Instagram-Unworthy?: How Beauty Brands Are Approaching IG Amid TikTok’s Ascendance

Many beauty brands have seen their Instagram engagement and return on investment for advertising on it plummet, and some are moderating their activity on the Meta-owned platform as a result.

For example, skincare brand Orgaid recently informed its followers that it’s stepping back from Instagram. Although it didn’t give specific reasons for its move, it wrote in a post that it’s keeping its focus on “delivering high-quality products and maintaining a risk-free community. This decision wasn’t easy and took a long time to make. We’ll continue to show our love and care for you in every way we can!”

To delve more deeply into the evolving relationship between beauty brands and Instagram at a moment of TikTok ascendance, for the latest edition of our ongoing series posing questions relevant to indie beauty, we asked 19 beauty entrepreneurs and executives the following: What’s your approach to Instagram today? How’s your ROI on the platform different from what it was previously? What role will Instagram play for beauty brands going forward?

Ricardo Quintero Co-Founder and President, Digital Brands and Care

Unfortunately, the Instagram beauty DTC model is no longer as effective as it once was. The algorithm now only shares branded content with a tiny fraction of your follower base, resulting in significantly lower engagement levels, and it severely limits reach to potential new followers.

This has led to a notable decrease in ROI, and with the rising costs of content creation, it has become increasingly difficult to justify allocating resources to Instagram, which has essentially become just a lookbook.

For small brands like ours which prioritize profitability, this shift has caused us to significantly reduce our investment in the platform. We would be more than willing to increase our investment, but the algorithm needs to return to the more efficient model it operated on a few years ago, when it was an effective tool for building both brand awareness and expanding your follower/customer base.

Priscilla Jiminian Founder and CEO, Skinergy Beauty

We've recently adjusted our social media strategy for Skinergy Beauty, particularly on Instagram. After analyzing our engagement metrics and the evolving digital landscape, we realized it was time for a change. Our previous strategies weren't delivering the results we needed anymore.

While many brands have shifted towards more trend-driven content, we felt that approach didn't align with Skinergy's authenticity. We noticed a decline in our engagement rates, fewer new followers and reduced interactions. As an indie brand, we found the constant adaptation to algorithm changes was becoming resource intensive.

Interestingly, our once-effective influencer collaborations and giveaways weren't generating the same impact. Even our paid advertising efforts on Meta platforms, while slightly improving reach, didn't significantly boost conversions.

Given these factors, we decided to halt our content output on Instagram. This allows us to allocate our resources more effectively, focusing on channels that provide better returns for our brand. It's worth noting that we're not abandoning the platform entirely. We're continually monitoring the social media landscape and remain open to adapting our strategy as needed.

Carrie Sporer Co-Founder, Swair

When we look at Instagram, we consider paid and organic (non-paid) separately. When it comes to non-paid participation on Instagram, we feel like that channel is still extremely important and relevant. While it has become increasingly difficult to cut through the noise, those who do engage with your brand regularly are continuing to see your content. These people are likely your super users, and you want to continue to keep in touch with them as much as possible.

Customers are also now accustomed to DMing brands with questions/concerns or leaving questions on posts. I think this is a great opportunity to meet the customer where they are, and we've developed some great relationships with customers, influencers and other like-minded brands this way.

Paid ads, however, are a whole other animal. We are seeing CACs that are 2X of what they were this time last year. As a result, we have pulled back our budget significantly and are doing a lot of testing to see if we can find a more successful ads strategy on Meta. We also started running ads with the goal of getting potential customers into our email flows since email marketing is a more effective channel over time.

Dillon Peña Founder, Leland Francis

Our approach to Instagram has evolved significantly in response to changes in user engagement and platform dynamics. Initially, we posted daily on our grid, but we've now scaled back to one to two posts per week.

For Instagram Stories, we aim to share content three times a week, typically with two to three slides per story. Additionally, we've adjusted our Reels strategy, reducing the frequency from four times per month to two.

This shift allows us to focus on quality over quantity, ensuring each post resonates deeply with our audience and aligns with our brand values. We're also in the process of incorporating more user-generated content (UGC) into our Instagram grid as users tend to prefer raw, authentic images and videos.

