Thinking about launching a new product or service? Don’t forget to build social media into your launch strategy! So, how do you best put social media to use for your launch?
Always align your marketing initiatives with your social media strategy. A strong social media plan will help you hit your sales goals, create buzz around your launch, and simultaneously fill your sales funnel for the future.
Here’s how you can get started with social media for your launch:
1. Determine Your Launch Goals
What’s the plan? What are your goals for your launch?
For example, let’s say ‘Company A’ is introducing a brand new online program (product) to the market. Here may be some of their goals:
Sales Goals: 1,000 sales for the new online program in the first month.
Prospect Goals: Gain 1,000 new subscribers to newsletter in the first week of the launch.
Product Awareness Goals: 100 retweets of launch-related information and 1,000 unique visits to their website within the first week of the launch.
2. Determine How You Will Use Social Media to Meet These Goals
Like I said above, align your marketing initiatives with your social media efforts.
Using the example above of ‘Company A’, it might look like this:
Sales Goals: 1,000 sales for new online program in the first month.
Social Media Objective: Use targeted Facebook posts to provide education and value proposition on the new product to people who have purchased a product in the past.
Prospect Goals: Gain 1,000 new subscribers to newsletter in first week.
Social Media Objective: Create Facebook posts and tweets on Twitter that encourage people to click on the link for the “free offer” landing page off of the website.
Product Awareness Goals: (1) 100 retweets of launchrelated information and (2) 1,000 unique visits to website within first week of the launch.
Social Media Objective: (1) Create tweets on Twitter to be highly “retweetable” and full of pertinent information of the launch. (2) Create Facebook Ads that link directly with the “free offer” sales pages off of the website.
3. Marketing Message and Communication
Create your marketing messaging for your social media efforts. This means deciding on all the content that will be distributed during the launch and writing all the content for the posts.
Ensure that your launch marketing message is clear and concise but also remember to not “oversell” it. Social media is about the user experience, and people don’t appreciate being bombarded with posts directly selling to them all the time. Find the balance.
4. Branding Social Media
Don’t forget that your social media networks reflect your brand! Use this prime real estate to your advantage by strategically branding your networks. This could look like a new cover photo on Facebook, new bio on Twitter that reveals your new product, etc.
5. Create an Editorial Calendar
Develop a content calendar so that and your team are clear on what communication is going out, when & why.
6. Launch Time!
All your hard work has led up to this day! I recommend you dedicate this entire day to your launch. That way if there are any hiccups, you can easily correct course as soon as possible.
7. Measure
Your launch was a success! It’s now time to take a look at it and see how you did. Did you meet your goals? How did your social media strategy perform?
You can easily find these metrics by using Google Analytics, HootSuite and/or Facebook Insights.
Here’s a Launch Checklist:
Pre-Launch
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Set your launch goals
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Create your social media strategy around these goals
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Lock down your messaging
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Write posts, create strategic content
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Prepare your social media platforms for the launch
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Brand your channels
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Create an editorial calendar
During Launch
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Follow the editorial calendar and post accordingly
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Have full engagement with audience during this time
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Track your progress in real-time
Post Launch
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Continue with follow-up on social media channels
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Post-launch success measuring and reporting
Iterate!
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