7 Best Post-Launch Campaign Ideas for a Successful Product Launch

Contrary to the general perception, product launches aren’t exclusive to tangible products or real-life events executed at a singular moment in time. Instead, it’s a company’s deliberate attempt to drumbeat momentum around its next venture - a new product or service, a revised version with better packaging or pricing, or a sub-brand you’re unveiling.

Even if your pre-launch marketing campaign paid out fruitfully on the launch day, it’s no time to sit back and celebrate the culmination of your hard work. The buzz and enthusiasm are meant to fade without a dynamic post-launch strategy to set the sales in motion.

Post-launch campaigns go beyond the initial hype, extending the excitement generated during your product launch, and harnessing it to drive continued success.

Regardless of what you’re announcing, it’s your job as a product marketer to fortify brand awareness and propel sales even after the initial launch day hype has subsided. Every organization must implement these winning post-launch campaign ideas in their marketing strategy for long-lasting growth.

Post-Launch Marketing Campaign: Why It’s Important?

Unlike regular advertisements that keep your brand name afloat, a product launch needs a more systematic approach to marketing. With reputation, market positioning, and financial performance at stake, you cannot treat it as an afterthought or an extension of your mundane marketing practices.

Product marketing managers (PMMs) direct most of their attention and resources on bringing the product to the stage under favorable conditions. Companies prioritize pre-launch campaigns to prepare the groundwork - build hype, create FOMO in the audience, and raise brand awareness - for the launch event.

Pre-launch marketing might be pivotal to the success of your product launch, but it needs a follow-up strategy to assess the launch, review customer experience, and make amendments. Not knowing the public sentiment around your latest offering and its competence against rival brands can cause a high churn rate and reduced ROI.

To make even with the leading enterprises, businesses must position the initial campaign as the start of a journey, not the end of one. Implement a post-launch strategy can help:

• Sustain momentum: A well-executed product launch generates buzz and engages the audience with spontaneous advertisements. Post-launch campaigns build upon that momentum and keep your brand in the spotlight.
• Extend reach: While a pre-launch strategy may attract initial attention, post-launch campaigns expand your reach and visibility. By leveraging mainstream advertising platforms like social media, emails, and influencer partnerships you can gain access to untapped audiences.
• Foster customer relations: By engaging customers through contests, user-generated content campaigns, and loyalty programs, companies can foster loyalty and strengthen the customer-brand relationship.

7 Post-Launch Campaign Ideas to Execute a Successful Product Launch

Achieving sales targets, sustaining growth, and coordinating marketing efforts are common milestones for every organization attempting to launch a new offering.

If you’re expecting a breakthrough with your cutting-edge product development, draft a launch plan that improves your visibility on the business landscape and offers a competitive edge in customer engagement.

Since every launch is different, the way you execute a post-launch campaign varies. The ideal product launches begin at least three months prior to the launch date and extend for weeks after. The following marketing ideas are set to inspire your post-launch campaign and instate a positive trajectory for your product following the launch day.

Improve Content Marketing Mechanics

Be it in any shape or form, content has the power to shape people’s minds, influencing their purchase decisions in your favor. Influencer shoutouts and targeted emails may drive the initial influx of customers on the launch day, but the tactics may not be enough to retain them long-term.

If you’re willing to drive continued momentum for your product, create content showcasing your expertise, industry knowledge, and unique value propositions.

Unlike sneak peeks and teasers released during pre-launch, post-launch campaigns reveal more about the product itself as a way to educate customers. Go into the specifics of your product or service and emphasize how the latest offering is set to impact users’ lives for the better.

Establishing your brand’s content channels as a go-to resource for gaining valuable insights relative to the product puts you in the spotlight for prospects.

Broadcast multiple content pieces on your social channels within the first few weeks of the launch. Focus on building domain authority around your preferred niche. Leverage social media, blog posts, videos, ebooks, and AMAs to connect with your target audience and drive healthy conversions.

Personalize Emails to Win-Back Customers

Leveraging paid media and broadcasting your launch on mainstream channels may drive the early adopters, but keeping them aboard requires a more in-depth approach. Not all product launches fare seamlessly. Even if the launch was flawless and attracted customers from all around, you may witness a higher churn rate or low product adoption down the line.

Instead of being reactive towards a lowering graph, adopt a proactive approach to win back customers before they even think of leaving. Every incoming customer must feel valued and rightly served on your platform to stick long-term - and emails help build that intimate connection.

Map out the customer journey from onboarding to retention to identify where they might need the most support. Craft compelling emails and personalize them based on the audience's preferences and purchase history for a higher response.

Build an email list of your high-spending and recurrent customers, and send them exclusive offers, helpful tips, and personalized recommendations to foster brand loyalty. By embedding clear calls-to-action (CTAs) in the content body, businesses can guide recipients towards desired actions, whether it’s signing up for a webinar or downloading a resource.

Host Social Media Contests and Giveaways

No matter what product you’re offering or the industry you’re attempting to penetrate, you can’t achieve the desired results without going social. Social media campaigns are crucial to pre-launch campaigns but you cannot undermine their impact in maintaining the launch buzz and driving constant traffic.

Hosting contests and giveaways is a way for businesses to keep customers interested, leverage their social networks, and draw newer leads.