Our influencer strategy remains consistent. We've never paid influencers or sponsored posts. Our Instagram presence is entirely organic, driven by genuine interactions and content that truly engages our audience. This approach mirrors a broader trend in the beauty and wellness industry, where the focus is on delivering high-quality products and cultivating a trustworthy community.

Regarding ROI, the adjustments to our posting strategy have not significantly impacted our return on investment. By emphasizing organic growth and meaningful engagement, we continue to build a community that values our brand's authenticity and commitment to quality. This strategy ensures that while our engagement may be lower in volume, it is far more impactful and meaningful.

Looking ahead, Instagram will remain a crucial platform in the beauty and wellness industry as they continually adjust their algorithms. It continues to be a powerful tool for reaching a diverse audience, particularly among older demographics who value authenticity and relatable content.

Eric Neher CMO, Canopy

As far as Instagram goes, we are leaning into the content themes and formats that have driven strong engagement in our organic feed such as humor and trends and incorporating the Canopy team and office culture. In terms of key metrics, while we see follower growth as an important health metric for our account, we have become laser-focused on increasing engagement and reach with our current follower base.

When it comes to influencers and paid, we have seen strong engagement working with creators who generate compelling and credible content and entering into whitelisting agreements so that the Canopy message reaches customers via third party creators' accounts.

Given our unique product offering and recent success and seasonal relevance of our Filtered Showerhead line, we have seen engagement increase recently—up almost 100% in recent weeks—and thus our ROI has increased as well. We've implemented tools that help us track engagement across our owned content and tags from other accounts, giving us an easy way to calculate the CPM on our owned social.

Instagram is a platform where millennials and older audiences are engaging with creators who have relatable and/or aspirational lifestyles. It remains an excellent place for growing a community. I think that brands will continue to leverage the platform, especially as more community-building tools are rolled out such as broadcast channels.

Joy Ekhator Founder, Lovinah

We are taking a new approach to Instagram by narrowing down our niche, posting consistently, creating relevant sharable and relatable content that will help add value to our audience rather than random content, collaborating with other brands from complementary industry, creating Reels that tell a story and investing time engaging more with our followers through comments, messages and Stories with interactive features like polls and questions.

Beauty and wellness brands are struggling with engagement on Instagram mostly due to a saturated market. Consumers are tired of seeing so many new brands or new launches every day. The forever Instagram algorithm changes every other day are causing decline in the overall engagement for smaller indie brands. Social media to us these days is about being helpful, friendly and consistent.

Using paid influencers who did not align with our brand values did not work for us in the past. Social media content is so fast paced that by the time an influencer posts your content, they’ve already moved on to the next brand, and you find yourself starting all over again.

Also in the past, our posts were very personal and not focused on relevant topics pertaining to our brand. Now, we are only targeting suitable influencers that aligns with our core values.

We made the switch to start providing more useful tips. People just don’t want to only see your beautiful packaging on social media anymore. They want value and useful tips that can also help them in their everyday lives.

Instagram will continue to play a key role in the beauty and wellness industry as we live in a very visual society, where having a beautiful storefront and high-tech website isn’t enough anymore, but rather having a vibrant social media presence is key in driving brand awareness, flaunting happy customers, acquiring new customers and making sales.

I feel it’s going to be a pay-to-play platform where you must spend money for real engagement as consumers flock to social media to help make decisions. Instagram is already slowly turning into a pay-to-play platform already, with paid advertising and l feel it’s going to continue.

Hannah Dhunda Director of Growth, Cocofloss

Our approach on Instagram has definitely evolved. We’ve noticed that, with our organic approach, people are most interested in stories we have to share as a brand that are unique to us, and we use it as an extension of our newsletter to keep people informed of what’s going on with our brand.

On the paid side, we’re leaning more into influencer content on Instagram and less on media buying. The type of content people resonate with has changed on the paid side, too. They want more authenticity and relate more to a brand or founder story than a product pitch.

