5 Tips for a Successful Shampoo Marketing Strategy

The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Body Care Industry is full of market giants like Procter & Gamble (P&G), producing many of the most popular shampoo brands dominating the retail market. The shampoo marketing strategies introduced by these corporate giants set as an important example for competitors to assess.

Today, we will be reviewing one of P&G’s successful brands – Head and Shoulders. We will also feature 5 tips for a successful shampoo marketing strategy and several areas for improvement in this case study.

FCB x Head & Shoulders Shampoo Marketing Collaboration

Head & Shoulders is a shampoo brand, initially targeted towards middle age men. Therefore, they originally marketed their product and aligned their marketing campaigns with a masculine approach. They definitely organised their marketing messages to appeal to men and is evidently shown in their advertisements, as well as in this campaign.

China has one of the biggest fan bases for the European Soccer Leagues, which made sense for Head & Shoulders to leverage this customer segment in order to appeal to more people. Hence, the brand collaborated with one of the most popular soccer clubs in the league – Football Club Barcelona (FCB).

This marketing campaign was integrated into their on-pack promotion, which offered a free, 100% polyester towel gift-with-purchase. We applaud Head & Shoulders for being able to score a licensing deal with the club and there is definitely more to learn from this campaign, even for brands with a lower marketing budget.

5 Tips for A Successful Shampoo Marketing Strategy

Tip 1: Understand Your Target Market

As mentioned earlier, Head & Shoulders have a distinctive target market to which they direct their campaigns. Before you plan your campaign, we recommend our clients to assess their target market and their tastes and preferences.

After all, the general rule of marketing is to create a more customer-centred approach to campaigns. Understanding what your customers like and their lifestyle choices will allow the brand to leverage these characteristics in order to capture the market’s attention.

Tip 2: Leverage Co-Branding

Branding requires a lot of time and effort to build up a reputation and customer loyalty. However, a quick way brands try to capture a target market they would otherwise struggle to obtain – is to co-brand. In other words, brands often sign licensing deals with other popular franchises to use their content and representatives for endorsement or as a collaborative product.

In this case, we see Head & Shoulders leverage the massive fan base of FCB, which comprises mostly of men. The promotional gift fits their target demographic and gives Head & Shoulders an opportunity to boost their shampoo marketing.

Tip 3: Utilise Gift-With-Purchase Promos

Gift-with-purchase (GWP) is a sales promotion technique that corporate brands use to encourage customers to buy or try their products. It is also a great way to brand a product that is not typically part of your business. Head  & Shoulders made a great choice to use this polyester custom-printed towel for their shampoo marketing.

Ideally, promotional products should be unique items that align with the nature of your business. Towels are complementary to shampoos. They go well hand-in-hand and customers can make a clear association between these 2 products. This is an important aspect of gift-with-purchase so that customers do not get confused by your campaign.

Tip 4: Establish A Consistent Color Scheme

This is probably not as obvious to many, but it definitely serves a purpose visually and in terms of branding. As you can see, FCB and Head and Shoulders share a common corporate colour – blue. Subsequently, we believe that the brand strategically chose to partner with FCB partly because of this, and you can see how strikingly blue the colour scheme is.

Having a corporate colour helps customers identify your brand, as the colour becomes a visual representation of your brand. It helps you stand out from your competitors and have an identity your consumers can perceive.

It also serves as an opportunity for the brand to associate itself with one of the most popular football teams in the league, implying that FCB is their original football counterpart.

Tip 5: Adjust Your Content For Your Target Market

There is sadly no universal language that all of the human race will comprehend the same way. It is important for multinational brands to adjust their marketing messages to align with the market’s cultural values and customs.

In this case study, Head & Shoulders properly assessed the market and understood how to appeal to them. Considering how their products were selling in China, they adjusted the language on their packaging to Mandarin Chinese – China’s national language. They also strategically chose a sport that is popular in the country and leveraged this by associating themselves with FCB.

What Can We Suggest?

We believe that while this shampoo marketing strategy is an overall success, it also holds its fair share of flaws. One of the main rebuttals we have against this promotion is its excessive use of plastic, as well as polyester. These materials are non-biodegradable and harmful to the environment.

Instead of plastic, the brand could have opted for an eco-friendly material, such as cornstarch or bamboo. Nonetheless, we are aware that this would have been  more costly and might not have been able to produce the same colour schemes that were pursued in this campaign.

The towels could also have been made with a mix of eco-friendly textiles, which would be appealing to people who are trying to adopt an environmentally conscious lifestyle. In doing so, the brand could have formed a positive brand impression while widening its market reach even more.