How to Apply a Make-up Artist’s Wisdom To Increase Your Revenue

I have always admired the simplicity and truth in Charles Revson’s (Revlon) famous fifty-year old quote “in the factory we make cosmetics, and in the drug store we sell hope.”

After all, what women really want is not a one-ounce glass container of Cyclohexasiloxane and Dimethicone, among other ingredients, and not even the specific results of what happens when that make-up is applied to their face.  What they truly want is the result of how that product makes them feel about themselves as well as the projected results of how the product will make others feel about them.

However, in the highly competitive, information mined and messaged, consumer products world of 2013, hope is no longer enough.  Consumers are saturated with too much personalized, targeted information to buy the simple promise of a singular benefit, no matter how accurate.

They need to understand the benefit in context.  In their personal world.  With personal relevance to them.

My client in the beauty products industry understands this concept.  And effectively communicates both benefit and context as the central tenet of her company’s core message.  As a result, the company has experienced massive revenue growth this year.

Her company manufactures a product that solves a real problem for women in the application of make-up.  It is a tool that allows women to seamlessly apply make-up in a way that quickly creates a look that appears like a professional applied the make-up.

And it should.  Because my client is a professional make-up artist who developed the product to solve real problems she faced in creating the perfect look for her famous music, film and television stars while she was either backstage or on the set.

So how does she position her core benefit in context?

“Life is fun…feeling beautiful with confidence”

The context:  Everything she does is fun – the packaging, the colors, the messaging, the company culture, the employees, and of course the actual product itself. The entire context of the company’s existence is fun.  And that translates to every touch point a consumer or retailer or online store has with the company.  After all, fun is the aspirational context that her consumers want in their life and she delivers fun in everything she is and everything she does.

The benefit:  Having the product developed and actively used by a professional make-up artist to the stars, instills the confidence consumers need to truly feel beautiful, and reap the internal and external rewards of that confidence in their beauty.

The result:  The effective combination of context and benefit has lit up her product’s social network and her product’s sales – multi-triple digit percentage revenue growth so far this year!

What is your company’s core benefit?  And, as importantly, in what context can your company’s core benefit truly shine?