance, is famous for its lower prices and discounts. It is known to embrace both the affordable and high-end brands, unlike Sephora, which only deals with the high –end products. Sephora has an advantage over Ulta because it offers price matching, which Ulta does not. Sephora and Macy’s, despite, their competition have a vast difference. Macy’s deals in a range of fashion items that includes a section for cosmetics while Sephora exclusively deals in cosmetics. More so, Sephora is high end while Macy’s is not thus enabling consumers with a low disposable income to shop more in Macy’s than Sephora. However, Nordstrom is more expensive than Macy’s and almost relative to Sephora. Nordstrom, however, offers more compensation and benefits than Sephora. Sephora, however, has an advantage over Nordstrom due to its beauty insider loyalty program, gifts, value sets. Nordstrom, on the other hand, also does the price –matching like Sephora but offers free shipping unlike Sephora, and it also has lines of MAC and La Mer, which Sephora doesn’t.
- Price
Sephora being a high-end cosmetic shop, has relatively higher prices compared to other shops such as Macy’s and Lush. However, their high-quality products, free makeovers, virtual artist, free samples, makeup demonstrations, and price matching have made it more popular. For those with a medium to higher disposable income, Sephora becomes an excellent choice in their search for quality.
- Place
Sephora has its headquarters situated in Paris in France with its corporate offices in Montreal and San Francisco. Moreover, it currently operates more than 2000 stores across America in countries such as Germany, Canada, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Australia, China, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Besides, it has opened an online platform where people from across the globe can purchase products that are shipped to their respective destinations.
- Promotion
The Sephora website offers several coupons and promotions. For instance, it offers promotion codes and other special offers for free trial-size products to enable customers to save up on their beauty essentials. Furthermore, it provides birthday freebies to its customers who shop two weeks before or after their birthday on the website. Such birthday perks include Brazilian Bum Bum cream, Milk Makeup, and Jo Malone London. The cosmetic company also allows customers to stack up to their Sephora promotion codes and coupons at checkout, thus enabling customers to get gifts after purchases while getting their beauty insider freebies. Additionally, it allows beauty insider members occupying the Rogue level to apply their $100 reward code in addition to their sample code bonuses. Also, when two friends shop at the same time in a Sephora store, they are given a 20% discount, which can be used online or in the store.
- Push vs. Pull
Push and pull strategies are used by most retailers in promoting and selling their products. Push strategies aim at selling products to consumers through giveaways, showroom sales, and other displays (Ryan & Jones, 2012). Pull strategy, on the other hand, involve manufacturers selling to retailers (Ryan & Jones, 2012). In some situations, both approaches are cooperated. Sephora, for instance, uses the pull strategy to sell its products through promotional activities. It has devised methods of creating brand awareness in the consumer market to attract more customers. It offers the best of cosmetic and skincare services and products and relies on the loyalty of their customers to help in advertising. More so, it provides makeup tutorials for visitors. Sephora also participates in events and contests that offer beauty tips and talks to target consumers. In a few circumstances, Sephora uses the push strategy to sell their products (Sephora Collection) to other retail stores such as JC Penny.
- Online marketing strategy
Sephora’s popularity among consumers across America are due to its outstanding online marketing strategy. It has created a Pinterest account where customers can pin their preferred colors and share with other people. More so, it has a Facebook and twitter page where it has more than 17 million and more than 2 million followers, respectively. Sephora has dominated the online makeup market through three main ways. Firstly, they have optimized their product page by ensuring their product pages are easy to navigate and that their products are displayed with the product’s reviews and ingredients. More so, the pages also have a section where Sephora answers their questions about the products and a section where users can post the look of the product in action. Secondly, Sephora has enhanced the user experience on their website by ensuring that the purchase process is simplified for their customers. Lastly, Sephora has combined its online and offline teams, thus enabling shoppers to access their loyalty rewards and freebie either way. It has therefore used the Omnichannel to retain its customers and gain new ones. More so, Sephora has connected the store experience to the internet and thus enabling the store associates to send videos and before and after photos of captured products. It has also innovated a Google voice-powered tool that offers advice to its clients from their mobile phones. Additionally, the Sephora mobile application enables a user to view information on products and personalized recommendations whenever they approach any of the Sephora stores. The cosmetic company has also created an online platform called the Beauty Insider Community, where its customers can engage in talks about their products, get recommendations, and gain inspiration.
- B2B, B2CM C2C
Sephora ecommerce enables B2B and B2C sales and purchases. There has not been approved for a customer to customer sales yet. Under B2B, Sephora sells some of its products from the Sephora collection to other businesses. In such situations, Sephora becomes the manufacturer, and the companies become its retailers. Under B2C, Sephora also has its stores where they sell the products directly to the consumers. In such situations, it becomes both the manufacturer and the retailer. However, Sephora focuses more on selling directly to consumers than selling to retailers.
- Provide a marketing mix for a new product and the marketing campaign offline and online.
The new Sephora product is called Herbivore Prism. It will be available online for the public and in all the Sephora stores. It has 20% Alpha Hydroxy Acid (AHA) and 5% Beta Hydroxy Acid (BHA). The two hydroxyl acids work together to give a younger, glowy, and exfoliate facial skin. The product will be packaged in high-density polyethylene, which is chemical resistant and is made of durable material that cannot collapse. The product will be priced at $58 and can be purchased with $35 for those with active coupons and those at the Rogue level. It will also be available in a testing size that will cost $20.The offline marketing strategy will include magazines, audio-visual adverts, and customer publicity. Online, the product will be marketed through customer reviews, Pinterest, and Beauty insider community platform.
References
Ryan, D., & Jones, C. (2012). Understanding digital marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation (1st ed.). Kogan Page Publishers.