There's a version of launching a skincare brand that exists in the imagination of most founders: the day the website goes live, the product is ready, the announcement goes out, and the orders come in.

That version is a fantasy — not because launches can't be successful, but because the work that makes a launch successful happens in the months before that day, not on it.

A launch is not a beginning. It's a culmination. The brands that generate genuine momentum on launch day have spent months building an audience, creating anticipation, establishing credibility, and removing every possible reason for hesitation from a first-time buyer. The brands that launch to silence spent those same months finishing the product.

Both groups have a finished product on launch day. Only one of them has an audience waiting for it.

This is the phase most skincare brands underinvest in — not because they don't know it matters, but because when you're in the thick of formulation decisions and packaging sourcing and compliance reviews, marketing feels like the thing you'll get to when everything else is done. By then, you've lost the runway.

The single most common mistake in skincare brand launches is starting to build an audience after the product exists.

An email list built before launch is a fundamentally different asset to one built after. Pre-launch subscribers opted in knowing you weren't ready yet — which means they have genuine intent. They're not casual browsers who found you through a paid ad. They raised their hand and said they want to know when this exists. That list, even if it's small, converts at a rate that a post-launch cold audience simply doesn't.

The same logic applies to social. An account that has been building context, trust, and content in the months before launch has a warm audience on the day. An account that posts its first real content on launch day is asking strangers to buy from a brand they've never encountered before. That's a hard sell regardless of how good the product is.

Waitlists work for the same reason — they're a mechanism for converting interest into intent before you have anything to sell, and they create social proof in the process. A product that 800 people are waiting for feels different to one that just appeared.

The practical question is how early. There's no universal answer, but the honest one is: earlier than feels comfortable. Building an audience takes time and consistency and the compounding effect of both. Starting six months before launch is not too early. Starting six weeks before is too late.

PR and influencer marketing are two of the most misunderstood investments for early-stage skincare brands — not because they don't work, but because founders often pursue the wrong version of both for where they actually are.

Traditional PR — pitching to beauty editors, pursuing print coverage, targeting major publications — requires relationships, timing, and a brand story that's genuinely newsworthy. For a new brand with no existing profile, the return on that effort is often low unless you have a compelling hook beyond "new skincare brand." Earned media in major publications is valuable when it happens. It's not a reliable strategy for a first launch.

What works better at early stage is targeted, authentic influencer seeding — identifying people whose audience genuinely matches your target customer, and getting the product in their hands without expectation, with clear communication about what you're asking for. Note the distinction between gifting and paid partnerships. Gifting requires no agreement to post and no disclosure, but also provides no guarantee of coverage. Paid partnerships guarantee content but require ACCC disclosure compliance — which means any paid or incentivised post must be clearly identified as such. This is enforced and the consequences for non-disclosure can fall on both the brand and the creator.

Usage rights, content ownership, and exclusivity are all things that need to be in a written agreement before you send a single brief to a paid partner. What you're allowed to do with content a creator makes for you is not automatically broad — it's whatever the agreement specifies.

Micro-influencers with genuinely engaged niche audiences consistently outperform macro-influencers for new skincare brands. Reach matters less than relevance and trust.

Every skincare brand knows they need good photography. Almost every skincare brand underestimates what good photography actually costs and then makes compromises that affect every downstream asset.

Your photography is not just your website hero images. It's your social content library, your PR assets, your retail imagery, your email headers, your paid ad creative, your influencer briefing pack. A single well-planned shoot with the right photographer and art direction produces an asset library that serves the brand for twelve months. A rushed shoot with a generalist photographer produces images that look fine individually and feel incoherent as a brand.

The brief for a skincare shoot is not "product on marble with flowers." That aesthetic is so saturated in the category it communicates nothing. Your shoot brief should flow directly from your brand strategy — who the product is for, what it feels like to use it, what world it belongs to. That brief requires brand clarity before the photographer is even booked.

Budget accordingly. The number you're thinking is probably too low.

Paid social and search advertising works for skincare brands. It also burns budget fast if you activate it before you have the assets, the audience signal, and the conversion infrastructure to support it.

Running paid media to a brand new website with no reviews, no social proof, and a cold audience is an expensive way to generate low-quality traffic that doesn't convert. The economics only start working once there's evidence for a new visitor to trust — reviews, UGC, a content footprint that makes the brand feel real.

The sequence matters: build organic presence and social proof first, then use paid media to amplify what's already working rather than to compensate for what isn't. Paid media accelerates momentum. It doesn't create it from nothing.

Which channels make sense depends on your target audience, your price point, and your creative assets. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) remains the dominant platform for skincare at launch stage. TikTok has significant organic reach potential but requires a specific content approach and a willingness to show up consistently. Google search makes sense once you have brand search volume and can capture people already looking for you.

What none of these platforms replace is the foundational work — the audience, the content, the social proof — that makes the spend perform.