L’Oréal remains a leader when it comes to beauty players leveraging digital, with recent investments in wearable beauty tech, augmented reality, personalised beauty and startup potential all proving the beauty giant is serious about the potential of digital.
Despite all of this, it says it has not yet ‘cracked’ how to effectively measure the ROI, and also says it is now turning its efforts to voice search, according to a recent report from Marketing Week.
Voice search: what can it achieve?
Nick Buckley, group digital director and head of digital operations in the UK, told Marketing Week that the company is ‘excited’ about the potential of voice search, having focused primarily on natural search until now.
“It’s about the implications of Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri and how consumers can learn more about our brands and their stories. We believe there’s an interesting opportunity with Amazon’s Alexa, in terms of how consumers ask questions to it and how it’s different to how they search online. We want to be at the forefront of that,” he says.
The company predicts that a fifth of total search will be done vocally in the next 18 months.
It is also keen to partner with existing digital giants, particularly marketplace players, such as Amazon and eBay.
ROI struggle
The company’s CEO, Jean-Paul Agon, has reportedly branded this the ‘year of ROI’, following several successive years of strong investment into digital.
“Everything we do has to drive back to the business, especially with digital and working with influencers and how we can improve our ROI against that. We call it the ROI obsession,” Buckley says.
The digital head reportedly describes the UK division as not having ‘cracked it yet’, and suggests further work needs to be done to work out what tech is the best to prioritise in the market.