How to Build a Billion-Dollar Beauty Brand: Lessons to Be Learned From Huda Beauty

If you’re a beauty enthusiast like us, chances are Huda Beauty needs no introduction at all.

This successful brand that Huda Kattan built herself from the ground up is now a force to be reckoned with. Huda Beauty continues to be one of the top blog-to-brand beauty businesses and a premium brand with maximum media impact value. 

How Huda Kattan started Huda Beauty 

Huda is one of the OG YouTube beauty bloggers who rose to fame with her inspiring makeup looks and crazy how-to’s. From shaving her face to making a DIY banana boob lifter, we’ve seen her do it all. But how did it all start? 

Surprisingly, before becoming a blogger and influencer, Huda Kattan attended the University of Michigan, Dearborn where she majored in Finance. She joined a finance company but was miserable there, and was often asked to take off her makeup and dress down to fit in with the job. Her beauty career didn’t take off until she was fired because her boss didn’t think she belonged there. And she didn’t. 

After the layoff, she decided to follow her passion and studied makeup at the Joe Blasco Makeup School. Soon, she was working as a celebrity makeup artist with an impressive clientele list that included Eva Longoria and Nicole Richie. Not wanting to stop there, Huda moved to Dubai and took up a job at Revlon. 

In 2010, she started her YouTube channel and a blog, Huda Beauty, where she would post makeup tips and tutorials. Skip to 2020, and Huda Kattan has turned her passion for beauty into a billion-dollar empire and was named one of Forbes’ ‘Top Influencers’. 

Why can’t we be the next Estee Lauder of our time? Nowadays, you’re only limited by your dreams. We think big and we dream big.

Huda Kattan

So, how do you go from a woman who was fired from a finance company to becoming a business tycoon? What lessons can be learned from Huda Beauty’s marketing strategies? We’re going to dive deep into the beauty marketing secrets of Huda Beauty and list out some tips that actually work. 

1.  Recognize a Market Gap 

Huda started her company with a loan of $6000 from her sister and began manufacturing lashes. During her initial days, none of the Sephora outlets agreed to feature her lashes until she made a presentation at Sephora Dubai. Sephora predicted that the lashes would probably sell out in a year or two, but to their surprise, the lashes sold out in a week.

The lashes were such a huge hit that one of the biggest influencers, Kim K, fell in love with them and sported them on her beautiful, almond eyes. There has been no looking back since then. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Recognize an unmet consumer need and work towards fulfilling that gap. As a beauty influencer, Huda believed that manufacturing lashes had the most potential as she, a makeup artist, often struggled to find high-quality lashes that would enhance her Iraqi features. 

•  Persevere. Huda vowed to her sister that if she didn’t sell her lashes at Sephora, she wouldn’t sell it anywhere. Even after being rejected by many Sephora outlets, she didn’t give up until her lashes were finally accepted. 

2.  Go All-In With Digital Marketing 

Huda Beauty’s primary marketing strategy is social media. Not only does the brand regularly post content on popular social media such as Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, but it also has its own website, which is dedicated to helping women with beauty and fashion tips.

With 45.2 million followers (as of July 2020), Huda Beauty is the top-most followed beauty brand on Instagram. How does a brand get so much engagement? Content! 

Content marketing for beauty brands is not a new concept. But Huda Beauty takes it one step further by religiously and unfailingly posting at least three contents per day on their Insta feed. Video posts gain more engagement than pictures do, which is why the brand focuses on posting makeup tutorials, how-to’s, memes, and funny videos for their ever-growing Insta fam. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Content! Schedule content around the day to engage with your social media family as much as you can. 

•  Video contents have a higher media impact value than photos do. Partner up with content creators who can make high-quality video content for your brand. 

3.  Add a Personal Touch 

What’s so unique about Huda Beauty’s marketing strategy? That the audience can often watch videos of Huda doing her makeup, trying on crazy stuff, and talking about the latest products to hit the market, and her thoughts on them on their Instagram feed.

The fact that Huda takes the time to engage with her customers gives a personal touch to the brand that her fans love. A beauty mogul who runs a successful business and yet creates content herself for her customers sure hits the spot. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Strive to give a personal touch in your service. 

•  Spare time to create engaging content. Huda spends at least 3 hours every morning shooting her videos and catching up with her social media feed to create current content. 

4.  Partner Up With Influencers 

Partnering up with the right influencers can add tremendous value to your brand. Huda Beauty isn’t shy with posting pictures and videos of several makeup influencers on their Insta feed, helping promote them as well as their products at the same time.

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In fact, a lot of content on Huda’s feed is videos of famous and upcoming MUAs using Huda products. By supporting and featuring a wide range of diverse artists, Huda implements multicultural beauty marketing beautifully to garner maximum engagement. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Partner up with other makeup artists to help promote your brand. 

•  To tap into multicultural beauty marketing, support, and promote diverse makeup artists and influencers. 

5.  Focus On Producing High-Quality Products

Huda Beauty has a loyal fan following, and beauty connoisseurs eat up all her products as soon as they’re launched. This is because the brand believes in building and distributing high-quality products that they’re proud of. 

During her Facebook Watch online reality show, Huda Boss, Huda revealed that she had spent $1.5 million on a line of concealers, which she later scrapped because the product was subpar. Instead of risking the reputation of the company, she chose to reformulate the product and only released it after assuring its quality.

This has led her fans to believe that Huda strives for perfection in her brand, and the customers are getting their money’s worth. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Let your product do the talking. 

•  Your customers must know that you have their best interests at heart. 

6.  Create Hype Around Your Products

One of Huda Beauty’s most loved and iconic palettes is the Huda Beauty Rose Gold Edition Eyeshadow Palette. So, imagine the customers’ dismay and surprise when Huda took to Insta to announce that it would be discontinued.

She warned them that this might be the customers’ last chance to get them causing a frenzy among her loyal fan base. Some even stocked up on the palette before it ran out. 

However, after eight months of discontinuation, Huda Beauty announced the launch of Huda Beauty Rose Gold Edition Remastered, the same iconic palette but better. Yes, the move met with some complaints and backlash, but the amount of publicity it received was massive. 

Lessons to be learned: 

•  Create hype around your products. 

•  Even though your product is already a best-seller, chances are you could make it even better. 

And there you have it. The beauty marketing tips of Huda Beauty that has helped turn the influencer-owned makeup brand into a conglomerate. With deep ties to her roots and by staying true to her brand, Huda Kattan’s marketing strategies have helped her business become a well-known brand in the makeup fraternity. 

All in all, Huda Beauty could turn into a multi-billion dollar business overnight through an immense amount of effort put into creating content that keeps the customers on toes and engaged all year round. 

By hitting all the right notes with content marketing, you can also follow Huda’s footsteps and be a well-established beauty brand that is looked up to in the industry.

Header Image Source: Photo by Marcelo Moreira from Pexels