Driving Relevance in the Shopping Experience with Mercado Libre and BrandLab

This past year, brands have wrestled with an urgent need to reach consumers online through ecommerce. But one of the key challenges for brands on any marketplace platform is standing out among competition within a rigid grid of product listings. What’s more, shopping behavior is typically defined by search, in which customer decisions ultimately come down to price and product ratings–not brand building.

But Mercado Libre, the dominant ecommerce platform throughout Latin America, has mitigated these concerns by offering distinct, branded landing pages aimed at delivering a greater consumer experience. As part of the BrandLab partnership between Media.Monks and Mercado Libre, which highlights advertising opportunities within the platform, the L’Oréal Paris “Beauty Click” site was designed and developed as an ideal “digital destination” for brand and beauty product enthusiasts. The secret behind the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub is a balance of content and commerce that differentiates the brand and its products while providing an improved user experience for shoppers–putting information they need to make a purchase decision just a click away from the products they’re looking at.

Supporting an Evolved User Journey

The landing page isn’t just a product showcase; it’s primary focus is on providing tips and tutorials that inspire consumers and help them learn about the products used within each–which are just a click away to purchase. “The main focus was to provide the best user experience in the beauty category to shoppers on the platform, so we wanted to ensure users can easily find and purchase the featured products,” says Matias Herrera, Digital Producer and Media.Monks.

Pablo Tajer, the Creative Director at Media.Monks who leads our BrandLab partnership, notes how the approach is ideally suited to serving customers who have come to the platform ready to shop. “Mercado Libre is the perfect place to build the brand and bring in people who are lower in the funnel,” he says. “We’re building this hub inside Mercado Libre with beauty tips, content and different ways to relate with the brand, so it’s a different way to approach and have a relationship within the marketplace.”

“We at Mercado Ads have a full understanding of every step in the consumer journey, from search to purchase,” says Juan Lavista, Director of Marketing, Insights & BI at Mercado Ads for Latin America. “Knowing the audience in a category such as beauty is what gives an added value: L’Oréal Paris reaches the consumer, who is willing to listen and buy its products in a highly relevant context.”

A Fresh Design That’s Always On-Trend

The L’Oréal Paris brand page isn’t the first to go live on Mercado Libre, but the team did take special care to push both the platform and the brand forward, providing an experience that feels fresh and resonates with the way beauty consumers shop today. “The first point in the design was to connect with the audience that we want to reach,” says Herrera. “We went with a look that was a little trendier than most beauty brands on the platform.”

About choosing L’Oréal Paris for the partnership with Mercado Libre, Isabelle Dumas, Director E-commerce CPD of L’Oréal Mexico, explains: “As the emblematic brand of the company, we chose L’Oréal Paris to join our commercial partner, Mercado Libre, and offer Mexican consumers the best possible shopping experience, all in collaboration with Media.Monks, who was in charge of executing the project.”

But to speak the language of the consumer, one must read it first. “Together with L’Oréal, we have been working on a long-term partnership where we seek to promote the group’s brands and take them to the next level,” explains José Maceda, Country Head at Mercado Ads in Mexico. “This project is just one example of what we can do when we listen to the needs of our clients, come up with ideas, think with insights and execute creatively, prioritizing the improvement of the consumer experience—all of this in a context in which L’Oréal Paris reaches an audience with a purchasing mindset.”

And as trends change, so do the experiences that consumers seek out. It’s important to note that the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub isn’t a static page–there’s room to grow by supporting new tutorials and entirely new digital experiences within the page, keeping the brand at the forefront of emerging consumer needs. “Content and innovative tools for the brand will help improve its positioning on the platform,” says Tajer, who looks forward to seeing how the hub grows.

Influencers Bring Added Impact and Speed

Influencers played a critical role in bringing the content to life, creating a more realistic, relatable and attainable look for audiences. They also offered local relevance: “We decided to make videos with local influencers in Mexico to make the content more relatable to audiences,” says Herrera. “These are influencers who are very well-known and important for this category.”

Relatability is key: influencers are adept at showcasing product benefits in ways that are meaningful to their audiences. Often, these interactions take place on social, focused on building awareness rather than conversion–but when integrated directly into an ecommerce platform where consumers are ready to shop, such partnerships can help consumers easily identify the right products for their specific needs.

Influencers are also deft content creators. Each of the six tutorials–three for makeup and three for skincare–were made within COVID-safe standards, and at record time: from concept to execution, the entire L’Oréal Paris beauty hub came together in just three weeks.

In this respect, the beauty hub serves as an important example for brands that are focused on beefing up their ecommerce efforts with urgency as the customer decision journey moves increasingly online. As brands race to deliver differentiated ecommerce experiences to consumers–or balance content and commerce to reach audiences with added relevance–the L’Oréal Paris beauty hub showcases how BrandLab can help them achieve their goals at speed.