Launching a new product can be both stressful and exciting. The biggest challenge is making the product appealing to the audience. With a big challenge, there is a big prize at stake; a successful social media campaign can secure sales, attract new followers and convert your existing audience into customers. Today we will discuss how to run a successful social media campaign.
What is a social media campaign?
A social media campaign is coordinated marketing efforts designed to reinforce information or sentiments —about a product, service, or overall brand—through at least one social media platform. A social media campaign requires focus, targeting and analysis when compared with typical social media marketing use.
How to execute a social media campaign?
Creating a product is a complex and sentimental process. The energy and effort put into creation of your products drives a will to maximise the product’s potential; this is where a social media campaign comes into play. The main objective of a social media campaign is to make your product visible and enticing to prospective buyers as well as promote not only your new product but also your business as a whole. How to run a successful social media campaign? Our simple social media product launch plan will answer all your questions.
1. Set a timescale and objectives
Creating a timeline and objectives for your social media campaign is key to success. It might not seem the most exciting task but it is certainly an important one. Even though product launching can sound simple, there are many factors you need to consider and remember about. A social media marketing strategy will need to cover product photos and videos, product descriptions, social captions, blog posts, SEO and in-store events… the list goes on. Even though you might or might not need all of these deliverables for each and every product, you will need to establish a plan that reflects your strategy.
Apart from gathering ideas for your campaign, you need to look into digital tools you can use. Applications such as Monday.com can help you map out goals and a timescale for your campaign. Additionally, publishing tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout enable you to schedule your content on multiple social media channels. Being able to prepare and schedule all your campaign posts in advance will certainly help you avoid panic and stress.
2. Build up anticipation
Once your timeline and objectives are set, you can move on to the actual content. Both prior to and during your product launch on social media, you are responsible for building up excitement in your current and potential new audience. The most common ways of building up anticipation are:
- ‘Coming soon’ posts: rather than just simply surprising followers with a new product, ‘coming soon’ posts are a playful way to encourage comments and conversation.
- Countdown posts: a social media countdown is a smart way to remind followers of your launch without constantly posting about it.
- Product preview posts: the idea here is to help followers visualise your product in their hands. Whether through enticing photos or videos, these posts let your followers know exactly what to expect and how to make that ever-so-important purchase.
- Giveaway and contest posts: a new product launch is a fantastic reason to launch a giveaway. This will spike your engagement rate and reactivate customers who may not have checked you out in a while.
- New product ads: Running ads is worthwhile if you have a budget and dedicated social audience that’s bought from you before.
3. Create a hashtag for your campaign
Coupling product launches with a custom hashtag proves an effective part of social media campaigns. Hashtags highlight content related to your launch, and by doing that they reinforce and outline your brand identity. However, more importantly, hashtag serve as a way for followers to tag, track and share launch-related posts.
Hashtags are also a meaningful data point when it comes to tracking the success of your social media campaign. You can use hashtags alongside your mentions as means to measuring if your new product built the sort of excitement you were looking for.
4. Get your audience talking
High audience engagement is not only a desirable but also an essential part of a successful social media campaign. Encourage your audience to tag and post photos with your products so that they can serve as your best advertisement. This not only makes your audience more willing to actively participate in your campaign but also allows you to curate product feedback. Additionally, you can use question-based posts linked to your product. Inviting your followers to a discussion on a relevant matter will help you keep your customer interactions high and create a sense of community behind your brand.
5. Track customer queries and questions
Even the best social media campaign can encounter issues along the way. During a product launch, it is imperative to keep on top of customer care. You need to be prepared to resolve errors and respond to any questions in a timely manner. Remember that 88% of customers expect a response from your business within one hour. Additionally, you also need to realise that your response to a single question is also a response other followers will see and refer to.
6. Measure your data
Assessing your web insights and measuring ROI (return on investment) will enable you to see what worked and what didn’t work in terms of your campaign. Analysing data via Google Analytics is also the best way to measure if you achieved your initially set targets. Measuring reach, engagement, shares, web traffic and sales is the ultimate way to recognise whether your social media campaign was successful. This way you can draw conclusions from your latest launch and determine what you need to amend or work on for future campaigns.
Summary
Even though launching a new product is not easy, promoting your launch via social media does not need to be problematic. Even though the first time might seem daunting, repeating the process is more straightforward and even more exciting. Our guidance on how to run a successful social media campaign should help you identify how to excel at product launch strategy from the very beginning.
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This article is full of tips that we use every day as a blogger and business owner. Sometimes we forget that once the basics work, we can make anything happen!