Our ROI has declined from where it used to be on Instagram. I think Instagram still has a space for beauty and wellness brand. It’s still a platform people go to learn about things and can almost be treated as a second website for your brand. It does seem that interactions are down with brands right now, but we still plan to play and experiment to see what people relate to.

KeNisha Ruff Founder and Creative Director, Marie Hunter Beauty

Approximately two years ago, we began to notice a significant shift in our engagement on Meta-owned platforms, including Instagram. Despite our consistent efforts, engagement rates started to decline rapidly.

In response, we adjusted our focus and diversified our social media efforts. While Instagram remains part of our strategy, our approach is now more targeted and selective, with a reduced posting frequency.

In the past, we heavily invested in both organic and paid content, including influencer partnerships. However, due to the decline in organic reach, we have scaled back on these collaborations for Instagram and redirected our efforts towards platforms with higher engagement rates such as Pinterest.

Pinterest's visual and search-friendly nature aligns well with our product offerings and has proven more effective in driving traffic and sales, resulting in a better ROI compared to Instagram.

Looking ahead, Instagram will continue to be a part of our social media strategy, but its significance will diminish as we explore more effective platforms.

For beauty and wellness brands, I believe Instagram will likely remain a valuable tool for brand visibility and community building, but brands may need to diversify their efforts and adapt to the changing landscape by leveraging multiple platforms to maximize reach and engagement.

Jessica Morelli Founder, Palermo Body

Our approach to Instagram has evolved significantly over the years. We previously had a dedicated freelancer managing social media for 25 hours a week, posting 5-plus times to feed, minimum two reels, every day to Stories, managing regular giveaways and seeding product to influencers (unpaid).

Toward the end of 2022, after consistently slowed follower growth and engagement, we could no longer justify putting the resources into this channel. We decided to distribute Instagram responsibilities across our team. I handle real-time Stories and community engagement, our COO supports with direct messages, and our head of marketing plans posts according to our broader marketing calendar, but we have no set posting targets. We post when we get around to it.

It may seem unconventional for our leadership team to manage Instagram, but it aligns with our brand’s authenticity. My role as founder and formulator is deeply connected to our brand’s identity and my heritage.

Financially, we can’t afford to outsource this, and even if we could, we've found that having someone else manage it doesn't feel as genuine. By managing it ourselves, it forces us to limit our time on the platform, only sharing what we have time for.

In the past, Instagram guided our marketing strategy, but, today, we rely more on our other marketing channels to drive our larger strategy, posting on Instagram as a small support. We now use Instagram to keep our community updated, creating less content solely for the platform.

While we won’t invest in Instagram as heavily as before, we’ll continue to use it to showcase our brand and connect with our community, at least with those whom the algorithm allows to see our posts.

Sheena Brady Founder and CEO, Tease

We feel we have hit a plateau across the board as far as Instagram goes. We have spent years giving the platform so much love: daily engagement, quality, interesting content, good aesthetic, paid ads. The ROI is abysmal frankly.

While we are an independently owned, bootstrapped business with a small team, we've been showing up consistently on Instagram for nearly 10 years. When our marketing resources spend hours filming that perfect lifestyle recipe Reel and practically no one sees it.

As a business owner, I can't help but think of the hundreds, if not more in dollars that go down the drain. The time our team spent on it, the props, etc., it all carries a very real financial costs beyond ads.

Recently, we've made the decision to reallocate our marketing resources by a minimum of 70%. That allocation will be rediverted to:

• Quality posts, less frequent. Two to three times per week max.
• Repost old quality content (Who will actually care or let alone notice?)
• Invest more time in PR initiatives. Podcast interviews, media opportunities, blog back links, etc. (organic SEO gold)
• IRL community activations to boost brand awareness

It's such a tough catch-22 situation. Retailers and consumers often go to social media first to validate a brands trustworthiness.

As a consumer myself, when considering trusting/purchasing from a new brand, a brand's social media account tells me in just a few minutes how much the brand cares about being where its customers are and if the customers/community care about the brand back. Therefore, some brand consistent investment on Instagram is critical in my view.

