How beauty shoppers decide
- They can’t touch, smell or try it. Close-ups, swatches, how-to video and reviews stand in for the counter.
- Skincare and haircare are routines. The first order is a trial. The profit is in the reorder.
- In makeup, shade is the risk. A wrong shade is a return, or a customer you never see again.
- Fragrance can’t be smelt online. Discovery sets and plain descriptions of the notes stand in for the tester.
What Meta does well for beauty, and what it does badly
Meta is good at showing texture and application in a few seconds, at customer and creator content, at reaching past buyers before they run out, and at gift sets for Christmas and Mother’s Day.
It’s bad at anything that sounds like a treatment, and copy about the viewer’s skin gets rejected. Left alone, it also spends prospecting budget on people who were going to reorder anyway. So your plan judges your ads on MER, your store’s revenue divided by your total ad spend, and uses Meta’s ROAS only to compare one ad with another.
Read more: ROAS vs MER, explained, and what to check when Advantage+ isn’t working.
Offers that work for beauty stores
- A gift with purchase just above your average order. A mini of your best seller lifts the order and puts a second product in their routine.
- A routine or duo price. Cleanser, serum and moisturiser together, or shampoo and conditioner.
- Try it small. A mini or discovery set, ideally credited to a full size. For fragrance, it’s the strongest offer there is.
- Refills or subscribe-and-save, with a clear price, a clear schedule and an online cancel button.
- A shade swap for makeup, if you’ll honour it.
Your plan picks one for your store and uses it in every ad. It skips promised results (“visible in a week”), “clinically proven” without the study in hand, and deep sitewide discounts every month.
Rules your beauty ads must follow
- Treatment words change what you’re selling. Claims to treat, heal or prevent a skin condition, and sun-protection claims, can make a cosmetic a therapeutic good under Australian rules, with its own approval and advertising code.
- Talk about the product, not the viewer. Meta’s personal attributes policy rejects copy that implies the reader has a skin or health condition. “Three steps, every morning” passes. “Struggling with breakouts?” fails.
- Before-and-after images are 18+ only on Meta for general cosmetic products.
- Proof words need proof: “natural”, “clean”, “non-toxic”, “cruelty-free”, “dermatologist tested”, “clinically proven”.
- Was/now prices must be genuine. Opened products can be excluded from change-of-mind returns; faulty ones are always covered.
- Reviews and creator lines become your claims once you run them, and paid or gifted posts must say so.
Your plan covers these rules in full for your sub-type. It’s general information, not legal advice.