Sephora UK

The objective

Driving incremental performance by capturing high-intent beauty search demand

Sephora UK is a leading global beauty retailer, offering a wide range of prestige beauty brands across skincare, makeup, fragrance, and haircare.

With a strong, always-on social performance presence on TikTok, Sephora sought to complement its existing activity with a comprehensive Search Ads strategy. Strong in-platform search volumes across both generic beauty categories and Sephora-specific queries presented an opportunity to capture high-intent users and identify high-value prospects directly on TikTok more effectively.

The solution

Nurturing audiences down the funnel with a phased TikTok Search Ads approach

Sephora UK adopted a nurture-led approach to TikTok Search Ads, gradually moving users down the funnel by optimising toward different pixel events over time.

The strategy launched with Search Ads optimised to the ViewContent event, allowing Sephora to build learnings around search demand, audience behaviour, and category-level interest on the platform. After establishing strong performance and momentum at this stage, the campaign progressively transitioned to AddToCart, and ultimately Purchase, refining targeting, keywords, and optimisation at each step.

This phased approach enabled Sephora to:

• Build a strong foundation at upper lower-funnel stages

• Adapt strategy based on real-time learnings

• Scale performance while maintaining efficiency

By taking a measured approach to growth, Sephora developed a Search Ads strategy designed for both scale and long-term performance.

The results

Delivering sustained efficiency gains

Sephora UK saw consistent performance improvements at every stage as the campaign progressed from ViewContent to Purchase.

Key results included:

• +39% increase in LPV rate

• +157% increase in ROAS

• -58% decrease in cost per purchase

(Purchase event results vs. ViewContent)

Beyond incremental efficiency gains, the strategy also enabled Sephora to identify top-performing categories and keywords at each stage of the funnel, allowing the team to continuously optimise and double down on high-value revenue opportunities.

By nurturing demand over time, Sephora successfully unlocked stronger performance outcomes and established TikTok Search Ads as a key driver within its wider performance marketing strategy.