Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.
OPINION: Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself in several conversations with women over the age of 40 about how we’re often under-represented in advertising and marketing.
Even if the product is targeted to our age group, the models they use to market to us about it are often far younger.
Perhaps there’s a belief that we’re all aiming to reset our faces or bodies to 23-year-old us, instead of finding a way to celebrate and love the skin we already have.
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Before you start to wonder if you’ve clicked on a lifestyle column instead of a business one, there is a reason I’m talking about this topic.
New Zealand businesswoman Gemma Ede decided she wanted to show her product, aimed to help skin of over 40-year-old (often) women, on faces of people over 40.
Ede launched her skincare brand Conviction after going through a marriage separation, and taking time out to heal her body, mind and spirit.
She explored her beliefs, focused on what she was putting into her body, and what she was using on her skin.
“I had recently separated from my ex-husband and recently had a miscarriage. Everything was just pretty s…, to be honest. I was pretty lonely. And I got fed up with my own attitude to everything, not being grateful and not knowing how to really find that kind of badass side that I’d always relied on to motivate me to the next stage in my life.
“I was already quite devoted to sort of health and good eating, and I’d always been an exerciser. But I levelled up and spent all this extra time I now had to do research in terms of what I was putting on to my body topically,” she said. “I was working with a naturopath, who was also clinical and holistic. I was exploring everything, including getting back into painting, and enjoying red wine.”
Through this, Ede started to explore the healing properties of different oils, and what they could do for her own skin. She also wanted a way to help other people like her connect with the new raw, confident energy she was rediscovering in herself as she explored and healed.
“I wanted it to be a disruptor in a market of beautiful luxury, organic, fresh and cool brands. I know there are some amazing products out there, even in the organic space. But there was nothing that spoke to me from an edgy gritty, ‘yeah, get-the-hell-out-there woman or man. And you take what’s yours, and you go after it, and you do it with conviction’,” she said. “So I knew I had to make that range.”
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Gemme Ede, founder of Conviction.
Ede’s always worked in marketing and comms, and her experience is evident in the way she’s branded and packaged the product. It comes in a beautiful box (the kind it’s tricky to throw away), and around the glass bottle is a little knife.
The packaging was part of Ede’s plan to help bring everyday ritual to busy lives, so that no matter what was happening, there could be a moment in the day where you picked up this beautiful glass bottle, let the oil drip from the dropper and then slowly massage it into your skin.
Ede felt that her own daily practice helped her recentre herself, no matter how she felt when she woke up.
“If I got out of bed and felt a little bit average, it was a reminder that you meet yourself where you are when you put on your Conviction. I find myself staring at that little knife on the bottle, and it says to me, ’I’ve got this. I’m going to be ok’. That’s what I wanted for my customers.”
As a marketer, I was especially interested in how Ede has been marketing her product. I interviewed her as part of the MAP IT Marketing podcast, admittedly after purchasing and trying out the product first.
I was influenced to buy it after Emma Johns, a stylist, shared how the product had helped her skin which was feeling worse for wear after several bouts of chemo. I didn’t purchase it right away, but was then retargetted with ads that shared Ede’s story, and showed her own face, or of fresh faces of her customers with their own stories of how her products had benefited their skin.
What struck me from her posts was her telling a raw, open and honest story, which hit me far more than her unboxing the product and trying it out. In fact, when I bought the product, the packaging was a pleasant surprise.
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Ede plans to continue to use micro-influencers who are happy customers as an ongoing strategy.
When Ede first launched her brand, she engaged with a large agency who helped her run some influencer campaigns with people with a large following.
While Ede had always felt she was producing her product for people like her, “they said the brand was going to resonate with such a young market. And I did agree because it is a cool brand. But to be honest, the meaning and the story and the price point, all of that actually lends itself to maybe a slightly older market. And there are 85-year-olds who are messaging me saying, ‘Oh, I love this conviction stuff. And my skincare and my husband saying I look great, and a little knife makes me feel so cool.’ I know that that’s my ideal market, even if the agency didn’t feel the same way.”
The influencer campaigns looked good online, with beautiful shots, video and captions. Ede did see an increase in traffic to her website, but there was little to no conversion to sell. She also noticed, when she looked more closely at the posts, that much of the engagement was from other influencers, rather than her target market.
Ede made the decision to instead start up using real customers as her influencers.
The results of her product were such that people were sending her photos and comments to show the results of her product, and it felt natural to use them both on her website and in her marketing online. It was a decision that started to pay off.
Women who had felt so underrepresented in advertising were able to see people like them talking about skincare. Ede describes a message she received soon after she made this change.
The woman said, “I’m about to purchase for one reason only, that you’re the only brand I’ve seen in a very long time that’s not afraid to use a grey-haired woman in your ads. And I’m just so, so happy, and it’s such a good day for me that I’m going to buy your product regardless of how amazing it actually could be.”
While Ede was initially advised to seek out a large retailer to stock her product to get growth, she found that retailers weren’t keen to take the product on, as she was too unknown.
Moving to a purely online business has had an unexpected pay-off. Ede now feels more directly connected to her audience, although she is aware that her customers may not realise just how small the Conviction team is.
Ede does it all, from answering chat, sending out orders and doing all the technical parts of an online business.
“Early on, I got some ad training and the trainer said I’d have to accept I’d need to do everything for a bit. I told him I didn’t have time for that. But he said it was important to learn how to do it all yourself, grow the business then start farming it out. And it was good advice.”
Ede plans to continue to use micro influencers who are happy customers and an ongoing strategy. She’s learned that micro influencers with engaged communities around them include small segments of her ideal customers.She’s found that for her brand, it feels best to develop “long-term relationships with people who love your product, love sharing about it, and you know share the same values your brand is all about. “
If you’re thinking about using micro influencers for your brand, here are a few guidelines:
Use people who are already customers
It makes a difference when people love your product. They’ll come across more authentically, and will always appear more trustworthy to the people engaging with their materials
Take a look at their engagement levels
While larger influencers can show you huge audiences, some micro influencers may only have quite a small number of followers. The key is the engagement of the people following them. It should be from people within their area of activity (rather than other influencers)
Take time to communicate around guidelines and rules
There are rules that need to be followed to meet New Zealand’s advertising standards. These apply even if the payment is a free product. You can check these here. It’s important that the influencer complies, or they can be fined.
You should also both be clear on the content creation guidelines for what type of posts or frequency will be used, and who owns the rights to the content. (it normally remains with the creator, but there can be agreements about what can and can’t be shared, saved or repurposed.)
Find ways to track success
This could be in the form of a personalised coupon code, watching spikes of visitors and purchases after a post, or watching the engagement levels in posts. The outcome may be slightly different depending on the product type, and you also need to be aware it’s not a perfect science (for instance, I was influenced by Emma, but didn’t use her code. )
Using micro influencers, who already love your product and have others who trust what they say could be the secret weapon your own business has been looking for.
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