Using Influencer Marketing to Launch a New Product

Launching a new product is exciting. You’ve put countless hours into developing it, and your whole team has invested their collective hearts and souls into creating something you all want to share with the world. 

But how do you get it in front of the right people and score it the success it deserves after all that? 

Whether you’re looking to build hype about your product within a targetted niche audience, increase direct sales from your website, or promote a pre-launch window and collect email sign-ups, working with influencers can significantly and economically boost your marketing efforts, with meaningful long-term results. 

Here I’ve listed a few of the ways we work with brands and influencers to support their new product launches: 

Work with the Influencers who already advocate your brand 

Working with influential content creators who are already talking about you online is one of the most effective ways to build awareness of your new product. Those influencers already have a genuine love for your products, and their followers will already be familiar with your brand, so will naturally be open to recommendations and discussion regarding your new products. 

This is where building long-term relationships with influencers comes into its own. Having a community of loyal influencers can significantly boost your profile, giving you a rolling army of advocates to fall back on, and making the early planning stages of your campaigns -  and overall influencer selection process -  much easier. 

Collaborate with influencers on product creation and co-branding 

Getting early buy-in on new products from influencers can really elevate the success of your launch campaign. Working with influencers in the early stages of your marketing strategy will give them a real sense of investment in the launch and will strengthen bonds between you and them. 

An effective way to do this is to involve them in your pre-launch strategy and get them involved in your campaign’s planning and creation. By essentially hardwiring the influencer’s voice into the fabric of your campaign, you’re guaranteeing direct reach to their followers at every step. Plus, getting  their input into campaign creative, narrative, and styling will only make your connection with their audience stronger and more authentic. 

Know your ‘Why’, and weave it into your influencer messaging 

If you haven't heard of Simon Sinek and his book, ‘Start With Why’, check out his Ted Talk, - currently the 3rd most watched of all time. 

In short, Simon says that business marketing shouldn’t be about what you do. It should be about ‘why’ you do it. The key notion - and it’s one we fully agree with - is that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the purpose and meaning behind it.

Once you have a clear understanding of your ‘why’, you can combine it with the inherently more human, relatable voice of a suitable influencer with similarly-aligned values, in order to weave your key talking points into a more powerful and resonant message. 

Saturate your market 

Whatever communities you belong to on social media - whether food, fashion, tech, photography, or something else entirely - the chances are that you follow and engage with a lot of great content creators within that particular niche. 

When launching a new product, a great strategy is to totally saturate that market over the timeline of your campaign to really own the culture and create a real sense of movement and event within your field. Work with 10, 30, 60 of the best content creators that you can identify, provide a really clear brief with content delivery times and key talking points, and watch your brand and product totally take over your chosen social channels. Find the right angles with authentic influencers, and you will be the talking point of your communities. 

This is a strategy that a lot of tech brands use extremely well. When Sony recently launched their new ZV-1 vlogging camera, it seemed that almost every vlogger on YouTube had a related video published on the day it was released. There was so much influencer hype that it was impossible not to be interested. If you’re into that kind of thing, of course. Which I am, because I’m a massive camera geek. 

Make sure all of your marketing ducks are in a row

Ultimately, for all the extra benefits of more human connection and genuine audience goodwill toward your brand, the topline reason you’re commissioning influencers is because you want to hit your sales and marketing objectives. That bigger picture in mind, there’s no point investing any chunk of your budget if all of your ducks aren’t in a row. 

Let’s imagine your influencer campaign was a huge success and thousands of eager people visit your website.  It would be a pretty poor experience if the website was out of date, or there were problems with ordering, or the exclusive community discount code you provided didn’t work. All of your hard work would come unstuck, and you’d likely have lost any impact and goodwill you gained in the first place. 

Whatever your objective is for the campaign (sales, follower growth, brand awareness, e-mail sign ups etc.) have that clearly in mind from the start and work back from there, making sure that every aspect of your operation is aligned and optimised for it before you shine the spotlight of influencer marketing. Take the time to put what you need in place to ensure the best experience possible, for you, your customers, and your content creator partners. 

We work with brands to create high-impact influencer marketing campaigns across all social platforms. We help you to get under the skin of your audiences, understand who and where they are, and collaborate with respected influencers to get your message to them. If you’d like to chat about working together, get in touch.