How to Create Social Media Posts for Your New Product Launch

Social Media - a medium originally designed for people to share their dull and brightest moments online, became a central channel for businesses to generate hype for product launches.

Unlike TV ads or billboards, social media enabled companies to promote their products and connect with their audience on an unprecedented scale. Over 80% of consumers base their purchase decisions on social media posts and influencer referrals.

By leveraging the power of social media, businesses can create a compelling online presence, amplify their reach, and establish a strong connection with their prospects. People discover, learn about, and follow new startups and product launches, paving for remarkable business success.

Leverage social media with interactive launch posts and backstage sneak peeks to turn your prospects into devoted brand advocates. Tell the world something exciting is on the way by creating attention-grabbing social media posts. Here’s all you need to know to kickstart your product launch plan on social media.

New Product Launch Social Media Posts: Why They Matter?

Sometimes an innovative product is not enough to attract people and frame their buying behavior. With over 59% of the world's population on social media, the medium carries massive untamed potential for upcoming businesses to leverage.

Implementing your pre-launch marketing strategy on social media might be complicated, but if executed right, it can bring you the following benefits:

• Reach and Visibility: Social media platforms have billions of active users. Businesses can showcase their product to the masses, increasing their visibility and reach beyond traditional marketing channels.
• Building Anticipation and Excitement: By strategically sharing teasers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, or sneak peeks, marketers can create a buzz and build anticipation among their followers for an upcoming launch.
• Cost-effective Marketing: Social media platforms empower users to share content and recommendations with their networks effortlessly. With minimal or no costs to set up profiles and post content, businesses can allocate their marketing budget more efficiently.
• Real-Time Interaction and Feedback: Social media facilitates direct real-time interaction with the audience. Sales teams can engage with customers, respond to inquiries, and gather feedback promptly.
  
  

First, Define your Pre-launch Social Media Campaign Strategy

Always plan with the end in mind. The complexity and magnitude of a product launch cannot be overstated. With the extent of resource employment and the company’s stake in a product launch, you must define a launch campaign to meet your business goals.

Planning a campaign strategy in advance provides a clear roadmap and structure for creating, scheduling, and distributing content that aligns with your overall marketing objectives.

Set Launch Goals

In order to launch and execute a successful social media campaign, first define what success means for your brand. Based on your niche, success may denote the following:

• Build brand awareness
• Invoke anticipation in the audience
• Generate valuable leads and drive sales
• Benchmark for performance for future campaigns

Translate success into achievable goals and KPIs you aim to achieve with the new launch. Without clear goals, businesses risk drifting aimlessly and being unable to assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

Nail Down a Timeline

While curating a timeline sets the deadline for the launch, it provides a structured framework to coordinate your pre-launch practices. It ensures all launch-related tasks are completed on time, facilitates efficient resource allocation, and sets a roadmap for tracking progress.

With the end goal in mind and a timeline to support it, marketers can schedule their social media content creation. Whether it's the product photoshoots or influencer collaborations for the main event, a timeline will streamline your pre-launch hype, launch day scheduling, and post-launch follow-up activities.

Devise a Content Strategy

A content strategy defines how a company communicates its brand messaging with the target audience. Besides educating prospective customers about the product’s USPs, a content strategy invokes anticipation and propels them to purchase.

For any content strategy to stay impactful, you must:

• Determine your brand messaging, whether it's increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or boosting sales.
• Align social media content with other promotional efforts, such as email marketing, website updates, influencer collaborations, or traditional advertising.
• Create a content calendar that outlines the specific types of content to be shared, the platforms to be used, and the posting schedule.
• Identify effective content formats for your social media channels, such as images, videos, infographics, or user-generated content.

10 Ways to Build Compelling Social Media Posts

Given the resources and effort you’ve put into building an industry-leading product, you’d wish for it to attract the attention and drive the sales it deserves. Predicting a product’s success on the launch date is hard without leveraging the biggest marketing channel to fortify its prelaunch hype.