Michelle Ballard Founder and CEO, Miche Beauty

Today, the approach to Instagram has changed and evolved from what it was before with more of a focus on authenticity and engagement. The focus has shifted from aesthetic feeds to more relatable and genuine content. Brands like ours now have to prioritize storytelling and community.

Previously, brands often collaborated with macro-influencers for broad reach. Now, there's a growing trend toward partnering with micro- and nano-influencers who have deeper connections with their audiences which may lead to higher engagement.

In regard to paid advertising, brands are using targeted ads to reach specific demographics. Since organic reach is low due to the algorithm, brands are focusing on creating shareable content to enhance organic visibility.

Instagram will likely remain an important platform for beauty and wellness brands. With the increase in online shopping, features like shoppable posts and Shop pay will enhance the shopping experience directly on the app. Brands will have to focus on video content and going live to connect with consumers authentically.

Sheena Lister Founder and CEO, The Barb Shop

When we launched The Barb Shop (formerly Barb) three years ago, we were keen on growing our Instagram following. We did everything possible to boost engagement, amass followers and create and collect content "for the gram.” It was stressful trying to keep up.

Three years later, our approach has changed, and we do our best not to stress about Instagram (key word, best) as we know follower count, for example, in our case, does not correlate to sales or community engagement.

Over the last year we have acquired a new audience, "Timeless Barbs.” These are people over 60 who spend their time on Facebook. Since unlocking this audience, we have shifted our strategy, focusing more on Facebook versus Instagram. Most of our conversions happen through our Facebook ads and messenger so we focus our attention on making sure we are creating engaging and relatable Facebook ads.

Most of our ads are created by customers who love our product (our version of UGC). Because we are creating content for Facebook, we are able to reuse this content for Instagram whenever it makes sense. Some of our ad content works for our organic Instagram page and some doesn’t, so we include other types of content as well (product photography, lifestyle shots and videos, testimonials, etc).

We think about Instagram as our "gallery.” We want it to look and feel as organic as possible and at the same time we want people to know what we are all about. We love highlighting our customers, and our beloved BarbTailers (shops that sell our products) and BarbTailers (people who cut short hair). We want people to be aware we are selling something but at the same time, we want them to feel like they are entering a community that inspires them.

I think, for now, customers are still discovering brands on Instagram (as a millennial, I still visit a brand’s website then head to their insta page), but they may not be interacting with the platform as they once did.

It's hard to say what role Insta will play for brands moving forward, but I think brands should continue to engage with their community on insta while not losing sleep over it. Whether that is possible or not, time will tell.

Tai Adaya Founder and CEO, Habit

I read Jonathan Haidt's "Anxious Generation." Personally, as I think about children and the next generation, I believe digital platforms like Instagram are the cigarettes of our time. We need a change.

I support age-gating digital platforms. I am for government intervention because corporations like Meta shouldn't have free reign to factory farm our eyeballs and attention.

I haven't made a decision as to what to do with Instagram. But I never assume any one channel is permanent. Instagram didn't exist 15 years ago. The internet has been publicly available for just over 30 years. The reality of business and life is that you have to be adaptable.

I still think, right now, Instagram is a useful tool/channel, but it does not occupy a lot of space in my mind. I do more consumer research on TikTok nowadays, but I strongly doubt TikTok will be relevant in 15 years.

Keith Cornelius Jr. President and COO, Maison 276

We can certainly attest to Instagram's declining ROI. Ultimately, the platform has become crowded and commoditized, with the same content often being recirculated by numerous accounts.

A decade ago, there was a unique opportunity for brands to authentically communicate a differentiated story while connecting to their audience. As content in general has become commoditized, it's more difficult for brands to stand out and attract incremental followers.

I believe Instagram will remain vital for brands as it offers digital real estate to tell their story. However, brands will need to find new and differentiated ways to efficiently acquire customers rather than relying on Instagram.

Andrew Glass Founder and Co-Founder, Non Gender Specific and Wakse

Our approach to Instagram is to create a mini NGS "world" or environment that best represents our brand. We focus a lot on the "flow" of our grid, the colors we use and the spacing between products we post about.

