Social Media in E-Marketing: Birchbox & New Beauty

Birchbox shipped their first boxes in September of 2010. Since then, the company has expanded to include subscription boxes and products for men and women, as well as an online magazine and a brand new store in Soho, New York. The company has remained noteworthy in the competitive market of beauty products, creating a community of people that help progress the brand. Their target market is women and men ages 18-35 who are tired of expensive beauty products and going through the hassle of stores and the traditional shopping experience.

On the other side of the spectrum is New Beauty, a company centered on a magazine that has been a leader in beauty trends and women’s health since 2005. While New Beauty tends to be one of the most expensive magazines available (it’s almost $10 per copy), the brand has expanded to include an e-magazine for tablets and phones as well as their beauty test tube, a subscription box for fans of the magazine that I will be looking at further in this post. 

Two companies with similar goals competing in the beauty industry, yet one company continuously exhibits great examples of marketing on the internet while the other company has started to decline in its online marketing efforts. Let’s start off by looking at Birchbox.

Until recently, Birchbox remained a strictly online only company. Although their office, and now store, are based in New York, the company generally focuses on the sale of their subscription boxes as well as selling full size versions of those products on their website. Their website (shown above) is not only easy to navigate, but it also focuses on their subscription boxes which is their main point of sales. It is easy to find out more about the company and the bright contrasting colors make the website effective as well as pleasing to the eye.

New Beauty created their own version of the subscription beauty box with their “test tube”. The page for their test tube is not particularly hard to find from the main website, and they tie the product in well with the magazine on the web page. Their pink and white color scheme also offers good continuity throughout the page and gives the whole thing a clean and minimalistic look.

On the surface, these two companies seem to be on the same level marketing wise. However, after further investigation into both companies, I found that Birchbox stands out when it comes to e-marketing, while New Beauty has some work to do if they want to continue to expand their market into the next generation.

Both Birchbox and New Beauty offer several forms of media that one can learn more about their brand. New Beauty has a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram account, each with a different purpose to help them promote their brand. Birchbox however, has each of those accounts, as well as a Tumbler and a Pinterest page, which is accounts for a good majority of its customers.    Even the Facebook pages between both companies start to give you an idea of how well each one does in their online marketing efforts. 

From the moment you open the page, Birchbox invites you to experience their company with bright colors that match the season, as well as helpful articles and videos. The content of their Facebook page acts as an enhancement of their website, offering beauty articles and videos. New Beauty’s page, while clean looking, focuses the top on its magazine while the rest of the articles are focused as extras. It also doesn’t look very inviting as a page. Although the magazine focuses on a slightly different target market, their e-marketing efforts should be aimed at the younger people in their market. The lack of design on the page shows in numbers as Birchbox has 1,537,353 followers and New Beauty has 208,796, which is a difference of 1,328,557.

Both companies have good continuity from their Facebook to their Twitter pages as well, but Birchbox still beats New Beauty in followers by 93,700 followers. Both of their twitter accounts differ in content from their Facebook pages as well. Still there is a noticeable difference when you look at the types of follower that Birchbox has and the type of followers that New Beauty has. New Beauty has a lot more companies and small business who follow them on twitter as opposed to Birchbox which has more personal accounts as followers. This means that more people are interested in following Birchbox and being a part of the online community the company has created. Where New Beauty strives for a very traditional magazine type feel in their online marketing, Birchbox dares to create a community around its company of people who focus on the same goals. This can be seen by the fact that Birchbox has a Pinterest account where their customers can go to see beauty tips as well as look at products from the brands that the company endorses. By having a Pinterest page, they cover a new form of social media which sets them apart from their competitors, something New Beauty could probably benefit from.

It’s about a personal beauty experience at Birchbox and creating a community of people that can come together and share their love for the brand. The company even puts Instagram pictures up on its website from some of its follower’s accounts. Their Instagram also focuses on furthering the brand, as opposed to the Instagram for New Beauty which, at first glance, looks like an art gallery of professional photos that are sometimes unrelated to each other. The idea of a strictly online magazine that is free also boosts Birchbox’s online presence because consumers can go online and read up on the latest beauty tips without breaking the bank. And for a society of people who are continuously on the go, focusing efforts elsewhere as opposed to print magazines which are slowly declining is the obvious way to go when possible.

Both Birchbox and New Beauty compete with each other as well as dozens of other beauty companies to stay on top in a competitive market. But Birchbox continues to promote itself excellently online by creating an online experience for its customers that is both personal and fun. While I don’t think New Beauty is going anywhere any time soon, I do feel that their online presence could be stronger. By using various forms of social media and focusing on a slightly different market, New Beauty could become a force to be reckoned with online. This just goes to show that social media can be one of the most important tools in e-marketing.