How LGBTQ+ owned skincare company Beekman 1802 is using Google ads to promote products

Beekman 1802 reexamines its annual budget every quarter, said Josh Kilmer-Purcell, the company’s co-founder. “Early in the year, we noticed that we had budgeted a little bit more for the top of the funnel, but by the end of Q1, we realized that was not working as well as we hoped,” Kilmer-Purcell said, adding that those results indicated the company should shift from pre-recorded videos to live educational video streams.

With the goal of increasing performance marketing efforts as well as boosting brand awareness, the brand shifted its focus from TV retail such as QVC and HSN to growing its e-commerce channel. The company has always kept a close on performance: during the pandemic, the company depended on TikTok for a better understanding of how consumers are interacting with self-care content, which informed campaigns.

Kilmer-Purcell continued, “One of our main goals is to connect directly with customers how and where they want, so online video has been a big opportunity that is top of mind.”

Aside from digital video spots on YouTube, the brand also occasionally does live videos, both for shopping and for educational purposes, to reach more people. These segments have featured the founders and their products to showcase the company’s products. According to Kilmer-Purcell, 80% of all the video content they create is done in-house with its own team.

“What I love about Beekman 1802’s video strategy is that the founders themselves play an active role in producing content. Their marketing approach makes the consumer feel like they know the co-foundersJosh and Brent — like they are two best friends who are sharing their personal skincare tips to another friend over happy hour,” said Paige Raiczyk, social media strategist at a full-service, boutique creative agency, Berlin Cameron.

It is unclear how much of its advertising budget is allocated to advertising initiatives as Kilmer-Purcell not share overall budget specifics. According to Kantar, the company spent close to $85,000 so far for 2022 on marketing efforts. Kilmer-Purcell noted that the spend was on influencer marketing and digital ads across social media with most of the spend allocated to TikTok. Since last year, Beekman 1802 saw a growth of 700% in revenue with every campaign since 2021 such as the recent launch of their face scan tool. However, Kilmer-Purcell declined to share specifics on which campaign caused the spike in growth.

As for the company’s influencer marketing work, they feature beauty influencers, most recently Kat Steckler, a macro-influencer, and dermatologists like Dr. Derm to convey the brand’s ethos as a wellness brand.

“We weigh all of our influencers based on their own kindness,” said Kilmer-Purcell on how they select their influencers. Rather than trying to find the top influencers in a particular community, the brand works with the communities that follow them and reads across their comments and those posted by other members of the community, encouraging everyone to be kind to one another. “Influencer marketing is full-funnel rocket fuel for DTC brands, and this is a great example of how a company’s core values can be brought to life through their community to drive growth,” said Anand Kishore, Founder and CEO of Aspire — an influencer marketing platform for 800+ Shopify merchants and e-commerce brands.

This approach isn’t limited to Beekman 1802. A number of brands have also recently leveraged influencer marketing to raise brand awareness while boosting sales for their products, such as Glossier, Morphe, and NYX.

“The influencers of the current generation are some of the most outspoken, progressively minded voices on their platforms,” said Brady Donnelly, global Chief Marketing Officer of the integrated, tech-enabled, omnichannel global distribution platform for beauty and wellness brands PCA Group. “Hyper-focused on inclusion and acceptance, they align with the values of many of the brands they represent so they are able to push their followers and fans to trust those brands on a more emotional, value-based level, which is longer lasting.”