When we first started, our approach was more about education and writing longer captions for each photo, but we've learned that today’s Instagram user doesn't take the time to read long captions. Our goal now is to capture the attention of users through eye-catching photography that evokes an emotional response. We try to tell the viewer who we are as a brand and what our products are about with as little text as possible.

This is definitely a biased statement, but I think we have one of the most beautiful and cohesive Instagram grids in the industry. It tells a story as you scroll, and I think that should be the goal for all brands.

We have stopped doing any sort of paid or "boosted" posts because, while it was great for gaining likes and followers, we didn't see a lot of that translate into sales. What has been working for us is creating a curated list of influencers who share the same aesthetic to work with. Mostly products in trade for content, affiliate links and/or giveaways, we've found this to be an effective way to gain additional sales from Instagram.

I think Instagram will continue to play an important role for brands, but from more of a visual perspective versus a sales driver. It's a great way for brands to show their creative side to potential consumers. Websites are hard to update, so we often go to Instagram to show off a fresh marketing campaign or shots from a new photoshoot, and I see that continuing and becoming the main point of the platform.

David Gaylord Co-Founder and CEO, Bushbalm

Instagram is still one of the largest social media platforms in the world [with] over 500 million daily active users. We use our organic social media as a way to continue to educate our audience. As time has gone on, it's become more challenging to gain reach and ultimately connect with your audience.

The truth is that Instagram owns your audience and reach. It's their platform. In 2010, the priorities of social platforms were different. Even look at TikTok today and the reach influencers can get. It's significantly more difficult to go viral versus years ago. This is change, and change happens.

In the future, we will use Instagram as a way to educate our consumers and a place to build brand. It's quite common for consumers to visit your profile on various social media sites to do their own buying research. That's how we see the platform. Build your brand identity and connect with your most loyal customers.

In the past two years, we've built a separate Instagram account for just our professional aestheticians. It's already amassed over 30,000 followers. It's a very focused audience and building the community has been very rewarding. For us, we're thinking differently about Instagram as a whole, and I think that's what we all need to do to succeed.

Nora Schaper President, HiBar

HiBar may be unique in that we are an omnichannel brand with the bulk of our sales and distribution in natural grocery. We do have a presence on both Instagram and Facebook.

For us, we spent years and a lot of money with ads on Meta to build sales and brand awareness aiming to increase online sales. We didn’t see a significant increase in online sales, even when we increased spend. We decided to turn off all ads on the Meta channels last year for a baseline of sales without ads and to see if our ads were working or not.

We realized that the ads were not directly impacting online sales, but we did see a decline in impressions and visits and realized we were not attracting new customers at the same rate we were before.

We have now turned ads back on, but have updated our content and our strategy toward more brand awareness than increasing sales. We believe there is still a place on Instagram and Facebook for educating and building brand awareness, but we think of it as less of a sales channel than it was at one time.

Nicol Varona Cancelmo Co-Founder, Ocoa

At Ocoa, we view social media as a vital tool for fostering deeper connections with our community. It's never about pushing content out for the sake of it. We're very intentional with what we share, treating it as an avenue for meaningful feedback and conversation with our fans, supporters and customers.

Despite the significant decline in organic visibility, followers and conversions we remain committed to creating an open platform for our community. Here, they can share direct feedback, reach out with questions and celebrate our milestones as an indie brand.

We now see ROI as part of a long-term strategy rather than expecting immediate results like in the past. This approach helps us stay connected with the engaged group that consistently interacts with our content.

Looking ahead, I believe Instagram will transform into more of a broadcast channel like a brand's group chat rather than a primary selling platform. It will increasingly serve as a driver of brand awareness rather than direct conversions as it continues to evolve.

Nima Jalali Founder and CEO, Salt & Stone

Our approach to Instagram today is the same as it’s always been, no difference from the past. We use the app as an advertising platform first and as a landing page/business card for the brand second. Our ROI remains the same.

I think organic and paid Instagram will continue to be extremely important for brands. There’s going to be a bit of risk in everything you do as a brand, but nothing great ever came from not taking a bit of a risk.

If you have a question you’d like Beauty Independent to ask entrepreneurs and executives, please send it to editor@beautyindependent.com.