<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/69089aa967d2815b92421b0a_65fd94453d90c43c3f1f707d_6ea7303a63bc-Foundation_PPC_Webinar_Eventbrite_Banner.png" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Event · Expression</span> <h1 class="gn-title">Driving business growth for your beauty brand through paid media - Free Webinar</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>23 April 2024</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>1 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-event-meta gn-reveal"><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">When</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value gn-date">Tue, 23 Apr 2024 · 11:00</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Where</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value">Online</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Status</span> <span class="gn-event-status gn-event-status--recording">Past · Recording</span> </div></div> <div class="gn-body"> <p>Paid media in the beauty sector is not straightforward. Beauty brands face a unique set of pressures: aggressive competition from legacy players and major stockists, tightening privacy regulations that are reshaping targeting, and AI tools that promise efficiency but require careful implementation. Foundation's paid media webinar, led by Paid Media Manager <strong>Alex Cox</strong> and Performance Lead <strong>Olivia Ford</strong>, tackled these pressures head-on, giving agencies and brand-side marketing teams a practical framework for making paid media work harder in health, beauty and wellness.</p> <p>If you work in an agency servicing beauty, wellness or personal care clients, the core questions the session addressed are ones your clients are almost certainly asking right now: how do we compete with brands that outspend us, how do we future-proof our targeting, and when is paid media actually the wrong answer?</p> <h2>Making a paid media budget stretch further in a competitive beauty market</h2> <p>One of the central themes of the session was budget efficiency. Beauty is a sector where smaller and mid-sized brands routinely find themselves bidding against much larger competitors and national stockists for the same keywords and placements. The instinct is often to increase spend, but that is rarely the most effective lever to pull.</p> <p>The Foundation team focused on how brands can sharpen their targeting and creative strategy to extract more value from existing budgets. Key considerations included:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Audience segmentation:</strong> Distinguishing between customers who are brand-aware and those in active discovery mode, then building separate campaign structures for each.</li> <li><strong>Campaign prioritisation:</strong> Concentrating spend on the highest-converting product lines or hero SKUs rather than spreading budget thinly across a full catalogue.</li> <li><strong>Bid strategy discipline:</strong> Resisting the pressure to chase volume at the expense of margin, particularly on branded terms where competitors are increasingly bidding.</li> </ul> <p>For agency teams running paid media for beauty clients, the practical takeaway is to conduct a granular review of where budget is actually converting before recommending any increase in total spend. Efficiency gains at the campaign architecture level often outperform raw budget increases.</p> <h2>Competing with big brands and major stockists</h2> <p>The stockist problem is a recurring headache for beauty brands running paid media. When a brand's products are also sold through major retailers, those retailers often appear in the same search results, sometimes bidding on the brand's own name. This creates a situation where the brand's paid spend is effectively driving revenue to a third party.</p> <p>Alex Cox and Olivia Ford addressed strategies for navigating this, including how new and established beauty brands can carve out distinct positioning in paid search and social environments. Rather than attempting to outbid stockists on every term, the approach involves identifying the search queries and audience segments where the brand has a genuine advantage, typically around direct purchase incentives, exclusive product variants, or brand story and provenance.</p> <p>For agencies, this means having an honest conversation with clients about where paid media can realistically win and where it cannot. A brand with a thin margin on standard retail products may be better served by directing paid spend toward direct-to-consumer bundles, subscriptions, or limited-edition lines that stockists do not carry.</p> <h2>Using AI to optimise campaigns without losing control</h2> <p>AI-driven campaign tools have become standard across major paid media platforms, but the Foundation session was clear that automation requires active management, not passive acceptance. Performance Max, Smart Bidding, and dynamic creative optimisation all offer genuine efficiency gains, but they can also pull spend in directions that do not align with a client's actual business objectives.</p> <p>The practical guidance from the session centred on maintaining meaningful controls alongside automated features:</p> <ul> <li>Using audience signals to steer AI tools toward relevant customer profiles rather than allowing them to optimise purely for conversion volume.</li> <li>Setting clear asset group structures in Performance Max campaigns to retain some visibility over where ads appear and what creative is being served.</li> <li>Reviewing AI-generated insights critically rather than treating platform recommendations as inherently correct for a specific client's goals.</li> </ul> <p>For agency teams, the message is that AI is a force multiplier on a strong strategy and a risk amplifier on a weak one. Getting the foundational campaign structure right before switching on automation is essential, particularly in beauty where brand safety and creative quality carry significant weight with target audiences.</p> <h2>Navigating a cookieless environment and knowing when paid media is not the answer</h2> <p>The session also covered the ongoing shift toward cookieless measurement. While Google's timeline has shifted repeatedly, the direction of travel is clear: third-party cookie reliance is a structural risk for any agency's paid media offering. Foundation's guidance pointed toward first-party data strategies, including customer list uploads, enhanced conversions, and server-side tagging, as the practical steps agencies should be implementing now rather than waiting for a hard deadline.</p> <p>Perhaps the most distinctive part of the session was the discussion of when not to use paid media. This is a question agencies rarely raise with clients, but it is one that builds long-term trust. Paid media delivers poor returns when a brand's landing experience is weak, when the offer is not differentiated, or when the target audience has low purchase intent for the category at a given moment. In these situations, redirecting budget toward conversion rate optimisation or organic brand-building may produce better business outcomes than increasing paid spend.</p> <p>For agencies servicing health, beauty and wellness clients, the clearest next step is a structured audit of current paid media activity: where budget is concentrated, how AI tools are being governed, and whether first-party data infrastructure is in place to maintain targeting precision as third-party signals diminish. Foundation offered attendees a complimentary top-line PPC audit following the session, which is a useful starting point for any agency looking to benchmark a client's current paid media maturity against these principles.</p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/driving-business-growth-in-finance-services-through-ppc-in-2024" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Driving Business Growth in Finance Services through PPC in 2024</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Balance shares paid media strategies to stretch your FS budget, outpace big-brand rivals, and use AI optimisation in a cookie-less landscape</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/podcasting-for-brands-hype-or-growth-machine" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Podcasting for Brands: Hype or Growth Machine?</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Experts break down the real KPIs beyond downloads, distribution tactics, and case studies of brand podcasts that delivered measurable busine</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/first-time-tv-advertising-success-stories-and-proven-strategies-for-brands" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">First-Time TV Advertising: Success Stories and Proven Strategies for Brands</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts unpack ROI potential, common pitfalls, and budget tips for launching a brand&#39;s first TV campaign with measurable results.</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/ppc-success-blueprint-strategies-for-maximum-roi" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">PPC Success Blueprint: Strategies for Maximum ROI</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Access this on-demand session covering data-driven bidding, AI targeting, ad copy best practices, and real brand case studies to lift paid s</span> </a> </li> </ul> </aside>