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Digital Marketing E-Portfolio: Rare Beauty

Student's full name: Khoang Kha
UON STUDENT ID: 25832084


INTRODUCTION

This academic e-portfolio explores key digital marketing theories and frameworks and applies them to Rare Beauty. It examines how the brand builds engagement through campaigns, utilizes TikTok, performs as an ecommerce platform, and responds to new digital trends.



Content included:


The Ladder of Engagement


This section explains the Ladder of Engagement and applies it to Rare Beauty's Your Words Matter campaign to analyse how the brand encourages different levels of customer participation and interaction.

TikTok Evaluation


This section evaluates TikTok as a social media platform using the Four Zones of Social Media framework and considers its relevance for digital marketing practice.

Website Checklist


This section develops a website evaluation checklist based on academic and professional criteria and applies it to Rare Beauty's website to assess its usability, design quality and overall effectiveness.

Trend Analysis


This section explores branded TikTok effects as a digital marketing trend and evaluates their relevance and value for Rare Beauty.

Explore the Analysis

Ladder of Engagement

Applying the Ladder of Engagement to Rare Beauty's 'Your Words Matter' campaign. The analysis demonstrates how the campaign successfully moved audiences from simple reactions to discussion, idea-sharing, and a stronger brand connection based on social values, though full co-creation remained limited.


Strategic Ladder of Engagement diagram
Figure 1. Strategic Ladder of Engagement. Source: module materials.

Stage 01 — rating
The Ladder of Engagement at Rare Beauty

Rare Beauty demonstrates the Ladder of Engagement through its Your Words Matter campaign, launched by Rare Impact by Rare Beauty in partnership with Mental Health First Aid during Mental Health Awareness Month. The campaign focused on how language shapes conversations about mental health and encouraged audiences to use more supportive and thoughtful communication (Shorty Impact Awards, 2022a; Bailey, 2022).

At the lowest level, ratings, engagement is reflected in likes and other simple reaction-based responses to campaign posts. These actions required little effort, but they helped generate awareness and visibility, showing that the campaign succeeded in attracting initial audience attention.

Initial engagement metrics showing high volume of baseline reactions
Figure 2. Launch content for Your Words Matter. Source: Rare Beauty / Instagram.

Stage 02 — Discussion and reviews

At the level of reviews, the campaign was less strongly represented in the traditional sense because this stage is more commonly associated with products or services. However, audiences still expressed evaluative responses through comments and brief public reactions to the campaign’s message, indicating approval, support and perceived social relevance.


At the level of discussions, the campaign showed much stronger evidence of engagement. Because the message focused on the language used around mental health, it encouraged users to reflect, comment and share opinions. This moved participation beyond passive viewing and created visible conversation around the campaign theme.

Audience responses and discussion surrounding the Your Words Matter campaign
Figure 3. Audience responses and discussion surrounding the Your Words Matter campaign. Source: Rare Beauty Instagram.

Stage 03 — Connection

At the level of ideas, engagement developed further as audiences adopted and shared the campaign’s central message in their own communication. Users were not only responding to content but also engaging with the broader idea of more supportive language, which shows a deeper form of participation.


At the level of ads, Rare Beauty used campaign visuals, branded posts and partner amplification to spread the message across digital platforms. In this sense, the campaign functioned not only as social advocacy but also as a branded communication initiative, where audiences interacted with and redistributed campaign content.


At the level of brands, the campaign reinforced Rare Beauty’s wider identity as a socially conscious and community-focused beauty brand. This is significant because Rare Beauty does not position itself only around cosmetics, but also around emotional wellbeing, self-acceptance and positive social impact. As a result, the campaign strengthened the connection between audience participation and brand values, rather than limiting engagement to short-term visibility.


At the highest level, products/processes, engagement was more limited. Audiences did not directly influence Rare Beauty’s products, but the campaign included elements of collaborative participation through influencers, partners and a social media toolkit that helped selected participants amplify the campaign message (Shorty Impact Awards, 2022b).

Collage of user-generated content reflecting the campaign messaging
Figure 4. Campaign amplification and toolkit support. Source: Shorty Impact Awards.

Rare Beauty's campaign therefore demonstrates several levels of the Ladder of Engagement, particularly discussions, ideas and brand connection. The campaign is most effective in turning a social message into meaningful audience interaction, while the highest level of co-creation remains more limited. This suggests that Your Words Matter functioned strongly as a values-driven engagement campaign that strengthened both campaign participation and brand meaning.

