Social media marketing is the latest trend in digital marketing. It’s also one of the most difficult ones to get right, especially because it takes a lot more than just having an account and posting every now and then. That’s why Sephora Marketing Director Steve Lesnard shared his insights on how social media can be used for beauty brands at this year’s Social Media Week conference in New York City.
Lesnard, who joined Sephora in 2013, started with a brief overview of the company’s digital strategy. He described how, as a merchant-driven company, their digital investments go directly to supporting their business operations and explained how this focus on building tools for employees has to lead to a number of innovations around mobile checkout and One-Stop Shopping. He also mentioned how they’ve shifted their focus to centralizing social media content into one cohesive voice.
This is where the beauty retailer’s efforts on Pinterest come in. Lesnard credited Pinterest as one of Sephora’s most important traffic sources, noting that it drove more than 5 million visits during Cyber Weekend 2015 (more impressive when you consider that its traffic comprises just 3 percent of their total web traffic.
However, he also pointed out how difficult it was for Sephora to find a way to make Pinterest work for them at scale given the fact that beauty is such a personal product. When asked about what kind of content they share on Pinterest, Lesnard told the audience that it’s mostly how-to guides, like the “French Manicure Step by Step Guide,” that they see the best engagement on.