Sarah Skinner
“From a marketing standpoint, stop looking at shiny objects. Build the brand.”
Sarah is a Performance Marketing Executive with 20 years experience building brands digitally and growing Direct to Consumer businesses. As an experienced, data-driven marketer she delivers proven growth strategies for clients across media, acquisition, website optimization, and retention lifecycle marketing.
As CEO and Founder of Sunflower Digital, former VP of Channel Marketing for Violet Grey, and former VP of Ecommerce at Milani Cosmetics, Sarah’s data-driven approach to marketing and brand-building has set the standard for connecting with audiences and scaling businesses.
You've worked with many brands on their marketing strategy. How is their playbook different now than it was, say, 4-5 years ago?
Brands were once heavily reliant on Meta for growth. It was a lot simpler and easier to build a digital ad strategy, launch some ads on Meta, and, with the right creative messaging and positioning, start to drive growth for your e-commerce business.
It's a lot more complicated now. There's a whole new world of creator affiliate programs and methods of incentivizing the creator network on their social channels. You need to build an infrastructure that allows your partners and community to participate in the business's growth.
Take a platform like ShopMy, which is just 5 years old and has become an essential part of the ad stack for beauty brands. It cuts right to the need, incentivizing creator partners through affiliates and commissions to drive sales to your business. TikTok has its own affiliate network now, too, and many startup brands are working in the TikTok space, trying to crack it and leverage it differently.
Additionally, you may have affiliate partners, advertising, your own content and community, as well as a reevaluation of traditional follower metrics and their significance. The ecosystem has just completely changed.
What's an industry buzzword you can't stand?
The one that gets under my skin, specifically in beauty, is this idea of carbon neutral or any greenwashing buzzwords in practice are not true, you know? They're oftentimes more marketing spin.
I had initial conversations with a very early-stage brand, and their entire positioning centered on saving the oceans. A lot of sustainability language. Then they sent me one of their PR boxes, and it was this massive, huge box with so much waste. There's such an inconsistency there, and it comes across as very ineffective and inauthentic.
That whole side of the industry gets under my skin because it feels like they're just leveraging some positioning. It feels like a game. It's not real, actual change that will affect the environment.
Beauty consumers genuinely want to care about sustainability, but it hasn't yet significantly changed their purchasing behavior. It still has to be about the efficacy. Does the solution meet the problem? Does the product work, and is it for me?
Have you noticed a positive trend in beauty marketing language?
There's a welcome emphasis on inclusivity and diversity, for sure. Shade expansion in color cosmetics is becoming more commonplace and evolving rapidly. It's a foundational shift that's been a long time coming.
I'd say now, too, the talk is more sensorial. Everything is driven by a product not doing just one thing, it has to be experiential in some way. It's got to have core efficacy, but then it also has to make you feel a certain way, have a particular fragrance, and transport you to this other world.
“Brands find themselves in a loop of relentless innovation, so they start quickly crossing into other categories and lose their center.”
You've also worked with young brands and startups. Do you ever see them heading towards a common messaging or marketing iceberg you try to steer them away from?
A common pitfall is trying to be everything for everyone, often precipitated by observing other brands doing this or that in the marketplace. They lose track of who they are.
It comes back around to something pervasive in the industry, which is this need for constant innovation. It's often fueled by retailers who want new, new, new, and they want it now. Brands find themselves in a loop of relentless innovation, so they start quickly crossing into other categories and lose their center.
As brands mature and enter retail, those partnerships drive a significant revenue boost, and then you have to maintain consistency. It's how you're incentivized monetarily, so it's tough to break that loop.
So, I'm always trying to bring brands back to focus on their core. Focus on the SKU that drives 80% of your business, on the products getting the most effective return. Yes, of course, you want to innovate. Of course, you're going to be adding SKUs, But from a marketing standpoint, stop looking at shiny objects. Build the brand.
Is there an under-the-radar trend you think brands should be thinking more about?
The blockchain side of loyalty programs and community building is something to watch. There's an app called TYB, which a lot of beauty brands have joined to start building communities.
The entire system is built on the blockchain, which introduces a layer of security. Brands can leverage this to offer rewards, product review incentives, discounts, challenges, event invitations, gifting, and a range of other benefits.
It's also a check against AI, as a certain level of validity or truth is stamped through the blockchain. When content becomes so littered with AI and falsehoods and fake reviews, how will customers get to the truth? Blockchain will enhance the concept of information originating from a credible source versus a bot.
Give us a favorite book, magazine, or author recommendation.
One of the most consequential books I read in the last maybe 15 or 20 years was Life of Pi. It's this amazing story about survival, religion, God, nature, wilderness, animal versus human.
I mean, it's biblical, it has all the pieces, and it's astonishing. Once my kids get old enough, I will definitely want to read it with them and to them because it's an incredible book.
A significant portion of our professional lives is now spent on Zoom, particularly in creative fields. What do you think of the way we communicate now for work?
I have enjoyed the work-from-home flexibility that emerged from the pandemic, which allowed me to leave L.A. and move back home to raise my family here. I still stay connected to the community and the colleagues and the work I built when I lived in L.A., and I'll be forever grateful for that.
But there is something I miss about in-office fun, where you're bopping from desk to desk, doing happy hour, and, you know, laughing and building culture. I recreate it through visits and being more involved in networks like THE BOARD, but it's different for sure.
I was talking to this girl who's spent her whole career remote working. Like she's never actually had to go into an office. It blew my mind. I never thought about a new crop of people whose entire career is spent remote, in isolation, without the community of an office.
I think when you are in an environment with like-minded people working together, you evolve and grow faster, especially in those early days, where somebody can show you something they're working on. You don't have to wait for a meeting. It will be interesting to see how this new generation of professionals adapts and how business grows.