Who is your digital opinion leader?

Accordingly, beauty, skincare and personal care brands typically use traditional marketing approaches, such as online influencers, social media, other paid media and earned media to drive product demand. Brands that have failed to adapt to new digital trends in beauty and personal care marketing increasingly lose market share to more digitally-savvy brands, fuelling e-commerce growth and digital sophistication in the category.

Despite the increase in digital marketing and consumer engagement capability, credibility and promotion by professionals still play an important role in driving product trial and uptake among clinicians and consumers alike. Brands that fail to engage across channels with professionals like dermatologists are likelier to lose market share, even when they invest in conventional consumer marketing.

Neutrogena is a prime example. Formerly a highly credible, first-line recommendation among skincare professionals, the brand lost nearly 10% of its market share between 2019 and 2023. Competing brands such as CeraVe, which claimed 29% of the US skincare market in 2023, quickly and successfully integrated TikTok and other digital platforms into its marketing strategies to target consumers and skincare professionals alike. While CeraVe made significant investments in online and influencer marketing, Neutrogena did not keep pace. By failing to use innovative channels to target consumers and clinicians, brand awareness among dermatologists faltered, leaving room for other brands to overtake Neutrogena’s leading position.

We have worked with marketing and commercial strategy leaders across healthcare, life sciences and consumer products to develop leading strategies that keep their products and services top-of-mind for their target markets. We encourage legacy brands to heed the cautionary tale of Neutrogena and identify ways to leverage digital capability and professional credibility to drive growth in their portfolios. Based on our experience, we have outlined three key levers to gain credibility with clinicians and consumers beyond traditional influencer and online marketing that primarily targets consumers.

We recommend that brands use digital channels to target both consumers and clinicians. As consumers seek expert input from clinicians in addition to their exposure to digital marketing, the dual targeting approach will yield results at scale.

Leverage credible clinical evidence

According to a recent report from Mintel, when considering a new personal care product, 53% of US consumers research ingredients to understand their effectiveness. A rise in the popularity and influence of dermatologist influencers, also known as Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) among life sciences marketers, echoes consumers’ affinity for products with clinical backing. As consumers increasingly seek to understand the efficacy and safety of their products, brands must integrate credible clinical evidence into their marketing content.

Many brands, particularly in the skincare space, already enhance the clinical credibility of their marketing content. For example, CeraVe leveraged a recent industry event with many dermatologists in attendance as a backdrop for social media marketing content. CeraVe’s website also offers detailed educational content about ceramides, a key ingredient used in all CeraVe products. The brand’s educational page references peer-reviewed journal articles that attest to the importance of ceramides in skin health, using unbranded language to give additional credibility to the formulation of CeraVe products. Similarly, Estée Lauder’s website offers an educational glossary to define the ingredients used in its products. It also includes links to relevant chemical specifications and safety assessments.

While these brands are targeted at consumers and generally sold via retail channels, there is also a clear user journey for clinicians. For example, a consumer sees an advertisement for CeraVe and asks her dermatologist for her opinion on the brand. Perhaps never having heard of CeraVe, the dermatologist researches the brand on its website and sees extensive clinical, unbranded evidence in support of the formulation and ingredients. The dermatologist then feels comfortable making a recommendation to her patient – or, ideally, to many patients – and the brand has an effective influencer who can drive purchasing decisions for thousands of potential new consumers.

Our recent Brand Impact Index report – which surveyed 7,000 US consumers to understand their relationships with hundreds of brands – found that 84% of US consumers only buy from brands they trust, illustrating the importance of brands establishing trust and credibility with their consumer base. Embedding clinical evidence in product marketing can save both consumers and clinicians the legwork of researching product ingredients, helping brands to build trust through clinical evidence and allowing beauty and personal care brands to differentiate themselves through credibility and convenience.

Focus on claims that denote product differentiation

Product claims are critical for influencing consumer decision-making, with 85% of female beauty product consumers evaluating efficacy claims and 86% conducting research on brand claims before purchasing products.

To confer clinical credibility, many skincare and beauty products leverage phrases like “dermatologist-recommended” or “dermatologist-approved” in their product claims. However, these claims do not differentiate the product in any meaningful way, particularly when many brands use the same positioning. This phrasing only indicates that one or more dermatologists have recommended the product with little insight into why or for whom the product is recommended.

Amid a sea of “dermatologist-recommended” products, it is critical for beauty and personal care brands to center their claims on the specific attributes, ingredients, or outcomes that truly differentiate their products in the market. Examples of product differentiators in the beauty and personal care space might include:

• Sustainable, natural, organic, or ethically sourced ingredients;
• Long-term efficacy against skin or cosmetic conditions, backed by clinical testing and real-world data;
• Unique mechanisms of action that could address unmet consumer needs; and
• Integrated customer experience (for example, through digital apps or multiple product lines that offer an end-to-end beauty / skincare regimen).

The challenge of crafting and leveraging a differentiating claim, of course, is that it requires a specific, evidence-based perspective on the target market for the product. Brands that have historically leveraged broad appeal may find changing their claims approach challenging and may even feel like they are abandoning a broad consumer base looking for an effective but generic product.

Kenvue’s Aveeno has taken this approach effectively, focusing product positioning on remedies for sensitive skin, while still providing products that support a variety of skin conditions among consumers. Positioning claims around sensitive skin is particularly savvy since approximately 65% of consumers surveyed believe they have sensitive skin. Hair growth supplement brand Nutrafol offers slightly different formulations based on specific consumer need states, which it calls “root causes,” and has launched a targeted campaign at post-partum mothers who may be experiencing hair loss.

Engage digital opinion leaders (DOLs)

Digital opinion leaders, or DOLs, are experts who use digital channels – often social media – to influence healthcare practitioners, patients / consumers, and scientists to try a new product. As we have discussed in our previous articles about digital opinion leaders, DOLs can be a valuable asset that brands can leverage to raise brand awareness and enhance credibility for consumer and pharmaceutical brands alike.

In the beauty and skincare space, dermatologist DOLs can be particularly helpful to confer scientific credibility to product claims. Many beauty brands are already working with dermatologist DOLs. For example, Estee Lauder’s “Derm Creator Council” is an expert board comprised of 7 dermatologist DOLs who advise and co-create content with consumer engagement teams. Similarly, in 2022, CeraVe hosted a #CleanseLikeaDerm event in partnership with dermatologist DOLs to help educate consumers about proper skin cleansing techniques.

In most cases, DOLs have established social media followings, positioning them to advise brands on social media strategies and campaigns, co-create social media content, or even post sponsored content on their channels to support beauty and skincare marketing efforts, typically for compensation.

In addition to financial compensation, we have seen dermatologists and other clinicians in the personal care category (such as dentists) respond well to the traditional approach of “detailing,” wherein a clinician receives free samples and product information from a brand. Detailing can be achieved in-person or virtually and can support other digital engagement approaches like “unboxing” a set of products on social media for public consumption.

While clinician DOLs may not have the same reach as celebrity influencers, clinical DOL campaigns are usually less expensive and confer greater credibility and authenticity than celebrity influencers, making them a valuable tool for conferring professional credibility to beauty and personal care brands.

In an increasingly competitive landscape, beauty and personal care brands must find ways to differentiate themselves to clinicians and consumers alike. To fully realize the value of professional credentialing in the consumer products space, brands should seek to integrate clinical evidence, highlight product differentiators and leverage digital opinion leaders.

This article was first published on happi.