Perin Gursel, Karolina Starkhammer, and Christoffer Vildershøj are responsible for developing strategic initiatives at L'Oréal Nordics. Including those that build long-lasting and personalised relationships with local Nordic consumers through various digital touchpoints.
At L'Oréal, we are more than just a beauty company. We are a beauty tech company. We recognise that the future of beauty is deeply connected with technology. Which brings both exciting opportunities as well as new challenges.
Consumers are increasingly tech-savvy and expect personalised, seamless experiences at every stage of their journey, from searching for products to shopping for them.
That’s why our digital marketing teams needed to find new ways to amplify our content across brands and drive quality traffic using our beauty tech.
Awareness: Unlocking discoverability with contextual connections
To begin, we looked at the search landscape as a way to increase high-quality website traffic efficiently for our L’Oréal Paris brand. Customer journeys often begin with a search for information or inspiration, and we want to be there at that important moment.
To do this, we started using broad match. It helped us bring potential consumers to our site who we might have missed with more specific exact or phrase match setups.
For example, our broad match keyword for "läppstift" (Swedish for “lipstick”) captured searches for things like "bästa lip stain" (“best lip stain”). This shows how one broad match keyword can cover a wide range of relevant searches.
A key learning for us was how important it was to roll this out step by step, making sure we had a strong negative keyword list for success. These lists helped us exclude certain search terms from our campaigns, so we could focus on only the keywords that matter to our customers.
For instance, we might add a negative keyword like "tattoo", so our foundation ads don't appear for people looking to cover a tattoo, or "billiga" (“cheap”), so we only attract customers looking for quality, not just the lowest price.
As users increasingly make longer and more complex search queries, broad match becomes essential in picking up that nuanced beauty context.
We've seen that broad match consistently performs well in terms of competitive cost-per-click and, crucially, in driving extra conversions. In fact, this shift resulted in a 28% increase in conversions onto our website.
Consideration: Building authenticity through YouTube Partnership Ads and creators
In the very competitive beauty market, standing out needs more than just traditional advertising.
We understand the huge power of influencers and creators, recognising them as authentic voices that resonate with consumers. To truly meet our customers where they are — often scrolling through social feeds for inspiration — we extended our YouTube strategy viaPartnership Ads powered by Demand Gen.
We carefully choose creators who connect with our brands, making sure their genuine passion becomes compelling content. The creator becomes our storyteller, showing the magic of real human connection.
For this specific campaign, we looked for a well-known Swedish YouTube creator, who already recommended our consumer products.
This was a multi-brand campaign across Garnier, L'Oréal Paris, NYX Cosmetics, and Maybelline New York, combining the precision of Google AI tools with the authenticity of creators. The primary objective was increasing traffic to Lyko.se — where consumers can shop for deals. It was important for the creator to naturally include all brands and categories, while also highlighting the affordable aspect.
Our main goals for influencer marketing include engagement and views, but for this case, our primary aim was website traffic and consideration. We drove:
- 3.6X higher click-through-rate compared to Video Action Campaign benchmarks for other CPG advertisers in Sweden
- 7.5X lower cost-per-click compared to Video Action Campaign benchmarks for other CPG advertisers in Sweden
Conversion: Improving engagement with personalised services
Once a customer has reached our website, our goal is not merely a button click, but to drive a specific, meaningful action: engagement with our SkinGenius tool. It uses AI to analyse skin in under five seconds, giving routine recommendations and quickly matching consumers with the right products.
We used Google's Performance Max to efficiently identify and drive qualified traffic to SkinGenius.
This approach led to a significant increase in website traffic and engagement with SkinGenius. The 50% year-on-year increase in tool completion rate in Sweden, became the highest global completion rate for L'Oréal.
Ultimately, these results show that beauty tech can be the bridge to our customer, not the destination. L'Oréal's success in the Nordics wasn't built on algorithms alone, but on a strategy that used AI and data to better understand and serve the human behind the screen. Our customers.
By meeting consumers in their moments of inspiration and tailoring experiences to their unique needs, we can provide authentic connection, and the right products.
