Inspired by the culture, nature, and beauty of Japan, TAKAMI is a beauty brand, specializing in skincare products for household medical beauty. Their products give immediate results in boosting skin metabolism, removing impurities, nourishing, moisturizing, hydrating, and brightening skin, and leaving an even skin tone.  Compared to other skincare brands, TAKAMI keep a low profile. In recent years, consumers have often preferred smaller brands, offering a personalized and convenient online shopping experience. The changes in these consumer preferences indicate that they are no longer interested in mass-market selling tactics. Since TAKAMI is a Japanese brand with a conservative mindset, when it comes to brand promotion and communication, they encountered difficulties in increasing brand awareness when targeting the Hong Kong market. Many customers in Hong Kong perceive the brand image of TAKAMI as indistinct and undefined. So, how would one build up content strategies to increase their customer base? How should brand communication be conveyed via messages? These are some of the challenges that TAKAMI experienced and we, at DSIGN, tried to tackle them.

1. Set Up a Content Center

The skincare industry has constantly evolved. People tend to pay more attention to individual needs and self-satisfaction, in which their interests are driven by the latest and hottest trends. Therefore, to increase brand awareness, it is vital to keep pace with the trends and make noise. In response to that, DSIGN and TAKAMI established a Content Center. Our content calendar, which dictates our content release cycle is usually brainstormed on a monthly basis. DSIGN is responsible for producing design materials and executing them on time. At the end of the month, we conduct a performance review and report. The entire process enables us to understand clients’ needs easily and revise the content quickly based on their feedback. However, getting customers to “like” your page can be difficult, especially when the product is new to the market. Starting from scratch, we first analyzed TAKAMI’s background and products. The study helped us generate a Content Plan specifically for the Hong Kong market. We picked the “little blue bottle” as our core product and designed a specific style for TAKAMI’s promotional materials, which encapsulated the ideas of light, tender and comfort.

2. Provide Online Value And Service

Whether it’s online and offline, excellent customer service is the key to success. According to a study from Accent Marketing, more than 82% of consumers expect excellent customer service on Facebook, more than any other social media platform.  Therefore, we insisted on the “twelve-hour response principle”. This included providing services with added value to our online customers via informative dialogue, responsive customer services, and feedback in a timely manner. Building up a good relationship with our customers would also help to raise word-of-mouth. 

3. Increase Engagement

You might wonder: How do you make the most out of content and let more people engage with it?  In 2018, Facebook announced that “meaningful engagement” is used as an important metric to prioritize posts. In other words, posts with active and thoughtful interactions will get greater influence and exposure. We are aware of this, but how do we increase engagement? Giveaways can sometimes be a good idea. A product would be selected as a giveaway every month. We see this as an opportunity to engage with our customers. On top of that, we asked them questions, started a discussion, and conducted simple polls via our posts. From there, their responses inform us of TAKAMI’s pain points.  What’s more? Direct messages, replies, and story interactions all count towards engagement numbers. Seeing that as important factors, we began to implement exciting content into instant stories in a timely manner.

4. Design a Landing Page

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has caused an increasing number of brick-and-mortar stores to close down, making digital transformation inevitable. Retailers are now dealing with well-educated customers, making it easier for brands to go digital.  In response to the market change, DSIGN team designed a landing page, a one-page website that brings visitors towards a single action. It aims to connect both social media campaigns and online stores as well as drive sales. From there, we generated a database, enabling us to keep track of visitors’ activities and collect valuable data. Moreover, by linking social media campaigns to the page, it generated organic leads and converted leads into sales and subscribers.

Conclusion

With those actions taken, we have successfully quadrupled the number of Instagram followers and improved Facebook engagement by 50%. At last, let us at DSIGN share 3 takeaways inspired by TAKAMI:
  • TA- Target Audience: We are targeting every individual who might be interested in our products. Therefore, making tailored content for specific target groups may allow us to find out who our target audience is.
  • KA- Keep Acute: Digital marketers need to keep up with trends and stay up to date. This can be achieved by setting up Google alerts to get regular updates or exploring hashtags to see what people are interested in sharing on various social media platforms.
  • MI- Maintain Impressions: After deciding a specific persona for the brand image, it is crucial to maintain the same image across all media channels for consistency and exposure. You may also want to include unique visual elements to differentiate your brand from others.