With over 5 billion active users, social media might seem the ideal platform to broadcast a product’s arrival - in theory, at least. We have outlined ten ways to curate your social media posts with proven examples from successful launch campaigns.

Design a Teaser Campaign

Whether launching a startup or introducing a new product, spreading the word is always the marketer’s dilemma. Over the years, broadcasting teaser campaigns has proven a viable strategy to generate that initial hype.

Teaser campaigns offer glimpses of your new product in action and highlight information as clues to generate anticipation and curiosity among the audience. By the time your offering comes to surface, you have an audience excited to buy and share it.

Marvel Studios often employs teaser campaigns to build anticipation for their upcoming movies. They release short video snippets, cryptic images, or character posters, leaving fans guessing and discussing the storyline or new characters.

Create a Hashtag

Unlike the standard perception, hashtags do work - you just need to use them correctly. Infusing them the proper way can make your brand discoverable to prospects on Twitter and Instagram.

A strategically placed hashtag can fortify your campaign, amplify your messaging, and track conversions across social platforms. Here’s a quick guide to creating hashtags for your upcoming campaign:

• Choose a hashtag that is easy to remember, spell, and type. Concise hashtags are more likely to stick with customers and reinforce the hype.

Apple's #ShotoniPhone campaign encouraged users to share their photos taken with iPhones.

• The hashtag must reflect your brand identity and resonate with the key messaging of your product launch. It must evoke desired emotions and associations in the target audience.

#ShareACokePNG campaign by CocaCola encouraged people to share their experiences of enjoying Coke with friends and family.

• Add trending topics or events to your hashtag to increase visibility and initiate relevant conversations.

The notable #OreoHorrorStories campaign leveraged the Halloween season to share spooky stories and engage with their audience.

Get Creative with Your Content Posts

As a marketer, you’re responsible for building the pre-launch buzz and retaining the buzz until after the launch event. Instead of repeating the general practices, try to be creative and unique. Here are a few ways to get people talking about the launch.

Coming Soon Posts

Coming soon posts are all about intriguing curiosity about what’s to come, enticing followers to stay tuned and await the final reveal. Marketers often use compelling visuals with close-up shots or abstract images hinting at the launch’s content without revealing too much.

Some are even captioned with intriguing taglines to invoke anticipation and leave the audience wanting more. Warner Bros' The Dark Knight coming soon post is the perfect example.

Product Demo Videos

The firsthand videos showcasing your upcoming product in action can be an effective tactic to get people on board for your pre-launch waitlists.

Blendtec's "Will It Blend?" Series posted product demo videos that became viral sensations. Marketers demonstrated the power and durability of their blenders by blending various items, including smartphones, golf balls, and even an iPad.

Sneak Peeks

One way to keep your social media followers curious about your new launch is to post sneak peeks of the product live or during production. They are a perfect way to spark conversations and anticipation, with followers sharing their thoughts and guesses about what the new product might bring.

Limited-Time Offer

Often instated during the launch event, limited-time offers are a powerful strategy to drive urgency and boost sales through social media. Limited offer posts create a sense of scarcity, motivating customers to take immediate action and purchase before the special offer expires. The urgency compels customers to act quickly, as they fear missing out on the opportunity.

Countdown Posts

A level up to “coming soon” posts, countdown posts are a smarter way to keep the audience engaged on the new product on social media by posting and reposting the same message.

Game developers like Ubisoft often use countdown posts to generate excitement for the release of their highly anticipated video games. They share countdown graphics featuring the game's logo or characters to pique the audience’s interest.

Tell a Story

Most online purchases are inspired or driven by emotions. Telling a story through social media posts effectively engages the audience and bridges their emotions with your product.

Storytelling adds depth and personality to your brand, making it relatable and memorable to the prospects. By sharing stories that resonate with your target market, you can evoke emotions such as joy, inspiration, or empathy - emotions that foster a loyal and engaged customer base.

