SMC X Lashes by Design

Overview

Lashes by Design is both a beauty cosmetics services boutique and training academy in Whitby, ON. They provide beauty services such as lash extensions, brow microblading, lip tattoos and more. The Lashes by Design Academy, led by our clients Kim and Blanca, is the training branch of the company and provides courses for those who wish to pursue a career in the beauty cosmetics industry. The boutique and academy work closely together and have become very popular, with separate websites and social media channels for each. This client was acquired in June of 2021. Celena Lin, and the team of 4 consultants, Rishi Goel, Jess McDougall, Megan Fowler, and Eesha Kohli supported Kim and Blanca through the summer of 2021.

The Problem

The ASK that our team was prompted with was two-fold: to improve their Website SEO and create a social media strategy that would increase traffic to the website. Our project objectives were to increase training course sign ups, increase website traffic, enhance social media presence and followers, and improve conversion rates. When looking at the Lashes by Design Academy’s website prior to working with SMC, we noticed minimal backlinking, which greatly contributes to poor organic search rankings, making the website less visible to potential clients. The social media, on the other hand, had great regular postings and branding, but lacked focus towards directing traffic towards the website linked on their home page. It needed more engaging and relevant content with specific “call to actions” that would encourage users to interact with the website. When looking at Lashes by Design’s competitors, the few direct ones included Lash Forever Canada, Lash Box, and Canadian Beauty Institute. However, we also referenced some brands with successful social media strategies such as Glossier. Though they didn’t provide the exact same products or services, it served as inspiration for how our client could move forward and achieve her objectives.

The Solution

After meeting to discuss the client’s main business pain points, the team decided there were two major branches of their marketing strategy that, when optimized, would lead to the greatest increase in traffic and thereby conversions to their site: website SEO and social media strategy. 

The website SEO backlinks portion was taken care of by Jessica and Rishi while keyword research was delegated to Eesha and Megan. Jessica and Rishi created a simple but effective backlinking strategy for the client by analyzing their current efforts in comparison to their greatest local competitors. They used this analysis to recommend which directories and bloggers would be high potential for backlinking collaboration. They also recommended how to find relevant and high authority backlinks with the best outreach approach.

Eesha and Megan created a comprehensive list of keywords that could be applied Lashes by Design’s website and social media channels. They measured each suggestion against keyword metrics, including volume and difficulty, allowing them to narrow down the list and identify “low-hanging fruit” ─ high volume, low difficulty keywords. Next, they cross referenced the suggested keywords against the company’s top three competitors and analyzed the shared keywords and differences in the ranking keywords, page authority, domain authority, and respective monthly volumes. This allowed them to strategically position Lashes by Design for success when executing their SEO strategy. Lastly, Eesha and Megan looked at not only what keywords should be used, but where they should be included. They used search engine optimization software to highlight the ideal placements for keywords, giving the client an analysis that was actionable and specific. 

After the client was presented with the team’s SEO strategy, the focus of the project was shifted to social media. Rishi and Eesha worked on Lashes by Design Academy’s current internal social media strategy while Jessica and Megan worked to analyze competitor strategies. Upon completing extensive and in-depth research on both fronts, the whole team came together to work on recommendations for Lashes by Design Academy. This involved picking the ideal content formats for their business across various platforms, deciding what metrics were more important in measuring the growth of their social media, and providing general best practices for each of their chosen platforms. The team also created tools for the client to make content planning and analytics more efficient.

Highlights

The team is very thankful for the opportunity to have worked with such amazing clients in an ever-evolving industry. One of our highlights included getting to chat so closely with Kim and Blanca to learn more about their business and their different target markets. We learned a lot about the various backgrounds and motivations behind those who are undergoing their academy services, which helped us better understand how we can make recommendations that would speak to these individuals, both on the website and on social media. We also learned about the increase in popularity of video content, which usually hold greater potential for virality. Considering the new platforms such as TikTok and Instagram reels, we saw the importance of having content in this form, which could lead to greater awareness and user conversion. Another highlight was being able to work so closely as a team and have all members gain exposure into every phase of the project. Everyone brought forward their own unique contributions and that’s what made our recommendations and strategies possible. Without the team working cohesively, we would not have been able to experience the growth and learning that we did throughout this project.

Key Takeaways

Having a clear project outline as well as deliverable templates was crucial to our success. These tools kept the team on track with a clear understanding of each individual’s assigned tasks at any given moment in time. The deliverable templates were also beneficial because it allowed us to condense our research into a logical flow that our clients would be able to digest and understand. Lastly, having weekly check-ins with our clients helped the team tackle any concerns or questions immediately, which helped us navigate through our project timeline smoothly.