The world of social media changes in milliseconds; you see a new trend every other day. Many research shows that social media has led to a decrease in peoples’ attention span. The average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.
All this makes planning a product launch on social media a little tricky, especially when you want it to become memorable.
The objective of every product launch is to create excitement among the target audience, most certainly, make them as thrilled as you are.
How can you manage to grab the undivided attention of your audience and ensure they remain intrigued by your product?
We have put together a step-by-step guide for you that will guarantee the success of your product launch on social media, and the results will surely leave you stunned.
Read ahead to grasp it all!
#1 Research & Define Your Goal
Before planning something, you should identify your goal. What outcome do you seek from the efforts?
In your case, you want maximum audience engagement during the product launch that generates leads and increases conversion. Now that we have a definite goal, it is time to look for possibilities that would lead us to success.
The audience is scattered on social media in terms of interests and age groups. For example, Instagram has an average audience of 25-35 years of age group, whereas Twitter has 30-49.
Due to such a difference in demographics, you should choose a social media platform with the maximum number of your target audience. It will ensure good results.
#2 Choose Your Product Launch Date
The right product launch date plays an important role in deciding how successful your product will be.
That’s because social media is used by all types of people coming from various demographic backgrounds, and their online time varies, so you don’t know whether people will be available during your chosen date and time.
To ensure maximum viewers for your social media product launch, use analytics provided by social media. These analytics provide you with numbers and percentage that determines which day in a week you receive maximum engagement on your chosen social media platform.
Not just that, you can also take the help of third-party social media tools like Command, Later, Hootsuite etc., to check the time frame when most of the social media users are online. It will ensure that you present your product when it receives maximum engagement and awareness.
#3 Create Hashtag Campaigns To Increase Social Presence
Research your competitors’ product launches. You’ll find many beneficial strategies that you can sum up your list with. For example, you may have seen many brands introduce hashtag campaigns before or after launching a product to create brand awareness, generate UGC, and attract the target audience.
Hashtags can be the most reliable tool in your social media toolbox if you know how to use them effectively. For instance, start by choosing a unique and memorable hashtag for your product launch, something that resembles your product and that is simple for users to easily catch.
Organize a hashtag contest around your branded hashtag with attractive prizes encouraging users to participate. Every time a user posts something on social media using your Hashtag, it will reach the user’s audience, motivating them to participate.
Hence, it will create ground-level advertising opportunities for your product launch.
You can utilize this User-Generated Content to display on your website and other marketing touchpoints that can generate peoples’ interest, build trust around your product launch.
For example:
Use Case: Audi #WantAnR8 Campaign
Audi started this hashtag campaign in 2011, and it is still running, making it the longest-running hashtag campaign. Although, a commoner on Twitter, Joanne McCoy, started this campaign, who wanted to ride in an Audi R8, a commonly loved car model of this automobile brand.
She used the hashtag #WantAnR8. It went viral when Audi offered her to ride an R8 for a day. Audi recognized this opportunity and used this hashtag as a campaign to promote their new R8 car on its official Twitter business page. Ever since over 75,000 tweets have been made with #WantAnR8, and Audi has invited several users to test drive the car for a day.
#4 Plan Giveaway To Create Online Buzz
Social media users love giveaways, and brands often see large-scale participation every time they organize one. Organize interesting steps to enter the giveaway.
You can also collaborate with an influencer to promote your giveaway, or you can collaborate with a brand that can help you curate the giveaway hamper. Finally, you can set some rules for the participants to help you choose the winners and reach your goals.
You can ask them to repost your product launch brochure, ask them to follow their page, and share it among their followers. You can also run a combination of comment and Tag options, where a user needs to comment on a post and tag their friend they want.
It will ensure that they follow you even after the giveaway is over for future updates. You can set a rule that every person who unfollows will not be considered for future giveaways.
It will create promising advertising opportunities and ensure maximum audience when you launch your product.
