Olipop, a healthy soda brand, made $30,000 in the first 15 minutes it was on the market with a new flavour.
So, how did the team pull it off?
Tuning into product feedback, designing intelligent marketing assets, stirring up interest, and carefully selecting marketing channels may all help you produce a compelling product launch. We’ll go through this dense topic and extract the information you need to develop a successful product.
What is the definition of a product launch?
A product launch is a coordinated marketing operation to promote the introduction of a new product.
Product Launch
Product launches that are well-planned excite existing customers, lure new ones, and create a sense of urgency. When you introduce a new product to the market, you have the potential to engage with customers, whether they are new to your brand or have been loyal for years.
How to launch a product and get people excited about it
When you decide to launch a new product, you’re essentially delaying satisfaction for your target market. You’ll tease your launch using organic and paid marketing, catchy language, and assets that capture how fantastic your new product is, rather than allowing customers to buy anything new right away.
1. Decide on a launch date.
As you construct your marketing language and assets and create a plan, keep your launch date in mind. It’s also where you’ll start working backwards from and how you’ll figure out what deadlines you have to meet and when. Without a launch date, you risk losing any built-up excitement, falling into a cycle of continually delaying the launch, or worse, never releasing at all.
2. Choose your launch platforms.
You should use the launch channels where you’re already most active as a company. These are the places where you’re already connecting and producing sales, as well as the places where your target audience expects you to be.
Email Marketing
Email is an always-on owned channel that allows you to communicate your product launch story to subscribers in a more long-form format—especially if you have a large email list with high email engagement.
Email marketing has the capacity to win clients over and keep their attention as you build up energy and enthusiasm for a new launch, even if it is less immediate than SMS.
Handmade jewellery store OxbowDesigns, for example, sends out marketing emails to its mailing list to advertise limited releases of its popular series of unusual skull pendants.
SMS
Remember Olipop’s launch success of $30,000 in 15 minutes? One of the brand’s primary marketing channels is SMS.
“Because it’s so immediate, the click-through rate on a text is exponentially greater than what you get on email,” explains Olipop co-founder David Lester. “However, it’s about having the discipline not to misuse that channel and to respect the privacy of communication while providing genuine value to individuals.”
If you use SMS, its immediacy can break through the noise of the many emails and social media posts your audience sees on a daily basis, which is especially important for a new product introduction. Olipop’s success with this channel is due to its team’s understanding of how intrusive a text message can be. Because the team sends fewer SMS messages, the ones that do get through have a greater impact. If you’re planning a big launch and have a large SMS list, this is a wonderful time to use it to send a message that you know your audience will see.
Social Media Marketing
Which social media platforms do you use the most? Where do you think your audience expects you to post updates? These are the ideal places to work on promoting a new product launch. At this stage, you don’t need to invent or invest in any new channels; just the ones where you’ve built a following or see the most activity are necessary.
In-person events
An in-person event may be the best approach to get your product in front of as many new customers as possible. This might be as simple as hiring a booth at a local farmers market or street fair, and it allows people to try out your items in person and directly ask you questions.
3. Create message and assets for your launch
This is the part of your product launch strategy that will require the most time. Now you’ll execute the photoshoots, create the images, and write the copy for the social media posts, emails, SMS messages, or paid advertisements you’ve planned. But first, take a few moments to consider the following questions:
What will be the positioning of this new product?
What will the tone of the taglines and copy be?
What will be the differences in messaging across channels?
How many emails, text messages, or social media posts are you planning to send?
Will you foot the bill for any advertising?
The next step is to take some high-quality product pictures once you’ve answered these questions.
If you don’t want to spend the money on a professional photographer, you can capture some fantastic photos yourself.
Choose the finest images for each channel and create the copy that you believe will attract the most viewers.
Girlfriend Collective, for example, employs a lighthearted tone in its product introduction mailings. “Ooh, Limited Edition,” the subject line of a recent release said, with the preheater, “These colours are too cute to stay in stock.”
4. Create an atmosphere of anticipation
When Fnnch, a street artist from San Francisco, became well-known, his prints and originals sold out in seconds on the internet. While the launches were a huge success, they left a lot of fans disappointed. And eager resellers were snapping up the sought-after items and selling them on eBay for thousands of dollars.
Fnnch discovered that by running his future product launches a little differently, he might sell more paintings, gratify more art aficionados, and benefit local charities.
Many of his new product launches now include limited-edition prints and originals, such as the December 2021 Heart Bear. The way it works is that the editions are released on a specific date and time, such as April 22 at 11 a.m. PT. The artwork is then made available for a limited time, such as one hour or four days. Fnnch will finish as many orders as he can in that time limit.
