· 3 min read · Jason Youngjin Koh
Selling a scent people cannot smell
Nobody buys a perfume for its ingredients. They buy who they will be when they wear it. The ad has to show that person.
Perfume sells online when the ad sells a feeling and a moment, then makes the scent concrete with comparisons the customer already knows, and removes the risk with samples or discovery sets. We built TinhHoa, a Vietnamese perfume brand, from zero to $25,000 a month at 6x return on ad spend this way, and grew traffic for Flirti, a women's perfume brand in Vietnam, by 400%.
6x
Return on ad spend for TinhHoa, a perfume brand built from $0 to $25K a month
How do you describe a scent in an ad?
With things people have already smelled. Fresh laundry, rain on hot pavement, a fig tree in summer, a café in the morning. Notes such as bergamot or oud mean something to enthusiasts and very little to everyone else. One concrete image in the first line of the ad does more than a full note pyramid.
What should perfume ads show?
The moment, not the bottle. Getting ready for a date, the first day of a new job, a wedding guest stepping out of a car. The bottle appears, but the subject is the person and the occasion. Customers choose a fragrance for who they want to be in that moment.
Creator content works especially well because a creator can describe what the scent is like to wear and how people react to it, which is the closest thing to smelling it through a phone.
How do you lower the risk of buying unsmelled?
- Sample or discovery sets at a low price, with the cost credited against a full bottle.
- Comparisons to well known scent families, so buyers can place it.
- Clear return or exchange terms for unopened bottles.
- Reviews that describe the scent in plain words, not just stars.
Which channels work for perfume?
In Vietnam, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok carry most discovery, with Zalo for follow up and repeat orders. In Australia, Instagram and Meta's wider network do most of the work, with email bringing customers back. Gifting seasons drive a large share of perfume sales in both markets, so build audiences and content before them, then push hard through them.
How do you build repeat purchases?
A customer who loves one scent is the best prospect for a second. Follow every first order with a message about the scent's sibling, a seasonal version or a gift set. Fragrance customers collect, and a brand that remembers what they bought sells to them again without paying for a new customer.
The creator program behind TinhHoa's growth is written up here. Thirty creators in six months