Competing in a Beauty TikTok World
How small beauty brands can compete in a TikTok world
'...For smaller brands like Cosy Cottage, with tight budgets, trying to copy the big players’ approach and chasing high profile endorsements in an environment as competitive as ours is hopeless. To gain customers’ attention, at Cosy Cottage, we need to work harder and give them something different, offering a more tailored, more personal, more caring and more authentic proposition. Instead of pursuing costly follows and likes, we prioritise growing a loyal, long term followership and a group of supportive micro influencers, delighted to test potential new products and provide exposure.
Trust beats trends
Customers who buy into trends tend to be fickle, making this audience unreliable for sustainable growth. Retaining our existing Cosy Cottage customers is critical, so building trust is at the heart of small and medium beauty brands’ success. To do this, we focus on transparency. We are open about our science led approach, our ingredients and the research behind them at Cosy Cottage. Our
On the phone from our Malton workshops and in our Malton Market Place store, our team can confidently explain to customers what our products can do for their skin and health and, importantly, what they cannot. We do not make unsubstantiated claims. Too many brands make product claims simply to align with trending hashtags, and we never greenwash. This is fundamental to building the long term, trusting relationships smaller brands need. Big brands may have the resilience to put a foot wrong occasionally, but if a smaller company loses customers’ trust, it is hard to recover.
Personality prevails
Smaller brands like Cosy Cottage can shine by showing customers the people behind the brand rather than corporate language. Through newsletters, podcasts, our website and social platforms, customers can get to know our founder’s story and the family, friends and colleagues involved. Virtual interactions are strengthened with in person contact, achieved when customers visit the store or take part in workshops and events. We also travel across the country to visit organisations, media, schools and groups who are interested in hearing about us.
Listen to your customers
Listening to our customer community, rather than just telling them about ourselves, is critical. With fewer layers of management in a smaller organisation, customer voices can be heard, their reviews and comments can be responded to, and their ideas can be considered by the decision makers. As our time to market for new products and fragrances is a fraction of that of larger brands, we can react to feedback quickly, and that is a real benefit we can and do use.
The news is good and the future bright for small and medium sized beauty brands. We do not have the big budgets, but we do not need to try to beat the corporates at their own game. By prioritising authenticity to build customer loyalty and leveraging our creativity and agility, there is plenty of room in this growing industry...'
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About Cosy Cottage Soap
A chemistry and cell biology graduate and Associate of the Royal College of Science from Imperial College, our CEO Clara became a corporate banking and IT consulting professional. After a breast cancer diagnosis in 2015 and becoming aware of the harmful ingredients in everyday bathing and skincare products, Clara sought to develop natural and environmentally friendly alternatives in the kitchen of her 350 year old cottage. She left the corporate world and turned Cosy Cottage into a thriving online business, with a busy store and workshops in North Yorkshire that offer spa treatments, soap making and candle making courses and yoga retreats. Cosy Cottage also develops and makes white label products for several brands, which are sold across the UK and worldwide.
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