A new product launch can be a thing of beauty, bringing in millions of dollars in new sales revenue. They can also be the stuff of nightmares and “lessons learned” post-mortems.
Ensure your product launch is a rousing success by empowering your brand advocates to spread the word about your latest product to their friends and family through an advocacy marketing campaign.
Your team has spent weeks, months, or potentially years working through all the kinks of your newest offering. With all that invested time and energy at stake, it’s critical that your product launch takes the market by storm. The first step is to make sure people know that your new product has hit the market. So pass out those noisemakers and paper hats, your advocates are here to help share your new product with the world.
Why Use Advocates To Build Awareness Of Your Product Launch?
Eighty-nine percent of marketers believe that social media marketing is an effective way to increase the visibility of your brand (we’re not quite sure what that other 11% are thinking). And they are right. The average person spends over two hours a day on social media. Your Superfans are on social media every day posting updates about their life, cat memes, and whatever else strikes their fancy. With an advocacy marketing campaign, you can leverage their timeline audiences to garner that sweet, sweet new product launch exposure.
On top of the extra impressions, posts shared by your advocates receive more engagement than posts shared on your own branded channels. Social media users typically pay over 2x more attention to posts and recommendations from their friends. So, not only are you leaning on your advocates to drive exposure, you’re also using their clout to help build some vetted buzz around your product launch.
Here comes the trifecta – your advocates are key to receive those new product sales! Peer-to-peer (advocate) marketing is the leading driver behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. In fact, 28% of millennials won’t even try a product if their friends didn’t approve of it. When your advocates are sharing your product announcement on their social media feeds, they’re also sharing their endorsement of your product. This little bit of extra trust can go a long way towards a customer reaching for their credit card.
7 Ways Your Advocates Can Support A New Product Launch
Your Advocates + These 7 Tactics = Your Product Launch Being A Raving Success – so, let’s get to it.
1) Create A Product Launch Hashtag
In an advocacy marketing campaign, your advocates are going to be generating a ton of exposure. Think about it: every advocate posting each of your content pieces to their timeline means a lot of branded messages being shared with the world. To help you easily keep tabs on the conversation (and make your product launch more discoverable by interested customers), be sure to include a single, consistent product launch hashtag in your content pieces.
2) Start With The Teasers
If the first time someone hears about your new product is the day your new product goes live, you’re going to have a hard time reaching the true potential of your product’s launch. Let your advocates help build excitement and anticipation for your new product before it even hits shelves by creating and sharing teaser content. Are you closing in on your launch date? Don’t worry! Starting a teaser campaign only a few days before your product goes live can help increase your day-of-launch sales.
Common teaser content pieces include:
- Coming soon messages and imagery
- Countdown posts to help build excitement
- “Behind-the-scenes” or “making-of” content that helps show off product features
3) Launch With A Video Bang
When it’s go time, don’t leave your best content on the bench. Now’s the time to break out the heavy content hitters to get customers excited about your new product. We’re talking video. Create videos that showcase your new product, it’s many features, and the problem it solves. Then use your advocates to share those videos with their friends and family.
4) Use Your Social Advocates To Support In-Person Events
Just because your advocates “live” on Instagram, doesn’t mean they can’t help drive some serious foot traffic to an in-person event. Whether it’s a nationwide campaign or a single store, many brands use in-person events to help build localized awareness of new product launches. Use your advocates to help build awareness of an upcoming event. Then, during and after the event, be sure to send them content to share that includes images, videos, and other content created at the event.
5) Host A Contest
Give your advocates the chance to take something home with them for all their advocacy efforts – specifically your new product! Develop a contest that encourages your advocates to help spread some product love by asking them to tweet, share, pin, and post your content to their social channels. A successful product launch doesn’t happen from a single post or announcement. It requires a multi-touch approach. A contest can help motivate your advocates to share your content across all stages of your product launch.
6) Turn Your Advocates Into UGC Creators
At the end of the day, the best product models you can use are your own brand fans. User-generated content posts have, on average, a 28% higher engagement rate than a standard brand post.
UGC posts are also two times as likely to be shared, meaning that not only are your advocates sharing your content, but their friends are also more likely to share those posts (and their friend’s friends, and so on). All this sharing sets the stage for maximizing the number of eyeballs on your product launch announcements.
7) Use Your Advocates To Help Create Your Next Product
As you can clearly see, there are many elements of an advocacy marketing campaign that can help your brand get the word out about a new product. But news flash – your advocates can also help you generate insights and ideas for your NEXT product!
Think of them as your own mini-content-sharing focus group. As part of your advocacy content mix, send your advocates regular surveys and questionnaires asking them for feedback on what they love about your latest product or other problems your company can help them solve.
Pro Tip: When choosing how you are going to manage your advocates, be sure to opt for an advocacy marketing platform that supports these types of quizzes, surveys, and questionnaires, such as the SocialToaster platform. SocialToaster is a robust, all-in-one advocacy solution that not only makes it easy for you to design and build your own custom surveys but also makes it simple to share those surveys with your advocates. SocialToaster also makes it easy to reward advocates that complete your questionnaires within the SocialToaster platform.
Get SocialToaster Before Your Next Product Launch
Product launches can be “make or break” events. Help ensure your success by using your biggest fans to build buzz, drive engagement, and grab those new product sales through an advocacy marketing campaign.
Got a new product launch coming up and want some help getting the word out? Talk to one of our advocacy marketing specialists today to learn more about starting your own advocacy marketing campaign. Contact us at 855.62.TOAST or send us an email to request a free demo!
