3CE L'Oreal

The objective

Leveraging TikTok to sell products online

Online shopping has taken on a life of its own after the pandemic forced shoppers to turn to digital platforms to get their favorite products, including cosmetics and personal care. In fact, e-commerce platforms are now the fastest-growing channels for beauty products.

TikTok especially has changed the game for the beauty retail world with TikTok Shop, which hosts various beauty brands on its platform. Among these is Korean beauty brand 3CE, popular with Gen Z and millennial makeup enthusiasts worldwide. In Southeast Asia, 3CE relies heavily on online operations to sell their products.

3CE wanted to drive incremental conversions on TikTok Shop and increase engagement with its audience—particularly its Vietnamese consumer base—on the platform.

The solution

Advertising to specific audience segments for strategic conversions

3CE used a full-funnel marketing strategy to increase touch-points and ensure a seamless purchase decision journey for target users.

Full-funnel marketing strategies on TikTok operate on the fact that customers will have varying degrees of engagement and loyalty to a certain brand. This can be segmented into five funnel stages: awareness, consideration, intent, purchase, and loyalty. TikTok recommends how brands can engage with customers at each stage using their platform.

3CE focused on a full-funnel marketing strategy on TikTok, from awareness to purchase on their TikTok Shop, with the goal of simplifying users' purchase journey on the platform. Their target audience for this campaign were female TikTok users aged 18 to 34.

3CE created Custom Audiences to target customers in relevant funnel stages. Creating Custom Audiences is useful for a variety of situations. In 3CE’s case, Custom Audiences was useful for retargeting users who already previously interacted with the brand’s ads.

Next, 3CE partnered with creators to produce a variety of native TikTok content. The content and videos they created were used in multiple solutions, including Video Shopping Ads, TopView, and In-feed campaigns.

Video Shopping Ads make TikTok in-feed video ads shoppable. This means that TikTok users can simply tap the product anchor link on the video to be redirected to your TikTok Shop, allowing for a more seamless watching and shopping experience on the platform.

Meanwhile, Product Shopping Ads advertise products on the Recommendations and Search area of TikTok’s Shopping Center. For this campaign, 3CE leveraged Product Shopping Ads to target high-intent users searching for products related to 3CE’s products.

TopView is a high impact ad placement tool used to increase brand or product awareness. Creator-led videos were used for TopView alongside Shake Surprise Interactive Add-ons to increase brand awareness for 3CE.

Lastly, 3CE conducted a Brand and Conversion Lift Study to measure how effective this campaign was in driving sales on the platform. Brand and Conversion Lift Studies compare conversion behavior between an exposed group and a control group to determine if the advertisement caused a desired outcome. In this case, 3CE wanted to see whether their TikTok campaign led to more purchases of their products.

3CE’s campaign ran on the platform for a month, during Chinese New Year.

The results

Focusing on the customers drives the desired results

The results of the Conversion Lift Study found that 3CE’s targeted campaign was successful in driving conversions on their TikTok Shop—proof that full-funnel campaigns bring in user conversion on TikTok.

There was a 38% incremental lift in add-to-cart engagements, a 25% incremental lift in initiate checkout engagements, and a 28% incremental lift in purchases for the three products on 3CE’s TikTok Shop. The campaign also found a 52% incremental lift in content views for these advertisements.