#5 Influencer Marketing Is Your Go-to
Since 90% of social media users follow influencers and their lifestyles, many of these users’ purchase decisions are influenced by this content promoted by influencers.
In that case, you should not ignore this strategy for your product launch. Instead, choose an influencer that has an audience similar to your target audience. It is the perfect way to ensure maximum results from your influencer marketing.
Ask influencers to post your product launch brochure or post engaging review videos about the product to create awareness around your launched product. Hence, influence influencers’ audience to use your product.
#6 Use Social Media Tools That Grab Online Attention
There are so many in-built promotional options on social media platforms that can help you curate an interactive feed for promoting. These work without disturbing the users’ social activity and still manage to gain their interest.
Instagram provides options like story countdown so that you can create a countdown timer for your product launch, and your audience can turn on the timer alarm. You can also ask your collaborated influencers, repost this countdown Story in their story to get more audiences waiting for the product launch.
Facebook also allows you to create an entire event page for your upcoming product launch and ask the influencers and networks to share it. The page will show all the necessary information around your product launch, making it informative for the target audience.
It also has the check-in button that your target audience can use to tell you if they are interested or not. Then, whatever they choose, the page gets shared among their friends and followers, creating more advertising opportunities for you.
For example, WWDC is a huge conference held by APPLE where they invite developers, press, and their customers to join the live event to get the snippet of the upcoming innovations and updates with its launch date. It helps them grab so much attention around the world that after most of the product launches, it raises the value of their company in the market.
#7 Give Entertaining Sneak-peaks Of Your Product
Now that you have managed to get the audiences’ attention with the hashtag campaigns, giveaways, influencer marketing, and other social media tools, it’s time to give them a cliffhanger that would keep them hooked until the launch day arrives.
Get inspiration from your favourite movie trailer, how they grab the user’s attention by showcasing a small story that makes sense and develops excitement to watch the full movie to know more.
In the same way, create a story teaser for your product that describes the use case of your product in general lives. That would be the perfect sneak peek for your audience to generate excitement among them.
Famous brands like OnePlus, SAMSUNG, etc., create many sneak-peek videos before every product launch to create excitement among their audience. You can get ideas from them or analyze your competitors’ behaviour and other such brands.
Keep in mind the audiences’ perspective and give out the kind of sneak-peek content that would excite you as well.
#8 Create An Offline Buzz
Just because it is a product launch on social media doesn’t mean you have to keep it strictly online. For example, if you are a business that receives many visitors at your premises, you have good reasons to do offline promotions for your product launch.
Nowadays, it is common for many businesses to have digital signages at their premises. If you are among them, you must utilize these simple screens and display endless information about your product launch.
Display the brochure of your product launch, display the user-generated content you have collected from your hashtag campaign, show off the Influencer content, and most importantly, don’t forget to play your product launch sneak peek video.
It will be a pure blend of the online world with the offline world. When you display all the engaging content on the display screens at your premises, these attention-grabbing screens will generate interest around your product launch among the offline audience.
#9 When The D-Day Arrives!
You have done everything it takes to create the perfect buzz around your product launch. You have gathered around the right audience, and you have left no stone unturned to make sure it remains hooked throughout the product launch.
You have been active while promoting the product launch, and once you have placed your product in front of your audience on social media, it becomes more important to stay active.
You cannot go around searching for what your audience is saying about your product. That’s why you need a social media aggregator. A perfect UGC platform like Taggbox can help you collect all the relevant content created by your audience every time they use your branded hashtag or mention you.
So that you know all the buzz around your product, and you can actively respond to them as the aggregator provides live updates. Not just that, It provides products like Widget that you can use to embed the aggregated content on your website to flaunt the success of your product launch.
Over To You
Product launching on social media can get a little overwhelming as if creating the product wasn’t.
Lifting off this burden from over your head, we finally reach the end of this blog, where you get to know some steps and fresh takes on how you can organize a successful product launch on social media relevant to this day, age, and beyond.
Note them down in your to-do list for your next product launch on social media, and strive for the best!
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