Amol Gopale

Social media is a great place to get the word out about your new product. Whether it is a new iPhone app or a new kind of mascara, you can be sure to reach your target customer via social media, and with all of the tools that most social media platforms provide to brands and businesses, you have lots of flexibility when it comes to how, when, and even where your social media launch takes place. Knowing just how to launch your product, however, can be difficult. That is why we have come up with this simple guide to get you started.

1. Figure out which social media to use. While you might want to use all of them to cast the widest possible net, you find a more effective strategy in figuring out which social media has the highest level of engagement with your customers and focusing your launch on that specific social media. Look over the last few months of data you have from your social media strategy—which media is most active? Where do most of your customers hang out? When it comes to a product launch, you only want to be investing your time and money in the platforms that will really bring good returns.

2. Pick out a theme or hashtag. It gives your customers, followers, or fans an easy way to be a part of the conversation and gives you an easy way to track that conversation. You’re likely going to be encouraging user participation as much as possible, so make sure that hashtag is heavily publicized. Encourage users to post pictures of themselves going to get the product, picking it up, or using it for the first time (depending on what it is) with that hashtag and be sure to use that hashtag in all of your marketing and update efforts during the launch. The right hashtag will be short, easy to remember, and make sense with the name of your new product.

3. Campaign before the campaign. Start engaging your fans or followers on your chosen social media channel about the new product well before it launches. Build hype for your launch by making your new product mysterious and asking your fans/followers to guess what it is. Highlight customers or run a special promotion like a giveaway to draw in more followers and really extend the reach of your product launch.

4. Make videos. You can utilize Vine for your product videos or just upload them to YouTube or Vimeo and then embedded them in an update. Making-of and production update videos can help build interest and hype in your upcoming product. Get those involved in the project to talk about their part in the production, how it fits into your brand, and even how and why the new product was conceived. Tell the story of the product before it launches, and after it launches, make videos about the launch itself to create a better brand recall.

5. Give out rewards for brand loyalty. Pick what your loyalty threshold is (do they just have to like you on Facebook or do they have to be subscribed to your company newsletter?), and come up with some sort of bonus content or sneak peak for those who are classified as loyal customers. You can even set up a very special program for those who want to get the product early and write reviews or post videos about the product on the day of the launch.

6. Get your fans/followers to publicize for you. A simple contest that pits consumer against consumer, either to refer the largest number of friends to your brand or to produce the best creative project with your product and then post the pictures to their social media pages with your hashtag is a great way to get your fans/followers to act as your publicists. Those already loyal to your brand will be more than willing to do something creative, as long as the prize is worth the time. A great prize to offer those that participate in your social media launch is the new product itself!

7. Utilize social media tools and trends. Facebooks quizzes are super popular right now. Is there a way to come up with a quiz that relates to your upcoming product? A quiz app or game is a great way to reach out to both your current fans and followers, and to get them to spread your name around their own newsfeeds, as well as earn you more fans, as the promotion continues. Facebook especially has plenty of tools that can make your launch more effective, but think creatively about how you can use Twitter and Instagram to make your launch more “fun.”

Do you have your own twists on the above methods? Please let me know in the comments section below.

When the Internet was first created, few people saw it as a means for advertising or marketing. The Internet was designed as a means to exchange messages in the form of electronic mail (email), and then to exchange information by means of web pages that were mostly text, with a few charts, tables, and graphs thrown in. There was almost no money at all spent on marketing via the Internet, compared to the more than $200 billion spent each year on Internet marketing today.

By the late 80s and early 90s, however, marketers began to see the Internet as a great way of advancing their marketing business, with millions of web surfers logging on every day to look for valuable and relevant information. Marketing pioneers conceived of ways to leverage the Internet to market businesses to consumers. When the first flashy banner ads showed up in the early 90s, they were at first seen as a cool, new way to advertise, but they quickly became a source of annoyance.

Marketing efforts for businesses were typically limited to web pages and email marketing campaigns. Companies that had previously spent large chunks of their marketing budgets on offline list building came to realize that they could accomplish much the same thing via email for much less than they were paying for their offline mail campaigns. While it’s difficult to believe in having an organization without some sort of online presence today, in the early days such presences were limited mainly to larger businesses and electronic-based businesses.

Email marketing followed the same general timeline as web marketing, beginning to be used en masse for marketing efforts in the early 90s. As with the flashy banner ads, advertorial email quickly became a nuisance, and began to be labeled as “spam.” With the CANSPAM Act of 2003, online marketers were forced to offer a way for consumers to “opt out” of email marketing campaigns, and many consumers took advantage of that ability.

Web browsers started offering a means to turn off the advertisements, too, by allowing users to disable popups and hide banner ads. Consumers took advantage of this method of blocking out advertisements, and the marketing bust of the Internet happened in around 2000, and marketers once again had to find ways to reach their Internet-based consumers.

Also in 2000, Google released its AdWords offering to 350 customers, providing a means for those customers to have keyword-matching advertisements showing up in Google search engine results. This prompted the first wave of what would become a more elegant, refined means of advertising to customers, since it allowed advertisers to target those customers who would actually be the most interested in whatever product they were marketing.

Google AdWords began to prove, after the marketing bubble burst in 2000, that there were still possibilities for Internet marketing. Marketers simply had to be smarter about their targeting and their advertising, and Google helped them realize that goal. Within 5-6 years, keyword-based marketing was becoming very popular and profitable.

With this success certainly in mind, Facebook launched an advertising program in August of 2006. This allowed businesses to purchase advertising space on Facebook that would cater to Facebook users with likes and interests similar to what was being advertised. Within a year, Facebook was able to turn on the ability for advertisers to target specific demographics of users, allowing even more targeted marketing efforts.

In 2009, Google joined the social media marketing frenzy by launching interest-based advertising on partner sites and on YouTube. This eventually turned into a means for YouTube uploaders to monetize their videos, thus providing even more ways for advertisers to attract their marketing base.

The following year, in 2010, Twitter launched promotional trend and promotional tweets. While some Internet advertising had already been happening via the short message based social media site, Twitter’s launch of promotional tweets enabled digital marketers to end out advertisements to people even if the Tweeple were not following the particular Twitter handle sending out the Tweets.

In 2012, Facebook upped the ante for its marketers once again, by putting ads into news feeds. This allowed for promotional ads and posts to show up right where Facebook users were already reading, making the advertisements more prevalent and more likely to be seen and clicked on.

Today, social media is an essential tool for any digital marketer’s toolbox. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are important tools to properly leverage, and any digital marketer is expected to be a proficient social media manager in addition to an excellent marketer. Through careful management of social media profiles, businesses can reach more consumers than ever before, increasing their profitability and even drawing non-local customers to local brick and mortar storefronts, restaurants, and so forth.

Businesses that combine social media marketing with their traditional banner ads tend to fare better than those who ignore social media marketing. Businesses that wage effective social media campaigns are better able to keep their consumer base aware of happenings in their market, including product news and promotions.

Another important aspect of Internet marketing is reputation management. Businesses and their marketing agencies now need to pay close attention to reviews posted online at sites like Yelp, Google Local, and other online directories. Through careful management of these resources and attention to the reviews, marketers and business owners can discover problems their business might be experiencing, and address those problems. This has also opened up a growing business for online reputation repair experts, a more specialized form of digital marketing that focuses on repairing the damage done by poor online reviews and a subpar online presence.

Banner bars, today, are not as effective as they once were, so digital marketers must continually refine their offerings to achieve the best results. Who knows what the future of Internet marketing holds, with all of the twists and turns it has taken over the years, but right now it is important that social media marketing is one of the most influential means of reaching the marketplace.