Customers must respond swiftly before the time limit expires with timed releases, which creates a sense of urgency. It also enables Fnnch to sell more paintings without the danger of overproducing or underproducing to satisfy demand. To encourage more individuals to buy, To inspire more people to purchase, Fnnch has also made certain product launches “fundraising releases,” where he donates a percentage of the sales to different non-profit organizations, usually in the Bay Area.
These types of innovative product launch concepts can help to draw in more attention and generate more enthusiasm.
Here are a couple more suggestions:
Organise a pre-sale.
Presale’s are a great approach to test demand in your new product and figure out how much inventory you’ll need to buy or make.
Organise a launch party.
An in-person event is sometimes the finest way to make a big splash with a new product. It’s also a terrific opportunity for consumers to see your things in person if you don’t have a retail store. Serve food, turn on some music, and encourage folks to socialise. Even if the event is free, try charging a fee to collect emails and get people to sign up for your marketing mailing list.
Make the launch a member-only event.
Some launches are only open to those who have paid for a membership. You might limit the release of items to your members if you provide online fitness courses and sell class memberships. This generates exclusivity and may encourage others to join when they might not have otherwise.
The launch will be password-protected and only available to email subscribers.
Young in the Mountains, a handcrafted fine jewellery store, sends out sale products to its email list one day before the rest of the public. You can apply this principle to product releases as well: give members of your email list a secret passcode that allows them to shop the deal early. This restricted access gives the impression of exclusivity, which will encourage more individuals to subscribe to your email. It creates a sense of urgency (buy one day ahead of time because items will sell out! ), encourages them to sign up for your mailing list, and allows you to re-engage with customers after the launch.
Make a limited edition.
Olipop creates limited-edition varieties, such as Blackberry Vanilla, at different seasons of the year. In December 2021, the flavour was reintroduced as a limited edition due to “popular demand.” If you’re trying out a new product, a limited-edition launch has a number of advantages. It might assist you in determining the level of interest in the new product. You haven’t committed to keeping it as part of your permanent collection if people don’t like it. It also generates a sense of scarcity, encouraging more individuals to convert before the product runs out. When you sell a limited number of things, your buyers will understand that if they’re gone, they’re gone.
Make a collaborative effort.
When you join forces with a larger brand, you’ll gain access to its whole audience. You’ll gain exposure to individuals of your target demographic who may not have heard of you before, in addition to providing a distinctive product. The partner promotion you can get from a larger store will be quite beneficial, especially if you’re just starting out.
Donate money to a worthy cause.
Giving a portion of revenues to a good cause helps individuals in need, and it can also encourage customers to support a cause they care about while getting a product they’ll like and use from you. Win-win!
Make a timed release available.
You can create a time constraint for clients to only be able to make purchases during a specified time window, similar to Fnnch. This reduces the risk of generating too much or too little, as well as creating a sense of urgency.
Use social media, SMS, and email to tease the launch.
Regardless of the style of launch you choose, you should publicise it at least a week or two ahead of time on your specialised social media channels, SMS contacts if you have them, and your email list. These postings act as small reminders to your audience, which can pique their interest, remind them to mark their calendars for the launch day and time, and persuade others to follow you for updates on the new product.
Olipop, for example, teased the re-release of its Blackberry Vanilla flavour with this post. To generate buzz, the team blurred out the flavour name and included remarks from the last launch.
At this stage, you probably have a good notion of your launch messaging and assets, but remember that the more you share on social media, the better. Some companies release photos of new products before they are released. Others, such as Olipop, keep things under wraps and only release little clues in the days leading up to the unveiling. Here’s where you should think about what works best for your brand.
5. Make the thing available for purchase.
It’s finally here: the day you and your audience have been waiting for has arrived: it’s officially launch day, and it’s time to start selling. This is when you’ll send out any launch day content to your followers, such as social media postings, emails, and SMS messages, to let them know that your product is online and ready to buy.
6. Keep track of the findings and evaluate them.
Examine the analytics across platforms after the launch to learn more about what worked and what didn’t. Examine the statistics on your social media apps and gather the data points that show how much engagement each one received. A social media tool, such as Sprout Social or Buffer, will almost certainly be able to provide a report for you. Examine the outcomes of any email or SMS campaigns you’ve run. What were the open and click-through rates for the launch emails? Which topic lines outperformed the rest?
Then look at the number of sales you made during the launch. If you’re using Shopify, you can access your shop’s metrics right from the Shopify admin. You may also use Google Analytics to get traffic statistics and check how many people came to your shop on the first day.
Increase sales by introducing new products.
Product launches allow you to reach out to previous consumers and entice them back, which is a lot more cost-effective strategy to increase sales. They also provide you the freedom to be creative with how you promote your business. You’ll learn what works and what doesn’t by pulling new levers.