Create social media posts that not only engage existing clients but also compel them to actively participate, creating and sharing content related to the brand. Healthy customer-business interactions act as authentic social proof, showcasing positive experiences and testimonials for prospects.

With social media as your playground, the sky's the limit. Your contests and giveaways have the potential to go viral, reaching an exponentially larger audience beyond your current followers. But to get the prospects to join in first place demands irresistible prizes. People love challenges and eagerly wait to try their luck if there’s a reward at the end.

Align your Sales and Marketing Teams

Organizations spend massive resources and human capital in bringing a product to a successful launch but fail to keep a coordinated strategy afterward. The need for a common understanding and agreement on shared goals between key stakeholders and their close-knit coordination toward achieving them can never be stressed more.

By bridging the gap between these two powerhouse departments - sales and marketing - companies can increase the prospects of achieving long-term growth. Opening active communication channels between concerned parties and documenting KPIs in advance prevents them from diverging after launch.

Some effective ways to accomplish team alignment are:

• Define common goals and KPIs for both teams to create a shared sense of ownership and accountability.
• Arrange regular meetings, brainstorming sessions, and joint strategy planning to ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Develop comprehensive buyer personas - outlining your target audience's needs, preferences, and demographics - for marketers to refer to when crafting their strategies.
• Establish a feedback loop between the two teams. Sales can provide invaluable insights from customer interactions, helping marketing refine its messaging and content to better address user objections.

Measure the success of your post-launch campaign based on joint goals such as conversion rates, revenue generated, and customer retention.

Run Customer Referral Programs

Your product launch was a resounding success, and now it's time to propel your brand even further with customer referral programs. The idea of empowering your existing customers to be your brand advocates, driving new leads and higher sales revenue to your platform.

Among all mainstream marketing channels, referral programs are highly cost-effective bringing in high-quality leads that are bound to stay. Customers referred in by trusted sources tend to stay longer, exhibiting a 16% higher retention rate than an average lead.

Recommendations from people you trust serve as social proof, contributing to your lifelong commitment to your brand. SaaS companies have been cashing the invaluable marketing resource to generate leads during pre-launch and continue to drive growth following the launch day.

Sharing success stories and testimonials on your landing page may reciprocate prospects, but people need something more tangible in return for referring. No matter how enthusiastic customers are about your brand, they need a little push with incentives and rewards to popularize your brand in their social circles. Offer discounts, freebies, or special perks to turn customers’ word-of-mouth in your favor.

Review and Respond to Customer Feedback

If leveraged right, customer feedback can be a great marketing asset in attracting new leads but isn’t as mainstream as other channels. Marketers often undermine the value of collecting and incorporating customer feedback into their post-launch strategy.

In the weeks following the launch event, businesses are bombarded with user feedback left and right. Doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative, anything you receive or hear from your customers about your latest offering is a marketing commodity.

Acquiring feedback - either through surveys or testimonials - offers valuable insights into what features customers are most excited about, what are the possible pain points, and what functionalities you failed to advertise as needed. The concept is to learn on the go and implement key learnings to refine your work.

Some easy ways to review feedback on your product launch include:

• Did your recent launch spark a fire in the business circles?
• Did you manage to attract the media attention you were expecting?
• What functionalities were the center of attention of industry experts?
• Was your offering featured on the HackerNews website or triggered a Twitter hashtag campaign?
• Did the early adopters ring up your customer support staff? If so, what were they asking?
• How was the response on your support channels on social media? Was there an influx of new followers? If so, what were they saying?

Learn and Reiterate Your Campaigns

The moment your product goes live, stakeholders will be eager to see that spike in the sales chart and growing customer pool. While the product launch is a catalyst for growth set in motion, it takes time for your brainchild to bear fruit - if things go according to plan.

Even if you see key business metrics plummeting, receive negative feedback on certain features, or sense rising discomfort from field teams it’s better to keep it private until the retro is conducted.

Retro is an inter-department meeting in an organization that reviews and analyzes what worked and what didn’t. It works as an activity log or a timeline record of the strategies implemented during pre-launch and steps undertaken on the launch day.

Besides the data analysis and reviewing customer feedback, keep a close on your competitors to know how they fared with the launch. While the process might seem timestaking especially after an exhausting launch, it’s necessary to stay en route to success.

Closing Note

A product launch is a high-stakes endeavor that impacts a brand's reputation, market positioning, and financial performance. But when competing with brands bigger and more organized than your startup, you need a comprehensive marketing strategy expanding over pre-launch and post-launch stages.

Even if your launch day was a success and you see the pre-launch efforts paying off, don’t forget to look back, review your performance, and learn from your learnings. If things don’t go according to plan, there’s always a next time. Keep learning from industry experts like Prefinery.com so your business endeavors never bite the dust.

FAQs

What is the purpose of a post-launch campaign?

The post-launch campaign aims to build upon the momentum generated during the product launch and sustain brand visibility, engagement, and growth. It involves various marketing strategies to drive customer acquisition and retention after the product has been introduced to the market.

Define key metrics to measure the success of a post-launch campaign?

During the post-launch campaign measure the conversion rate, website traffic, engagement metrics (such as click-through rates and time on page), customer acquisition costs, and revenue generated.

How to set up a post-launch campaign on a limited budget?

Businesses with limited marketing budgets should utilize social media platforms for organic reach, leverage user-generated content, and implement customer referral programs to drive engagement and experience continued growth after launch.