Digital marketing and language strategies in the skincare sector: the cases of Estetista Cinica and Drunk Elephant

ABSTRACT The dissertation will focus on the main concepts of digital marketing aiming at analyzing how, through the use of online platforms, such as social media, and also through the use of appropriate language on them, a company can improve its performance. In doing so, the following factors are considered, which lead back to digital marketing: - the language used by the company depending on its communication needs and, in this case, may decide to use different techniques, such as literal and/or figurative, concrete and/or abstract, informative and/or emotional; - the technology that has revolutionized the way they do business, using an online channel in addition to the offline channel to interact directly with customers; - the concept of “web advertising”, which refers to the online communication that companies direct to their target audiences through their sites and other online channels; - the content of communication that is produced within online environment (social media and websites). Content marketing is important because it is changing the way companies communicate with their target audiences; - the concept of creativity, which is fundamental to making the company stand out and be remembered; - the distinction between the concept of personalization as a seller-initiated activity, and customization as a customer-initiated activity; - the concept of experience; the focus of modern marketing is precisely on enhancing the customer experience: the purchase must be pleasurable, and this creates brand loyalty in the customer. To reach the research purposes, a multiple case studies methodology approach and comparative analysis between two cosmetic skincare companies (VeraLab, an Italian company, and Drunk Elephant, a U.S. company) have been used. The analysis focused on company’ social media pages and, therefore, what role these two companies have on social, and on company’s website to better analyze how it is set up, how easy it is for customers to move within the site and, therefore, how user-friendly it is; to finally analyze, the strategies that both companies put in place to communicate with customers and how important the "experience" factor is for them. Finally, after the discussion of results emerged from the analysis, theoretical and marketing contributions are presented.