TikTok Evaluation: The Four Zones of Social Media

TikTok has been selected for evaluation because it is one of the most influential social media platforms for digital marketing, particularly in beauty and lifestyle categories. Its short-form video format, algorithm-driven discovery and interactive features make it highly effective for content visibility, audience participation and brand communication. For a brand such as Rare Beauty, TikTok is especially suitable because product demonstrations, tutorials, creator content and celebrity-led videos can be communicated more effectively through video than through static formats.


To evaluate TikTok, the Four Zones of Social Media framework developed by Tuten and Solomon (2017) is appropriate. The model divides social media into four zones: social community, social publishing, social entertainment and social commerce.

TikTok content example

Figure 5. Four Zones of Social Media framework. Source: adapted from Tuten and Solomon (2017).

TikTok content example

Figure 6. TikTok platform interface. Source: TikTok.

Figure 7. Rare Beauty's TikTok visibility and hashtag presence. Source: author's compilation based on TikTok.

Social Publishing

In terms of social publishing, TikTok enables Rare Beauty to maintain a highly visible publishing presence through short-form branded videos. The Rare Beauty profile shows approximately 5 million followers and 111 million total likes, while individual videos reach high view counts across product and Selena Gomez-led content. The hashtag #rarebeauty recorded approximately 736,000 posts, indicating that content around Rare Beauty extends beyond official brand publishing into wider creator and user participation. This suggests that TikTok supports the expansion of branded content into broader user-generated visibility.

Figure 10. Social entertainment on TikTok: Rare Beauty's creator-led and entertainment-focused content. Source: TikTok / author's compilation.

Social Entertainment

Finally, in the social entertainment dimension, TikTok functions very strongly because videos featuring Selena Gomez and creator-style beauty content combine product communication with humour, personality and entertainment. This is one of the main reasons why the platform is valuable for Rare Beauty. Entertainment-led content fits the nature of TikTok and increases visibility by making branded content feel more natural and culturally relevant rather than overtly promotional. For a beauty brand, this is especially important because entertainment and product appeal often work together.

Figure 8. Social community on TikTok: audience interaction and brand replies around Rare Beauty content. Source: author's compilation based on TikTok.

Social Community

In the social community dimension, TikTok supports direct audience interaction through comments, shares and post-level discussion. Rare Beauty's videos generate visible audience response, particularly where users react to Selena Gomez, ask questions or comment on products. In one of the screenshots, the post records approximately 642 comments, showing that interaction moves beyond passive viewing into conversation. However, while the level of interaction is strong, community-building remains mainly post-based rather than developing into a deeper ongoing brand community.

Figure 9. Social commerce on TikTok: profile-based purchase pathway linked to Rare Beauty content. Source: author's compilation based on TikTok.

Social Commerce

In the social commerce dimension, TikTok reduces the distance between content discovery and product consideration. Although Rare Beauty does not appear to use TikTok Shop directly, the profile includes a purchase-related link in the bio, which still provides a pathway from content engagement to the brand's commercial site. This suggests that TikTok supports commerce indirectly by helping users move from viewing content to exploring products more quickly. However, commerce remains less developed than publishing and entertainment, because purchase functions are not fully integrated into the platform experience.

Overall Assessment

Overall, TikTok operates effectively as an integrated platform for content publishing, interaction, entertainment and commerce. For Rare Beauty, the platform is strongest in social publishing and social entertainment, while social community and social commerce are also important but slightly less developed. This suggests that TikTok is highly valuable for Rare Beauty’s digital marketing because it supports both brand visibility and audience engagement in one platform.

Website Checklist

This checklist is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Rare Beauty's website as a commerce-focused beauty site. The selected criteria reflect important stages of the online customer journey, including navigation, product information, checkout, trust and support. The rubric is based on recognised ecommerce UX and accessibility principles, particularly product page usability, checkout usability and accessibility standards. Baymard's current research shows that many ecommerce sites still perform only at a mediocre level on product page and checkout UX, which makes structured evaluation particularly useful (Baymard Institute, 2026).

Scoring Scale (1–5)

Website analysed: Rare Beauty official website
Brand: Rare Beauty
Score Meaning
1 Very weak
2 Weak
3 Acceptable
4 Strong
5 Excellent

Rare Beauty Overall Score

Category Score
Site Navigation 4.5/5
Product Information & Decision Support 5.0/5
Checkout & Purchase Pathway 4.0/5
Trust, Policies & Customer Support 5.0/5
Accessibility & Inclusive Design 5.0/5
Overall Score 4.7/5

  • Site Navigation — 4.5/5

    Rare Beauty performs strongly on navigation because the site presents a clear top-level menu structure with categories such as New, Bestsellers, Fragrance, Face, Eye, Lip, Body, Tools and Online Only, alongside links to Shade Finder and Rare Impact. This is especially effective for a beauty website because users can browse both by product category and by branded utilities (Baymard Institute, 2025).

