Find Out How You Can Take Advantage of It.
Since the pandemic began, our agency has been spending a lot of time researching the shifting consumer trends. Through the use of tools such as “Google Trends” we are able to predict consumer behaviour post pandemic. We can use it to find trends that are hot, have already peaked or beginning to boom.
This is really valuable for businesses because they can leverage the data in their marketing, product positioning and overall business strategies to stay ahead of their competitors.
One topic that has exploded in popularity is Self Care. In this article, we dig deeper into product trends that relate to self-care and how you can take advantage of it as a business or brand.
Before you continue,
Self Care and Isolation
At first glance, you wouldn’t think that people would be interested in beauty topics during this time of self-isolation.
However, beauty is still important in the iso age as people are Zooming each other and so there’s still a need to scrub up (at least above the waist!). Google trends show that consumers want to know “how to look good on Zoom” and this exact phrase has skyrocketed (in Google searches) from 0 to 100 beginning from March 14th.
Although many consumers are in isolation, it’s still important to look good in teleconferences when speaking with their colleagues or clients. That’s why we’re seeing a surge in queries about self-care and certain beauty products. We list some of these products below.
Face Masks
Phrases such as “Peel Masks” have seen a 58% increase over the past few weeks as shown above.
Skincare and Footcare
Searches for skincare and footcare have also surged. Consumers often rely on salons to find the resources that they need. With most of them being stuck at home, they are now turning to the internet for this information.
Hand Moisturiser
Interestingly, queries for hand moisturisers have seen an even larger increase, jumping up 156% since February (April 5-11th vs Feb 16th-22). This is probably because of the skin cracking effects that frequent handwashing has had on people’s hands.
Leisurewear
Right now, everyone is wearing leisurewear throughout their day. And we have seen an abnormal increase in demand for sweatpants and track pants over the last month. With more consumers browsing for clothing on their mobile devices, apparel companies should take advantage of this rise in demand and shift their marketing to reach more customers.
How to Take Advantage of the Self Care Trend
Content Marketing
If you are in any kind of health and wellness business, focus your content marketing around self-care. Give tutorials, tips and educational information on how users can practise self-care at home. By doing so, you will likely get higher engagement on your content and more traffic to your site.
In your product descriptions, add more instructional information than usual. For example, add more instructions about how to self-apply “XYZ product” so consumers can know how to use your product before they buy it. With everyone at home right now, consumers need to do everything themselves and will appreciate the extra advice.
In a time where returning products is not easy, and consumers want to minimise contact with the outside world, any content that guides users to the right product selections is valuable. So publish content like product guides, reviews and self-care tips with recommendations of products that will help your readers.
SEO
If you are quick enough, there is a great opportunity right now to get your website or page to show up in the rankings for new popular keywords. If writing an educational article or page, remember to:
- Use the “Google Search Keyword Tool” and “Google Trends Tool” to find the best keywords to target.
- Include your chosen keywords in your copy, URL and title tags (choose 1-2 keywords to focus on per page/article so you don’t dilute your ranking strategy).
Doing the above gives you a better chance to obtain high SEO search rankings for your chosen keywords. If done well, you can rank on the first page of Google Search results and give your business a boost.
As an example of a business that has done this well, Vaseline wrote an article about how to deal with dry cracked hands and they are now ranking for a total of 1,100 keywords thanks to this article. That’s a lot of organic traffic that they are now driving to the site because they were smart and fast enough to take advantage of this trend.
