In this step-by-step guide, we’re sharing everything you should know to launch a new product on social media — from setting your objectives and growing a strong creative idea, to constructing a content plan that generates buzz and drives conversions.
Step #1: Define Your Targets
On the subject of planning a social media campaign, it’s vital, to begin with, the end in mind: your objectives and KPIs.
In order for you your new product launch to “be a success” on social media, it’s vital to define what success actually means in your model.
Relying on your situation, it might be to extend model awareness, enhance model perception, drive sign-ups and gross sales, or all the above.
For instance, when Later launched the ability to automatically schedule the primary comment on Instagram, we had two advertising objectives:
- Drive upgrades to paid plans (the one option to access the feature)
- Improve retention with current paid plan customers
After getting clearly defined objectives, you may develop creative methods that may enable you to reach them.
TIP: Keep in mind to set clear efficiency indicators when defining your objectives to assist you to measure your success (more on this later).
Step #2: Nail Down Your Timeline
Timing is everything in terms of launching a new product on social media.
Your product launch date is your deadline — so use it as a place to begin and construct your timeline backward from there.
This offers you a possible scope of the project and the way much lead time you need to work with. In case your deadline looks tight, consider scaling back on some of your more ambitious concepts.
To add some perspective, we deliberate the marketing campaign for Later’s Instagram Stories scheduling tool two months in advance.
In case you’re launching a physical product instead of digital services or products, you could want to provide yourself even more time to account for product photoshoots, influencer gifting, events, and video manufacturing.
You’ll additionally want to consider how long your campaign will run on social media. This might be something alongside the lines of:
- Day 0-7: Pre-launch hype
- On day 8: Launch day
- From day 9-13: Post-launch follow-up
- From day 14-30: Integrating your new product into your common content schedule, or planning extra activations to maintain up the momentum
By breaking it down per day, or pre-and post-launch, you’ll be capable to brainstorm inventive methods to include your new product into the campaign, without having dull, repetitive content.
For instance, at Later we spent a full week instantly selling our Instagram Stories scheduling feature on social media.
We then launched a free Instagram Stories for Business course, which supplied a new option to highlight the product and share precious content.
When you’ve set a timeframe, it’ll be a lot simpler to holistically plan your content technique.
TIP: Take a step back and look at your timeline objectively. Assess the consistency of your communications — are there any durations where viewers’ fatigue may set in?
Step #3: Identify the Greatest Social Media Channels
Now that you have a purpose and a timeline, it’s time to get strategic.
You may wish to run your launch campaign throughout each social platform, however, in reality, this isn’t all the time a viable strategy.
Instead, it’s higher to focus your efforts where you realize you’ll achieve the best return on investment in relation to your product launch objectives.
For instance, when you’re seeking to increase awareness with younger viewers, you may wish to invest closely in your TikTok strategy.
However in case, you’re targeted on sales and already have engaged viewers on Instagram, you may wish to consider capitalizing on Instagram’s fully integrated e-commerce features.
Whether you go for TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, or beyond, each platform would require a barely different content technique.
The basic idea is perhaps identical, however, you must consider each platform’s specs, distinctive options, and viewers’ demographics as you ideate.
Keep in mind, it’s all the time better to have a smaller quantity of content that really converts than an enormous quantity of content that misses the mark.
Step #4: Decide on Your Creative Direction
Now that you’ve all the elemental particulars locked down, it’s time for the fun part: what will your campaign look like?
A recent design can set the tone in your campaign at-a-glance and is also an effective way to visually tie your entire product launch content collectively.
Glowing water model Recess marked the introduction of their Mood varies with an inventive update. The idea aligns with their current identity, however, has a fun new twist:
Unsure where to start out?
Your inventive direction should consider two key parts: visual style and a campaign message.
Firstly, the visual style of your campaign must be defined before you work on anything else.
This could embody a color palette, some inspirational imagery, a design style guide, or templates that may work throughout your social channels.
Mood boards are another nice concept at this stage of planning. You may easily create a mood board by pinning pictures on Pinterest or go old school with a cut and paste scrapbook.
Secondly, your inventive direction should define your overarching campaign message. This may be something from a fully polished mission assertion to some words or phrases that seize the sentiment of your campaign.
This may enable you to fine-tune your content and ensure the way you introduce, explain, or promote your product is constant throughout the campaign.
Step #5: Consider Offline Activations
While you’re planning a new product launch on social media, you’ll probably deal with the digital side of issues: images, videos, graphics, and copy.
However today, offline activations are becoming an integral part of online campaigns.
From influencer events and launch parties to wall murals and coffee cups, more and more manufacturers are integrating Instagrammable moments into their new product launches.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKFAhqQnCQD
For instance, skincare model Summer Fridays put in a rose-covered phone booth in LA to mark the launch of their R+R face masks.
Summer Fridays then inspired their community to share their images within the booth utilizing a dedicated hashtag — making a viral social media moment.
The Instagram-ready floral installation had a transparent connection to their new rose-based product, utilizing identical color tones because of the product’s packaging.
In case you’re considering an offline activation as a part of a product launch, think about how incentivized folks will be to take images and share them with their group — and the way you’ll hold observe this content.
Offline activations could be an effective way to collect on-brand user-generated content to use in your post-launch campaign, however, you’ll want a memorable hashtag and a transparent call-to-action to group it all collectively.