  • Product Information & Decision Support — 5/5

    This is one of the strongest areas of the site. Rare Beauty supports decision-making through multiple tools, including Shade Finder, Foundation Shade Finder, Shade Grid and a live shade match chat. For a beauty website, this is a major strength because users often need help comparing undertones, tones and product fit before purchase. Product-page usability research shows that many ecommerce sites still perform poorly in this area, so Rare Beauty's combination of product content and guided decision support is particularly strong (Baymard Institute, 2026).

  • Checkout & Purchase Pathway — 4/5

    Rare Beauty clearly supports movement from browsing to purchase through its cart and checkout flow. The site shows visible cart, checkout and product suggestion functions, indicating a functioning ecommerce pathway. Checkout research shows that even strong ecommerce sites frequently create friction around account creation, form completion and fulfilment clarity, so it is more credible to score Rare Beauty's checkout as strong rather than perfect unless every stage has been fully tested (Baymard Institute, 2025).

  • Trust, Policies & Customer Support — 5/5

    Rare Beauty performs extremely well in this area. The FAQ page provides visible links to Contact Us, Shipping & Returns, Start a U.S. Return, Gift Card Balance, Shade Match Live Chat, Klarna and Accessibility, while the Contact page gives users multiple support channels, including email, live chat and phone support hours. This justifies a maximum score because support infrastructure is both visible and practical.

  • Accessibility & Inclusive Design — 5/5

    Rare Beauty is unusually strong in accessibility because accessibility is not treated only as a technical compliance issue. The site includes an Accessibility support pathway, but it also presents a Made Accessible Initiative that explains how product design and packaging are being developed with inclusivity in mind. This aligns strongly with inclusive-design logic and supports a maximum score.

Figure 7: Shade-matching support interface demonstrating inclusive beauty tools
Figure 7: Rare Beauty website navigation and category structure. Source: Rare Beauty website.
Figure 13: Rare Beauty product information and shade-selection support
Figure 13: Rare Beauty product information and shade-selection support. Source: Rare Beauty website.
Figure 14: Rare Beauty cart and checkout flow
Figure 14: Rare Beauty cart and checkout flow. Source: Rare Beauty website.
Figure 15: Rare Beauty support, FAQ and policy visibility
Figure 15: Rare Beauty support, FAQ and policy visibility. Source: Rare Beauty website.
Figure 16: Accessibility and inclusive design on the Rare Beauty website
Figure 16: Accessibility and inclusive design on the Rare Beauty website. Source: Rare Beauty website.

Trend Analysis: Branded Interactive Filters

A relevant digital marketing trend is the use of branded TikTok effects and interactive filters. This trend reflects the move from passive viewing towards participatory and co-creative digital experiences. Filters allow users not only to consume branded content but also to interact with it and reproduce it in their own videos. Research suggests that AR filters can increase playfulness, interactivity and engagement, which makes them useful for brand communication on social platforms (Ibáñez-Sánchez et al., 2022; Javornik et al., 2022).


This trend is relevant to Rare Beauty because the brand has already created its own TikTok effects, including Soft Pinch Randomizer and Rank Rare Beauty. Based on the platform screenshots, Soft Pinch Randomizer shows approximately 6,446 posts. These figures indicate that Rare Beauty is extending content beyond official publishing into user participation and user-generated visibility.


The trend fits Rare Beauty particularly well because beauty marketing benefits from visual experimentation, self-expression and product play. Branded effects make product discovery more entertaining and encourage users to engage with the brand in a format that aligns with TikTok culture. However, participation does not always translate into purchase or long-term loyalty, and filter-based trends can be short-lived. Overall, branded TikTok effects are a relevant and valuable trend for Rare Beauty, but they are likely to be most effective when integrated with wider campaign and conversion goals.

Soft Pinch Randomizer TikTok effect interface showing gamified product selection
Figure 17. Rare Beauty’s branded TikTok effects as a form of participatory digital marketing. Source: TikTok / author’s compilation.

Conclusion & References

This e-portfolio evaluated Rare Beauty’s digital marketing through the Ladder of Engagement, TikTok, website analysis and trend analysis. The findings show that Rare Beauty performs strongly in digital visibility, audience engagement and ecommerce support. TikTok is especially effective for publishing and entertainment, while the website performs well in navigation, product support and customer service. Overall, Rare Beauty has a strong digital presence, although deeper community-building and more integrated commerce features could strengthen its strategy further.

References