Morning!

I never thought I’d say this… but I just spent the last 5 hours of my life going down the rabbit hole of a beauty brands origin story.

Yep. Definitely not on my 2023 bingo card.

But 5 hours ago I came across a woman who has gone from “Broke artist eating instant ramen every day” (her words) to having a $50M+/year beauty brand.

All through a genius little marketing strategy.

Here’s how Ann Mcferran & Kevin Gould took Glamnetic from a crazy idea in a 1-bed apartment to a dominant player in the beauty space (all in the space of a year) ↓

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Breaking Down The Strategy

In 2018, Ann McFerran was a pre-med major turned artist, but unfortunately, her art career wasn’t working out as well as she’d hoped.

She was living in a 3-bed apartment with 7 people and eating ramen noodles to stay afloat.

Then in 2019, she decided to put her creative flair into something that would actually put food on the table.

She saw a gap in the market for lashes that were easy to apply. She felt like the current magnetic lashes were thin and plasticky. So she set out on a mission to create her own.

1 year later… Glamnetic was born.

And it took off like a rocket ship.

In its first year of business, Glamnetic turned over $50M in revenue.

That’s absolutely unheard of.

But it wasn’t because they raised a bunch of money or got pumped to the top by some big brand.

No, in fact, Glamnetic was completely bootstrapped.

What made the brand grow so fast were two things:

A) Their awesome products
B) Their genius low-cost marketing strategy

And that’s exactly what I’m about to break down.

So here’s how Ann and her co-founder Kevin bootstrapped Glamnetic to $50M in revenue through 4 genius growth levers:

1) Make your account a meme page

When Ann was just getting started her biggest challenge was to get people’s eyes on the Glamnetic brand. She was competing with some HUGE players in the space and if she didn’t get things moving quickly, they’d walk all over her.

She did this by growing the Glamnetic Instagram page to 10,000 followers, in rapid time, by turning it into a meme page.

She did an awesome job of leaning into humour to attract her target audience to the page whilst also integrating her products into the posts too.

You see a lot of brands doing this nowadays - the reason? It clearly works.

You may think it’s “generic” or maybe even “overused”. But it’s what took Glamnetic from a random idea to a real business with real fans.

2) Send every new follower a personalised discount code

The big problem with posting reach-focused content is that it converts really badly.

But Ann had a genius little strategy to fix that.

Up until 10,000 followers Ann would DM every single follower a custom discount code personalised to their name.

I have no idea how she did this, but I love it.

A discount code is one thing, but personalising it with their name takes it to another level.

It’s personal, it’s intimate, and I’m guessing this is how they got their first ‘1000 true fans’.

It might not be scalable once you have hundreds of thousands of followers, but when you’re getting something off the ground, it’s a pretty great idea if you ask me.

3) Founder content

Personal branding is all the rage right now, but no one is really talking about “Founder content”. This is where a founder acts almost like an influencer/UGC creator for their own brand.

Ann does this magically, in fact, it might be the best I’ve seen.

Across all of her socials, she is constantly posting content about the brand, in 3 different ways:

Way 1: Viral story + product

In a classic influencer format, Ann often posts videos on TikTok where she tells a story that she knows will go viral while she’s getting ready and putting her lashes on.

In just the two videos below she pulls in 100k+ views and 5k+ likes:

Way 2: Founder story

She documents the behind-the-scenes of building the brand and makes sure to highlight the key moments along the journey.

The perfect example of this is her video showing her mum her brand in their local Sephora:

Way 3: Product focused

She also posts a bunch of product-focused content where she’ll answer FAQs and talk about product updates.

Like in this video where she explains the perfect way to glue on her push-on nails:

Honestly, I just love the way that she still thinks like a creator even as the CEO of a multi-million-dollar business.

She gets what sells and practises it herself.

Not to mention, she also builds a huge amount of trust around her brand (and product_ by showcasing herself using it.

You don’t see the CEO of Gillette using their razors or the CEO of Adidas decked out in Adidas tracksuits.

Yet, when people do see founders actually using their own products it’s a huge green flag that you should probably trust them.

4) Gift to micro-influencers then repurpose for ads

UGC ads are THE way to go when it comes to ads at the moment and Ann was onto this very early with Glamatic.

But rather than paying UGC creators to create the ads they just gift their products to micro-influencers to create content and then repurpose that content in their ads.

It’s such an easy way to get really high-quality content that’s tried and tested online, for virtually free of charge.

In the early days of the brand, Ann literally used one of her own videos as an ad, which she says was one of the highest-converting ads they’ve ever run.

Another example of the importance of using your founder in your marketing.

Today, Glamnetic is a powerhouse in the beauty space.

They’ve:

- Collaborated with HUGE brands like Hello Kitty
- Done $100M in cumulative revenue
- And have become renowned around the world

But honestly, I’m most impressed with how Ann and Kevin were able to get the brand off the ground so quickly through these genius little growth hacks.

I hope you enjoyed hearing how Glamnetic grew viral, if you did, let me know what you thought about the strategy.

Right, that’s all from me.

I’ll see you next Sunday!

— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of Glamnetic’s marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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