Patagonia's "Worn Wear" campaign tells the stories of their customers and their well-loved and repaired Patagonia clothing and gear. Emphasizing sustainability and ecological output, the brand encouraged customers to repair and reuse their products rather than buy new ones.

Collaborate with Influencers

If there’s one strategy that offers you better access to the target audience than paid adverts, it’s paid partnerships with credible influencers in your niche.

Collaborating with influencers expands your brand's reach and increases exposure to a broader audience. Influencers have dedicated followers who trust their recommendations, which can boost engagement, generate buzz, and drive traffic to launch a new product.

Since influencers have a close and trusted relationship with their customers, their endorsements are often well-picked by the followers. Gymshark, a fitness apparel brand, leverages collaborations with fitness influencers to promote their brand.

Engage the Audience with UG

Many upcoming brands rely on user-generated content (UGC) to maximize their social media following and increase engagement. UGC involves encouraging your customers or followers to create and share content related to your brand or product.

If leveraged effectively, UGC can increase engagement on your platform and build a sense of community around your launch. A successful UGC social media campaign must include:

• Incentives or Rewards to motivate your audience to participate in the campaign.
• Showcase Diversity by featuring UGC representing different demographics, backgrounds, and product use cases.
• Actively engage with the UGC shared by your audience, liking, commenting, and resharing their content.
• Permission from users to feature their UGC in your marketing to ensure compliance with legal and ethical considerations.

Organize Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways, as part of a social media campaign, help create a sense of anticipation and excitement among your audience. By offering your followers a chance to win prizes or participate in a unique experience, you can capture their attention and encourage participation.

Since contests are shareable, they can reach a wider audience beyond your existing followers. When participants share their contest entries or tag their friends to join, it creates organic exposure and improves brand awareness.

To promote the launch of the Xbox Series X, Microsoft ran "The Birth of a Legend" contest. Participants had to submit a creative entry explaining why they deserved to be among the first to own the new console. The winners received an exclusive Xbox Series X bundle which brought more engagement around the product.

Integrate Call-to-Action

Integrating a strong call to action (CTA) in your social media campaign is crucial to guide your audience toward the desired action, whether it's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or visiting your website. CTAs prompt users to take immediate action and increase their chances of converting into customers.

Spotify often incorporates a compelling "Listen Now" CTA in its campaigns when promoting new music releases or curated playlists. By including a direct link or a swipe-up feature in their Instagram Stories, Spotify made it easier for users to listen immediately.

Be Consistent on All Channels

In the current market, businesses must ensure a cohesive and unified brand presence across all channels. Consistency helps build trust and reinforces your messaging to prospective customers.

Each channel contributes to the overall success of your product launch. When they work together seamlessly, you can reach a broader audience, increase engagement, and drive conversions across the board.

Create Exclusive Groups

Exclusive groups provide a space for your most dedicated followers to connect and access exclusive content and insights into your product launch.

Companies grant their followers access to exclusive content, behind-the-scenes updates, and special promotions to make them feel valued and appreciated. This, in turn, builds brand loyalty and encourages them to become advocates for your product.

Ending Note

Whether you’re preparing your marketing assets or curating social media posts, better start early to generate hype and anticipation in the audience - and retain the momentum until launch day.

Ensure your product launch on social media aligns with the performance metrics and KPIs to stay on track and focused. While successful product launch posts may offer insight into shaping your ad materials, register with Prefinery.com to have a comprehensive content strategy prepped up as well.

FAQs

How can I create visually appealing social media posts for my product launch?

When creating a social media post, you must use high-quality images, videos, or graphics that highlight the features of your product. Experiment with different formats, like carousel posts, GIFs, or animations, to capture attention and stand out in users' feeds.

What type of content should I include in product launch social media posts?

• Showcase your product's unique selling points and key features.
• Create engaging and informative product demonstration videos or tutorials.
• Provide behind-the-scenes glimpses of the product's development or production process.
• Incorporate user-generated content, such as photos or videos of customers using your product.