Four tips to plan a successful product launch!
Planning a product launch on social media platforms is an exciting opportunity and can become a huge milestone for your business. However, it is more than just publishing compelling visuals featuring the product on social media. Product launch initiatives require strategic planning, call-to-actions and, converting your existing audience to paying customers. All in all, it’s crucial to create a campaign that your audience will be excited about. Here are our four top tips to ensure a successful product launch.
ONE - Define your targets, goals, and KPIs.
Let’s start with an easy question, why are you launching a new product or service? When it comes to defining your KPI’s, you must ask yourself various questions:
Am I launching a product or service to increase brand awareness and brand visibility?
Am I aiming for more sales in the upcoming quarter with this new product/service?
Drive signs up and sales?
Or all of the above?
When it comes to any campaign that you’re launching for your brand, it’s important to start with an end in mind, and your focus is to achieve these KPIs post-campaign. These KPIs will help you determine what works for your brand and what doesn’t in the future.
TWO: Timing is everything
Have you heard the saying, time is money? When launching, your product can be a make-or-break moment for your brand. Effective timing is crucial when it comes to capturing your ideal target audience and potential customers. Now, there’s no science behind “The best launch time.” but there are a few factors to keep in mind when announcing the big day.
The readiness of your product or service
Ideally, you launch when your product or service is in its final form; however, if you keep postponing your development because you feel it’s not “perfect,” you’ll never launch. This does not mean you should release something mediocre to your audience. Do your market research, know the insides and outs of the product and, perfect the unique selling feature of the product or service. The development stage is a never-ending cycle in your business plan. While you go through different trial and error stages and hearing feedback from your clients, there is always room to tweak the product. Apple iPhones took years and years of tweaking, but they still launched different generations of iPhones; they just kept getting better through trial and error.
Sales Cycles
Depending on your buyer’s personas, different times of the year, and the product/service you are offering, you can determine the ideal time of when your potential customer would be the most interested in utilizing your product or service. Perhaps it’s the holiday season, and they’d want to gift their family members your product, or maybe it’s the end of a long work week. Whatever the occasion, it’s essential to dictate the right time or platform to launch in your marketing strategy.
Questions to consider
Is there a particular time when your target audience will want to use that product?
When would they enjoy your product most
THREE: Nail the positioning and messaging
The opportunity that you have when it comes to launching a new product or service is nobody knows much about what you have to offer. Now it’s your time to use that factor to your advantage by providing your audience knowledge about your offerings. The awareness stage is a significant step before you launch. Before you craft promotional material to showcase these new products, you’re going to have to research and collect all the information on your new product. Creating that sense of authority by knowing what you have to offer is vital. Nobody wants to hand their hard-earned money to a brand that is unsure of their product. Position your informational content to describe your offerings and how they can provide value to your customers, how it works, and the research that went into its creation.
We’ve created a messaging map for you to utilize to draw essential conclusions to these fundamental questions.
Keep these questions in mind when crafting your product positioning and messaging:
What problem is it meant to solve for your customers?
Why should it be solved?
How can your product or service solve these problems?
How does it compare to similar products in your niche?
As a business owner, you’re the number one advocate of your products and services. It’s important to articulate unique messaging that helps you stand out from similar products or services in your niche. Write down different taglines and messaging that will help your audience uncover more profound value in what you’re selling.
FIVE: Build momentum marketing!
Launch activities are the best way to sustain results post product launch. A common mistake brands make is crafting content only promoting the new product but not creating buzz to support it. Launching a product isn’t just a simple “post it and wait.” You’re marketing should be proactive and focused as much as the actual product development. Involving your existing audience and potential customers in your marketing activities is a great way to push anticipation and momentum to ensure success.
Here are few tactics that you can try that helped us build success:
Awareness Content:
While following the timelines and phases of your product launch, it’s best to craft content that broadens your brand’s visibility and gets your audience anticipating these new releases pre-launch. Ensure that all your content has actionable messaging (Eg. Sign up to this newsletter to receive updates/teasers). Maintain a blog that provides snippets of product information to give your audience some knowledge about the product that will launch soon, or hire a professional photographer to give your audience bits and pieces of the product they’ll be looking to see in its final form. Whatever your content may be, get them something that encourages them to mark their calendars off and get first dibs on your product or service!
Onboard thought starters and opinion leaders
It’s crucial to build your PR list pre-launch. Keeping your potential target audience at hand will help you run your launch smoothly and foster those connections. Your audience is your number one thought starters and can easily do your marketing for you. Nurture relationships with your existing clients by giving them a sense of exclusivity with sneak peeks or user-generated content—partner up with influencers in your niche to enhance your brand’s credibility. If you’re a new business and still don’t have a solid social media presence, influencer marketing is a great way to give your brand that sense of authority and help build your audience’s trust.
Focus on the people, not entirely the product.
Awareness and anticipation are the key themes when launching a product or service. Long gone are the days where catalog content and billboards with pricetags are relevant; now, it’s about how the products will benefit consumers and make their lives a lot easier. Successful product launches go above and beyond to ensure their customers are satisfied, well beyond the technicalities like product features or specs. Consider creating an event where you can humanize your brand beyond the product. Your customers want to see the voice behind the product! Customer experience should be your primary focus.
So what are you waiting for? Give your audience something new and refreshing! Product launches are a great way to give your brand visibility and something for your existing customers to look forward to. There are tons of achievable factors that come into play to ensure the success of your new product or service. You don’t need to blow your entire budget in order to launch if you plan carefully and instill effective launch campaigns. Product launches are all about trial and error, discovering what doesn’t work and what works for your brand moving forward. Do you have a product that you’ve meant to launch for a while but unsure where to start? At RAVEN + CO., we’ll walk you through all phases of your product launch. Through strategic content creation, result-driven campaigns, and post-launch. It’s your time now; get ready to launch! Book a complimentary discovery session now. www.ravenandcompany.com/consultation