Influencer marketing is a great way to build brand awareness and grow your audience of potential customers. Creating campaigns to launch new products is one of the most well-known ways for brands to partner with influencers. Influencers are highly trusted and seen as peers by their followers. When they recommend a product, it helps build...
Influencer marketing is a great way to build brand awareness and grow your audience of potential customers. Creating campaigns to launch new products is one of the most well-known ways for brands to partner with influencers. Influencers are highly trusted and seen as peers by their followers. When they recommend a product, it helps build social proof and increase conversions.
If you’re partnering with influencers to launch a new product, there are a few different tactics you can use. These are the top three influencer strategies to use for a successful product launch!
Pre-seed your product
Sending products to your influencers is usually a no-brainer for launching a new product. But, it’s important to be strategic or your timeline for launching a new influencer campaign might be delayed. If you’re planning a non-exclusive launch, seed your new product out to influencers up to a month and a half before it’s available for consumers so they are able to test it out ahead of the launch and formulate their opinions on it for their audiences. If you’re not working with an influencer marketing platform, be sure to give your influencers a product brief when you send your outreach so they have the right information about your brand and the product.
Pre-seeding products means influencers can start creating user-generated content that they can share with their followers to boost brand and product awareness before the official launch. This UGC can also be leveraged in ads and posts from your brand accounts to continue advertising the new product. If you’ve worked with influencers before, make sure to reactivate your VIP influencers for new product launches. When you’ve worked with an influencer multiple times, their audience is already used to seeing your brand on their feed. This helps increase frequency and build additional brand awareness, which both help drive more conversions.
Generate text reviews
Ecommerce reviews are a must-have for all your products, but they’re even more critical for brand new launches. Reviews are a powerful form of social proof — 93% of customers have been influenced by product reviews. When you launch a new product, potential customers want to know what to expect, especially if they’re not familiar with your brand. Text reviews are a form of user-generated content that are often overlooked and shouldn’t be.
When your influencers have the chance to use and test your product, they can write text reviews that can be featured on social media, your site, and even in advertising campaigns. Text reviews also help with SEO rankings, since search engines can read the copy from reviews on your site. This helps build strong brand recognition for your business and your products. Include an ask for written reviews in your outreach to your influencers so they know what to expect. If you pre-seed your products, you can start building up text reviews to feature on your site when the product is launched for all customers to see and purchase.
Host events (digitally or in person)
With new product launches, you want to give influencers an opportunity to experience the product and you want them to get excited about the launch. Hosting an event helps generate buzz for the product and gives you a chance to celebrate your influencers and build relationships at the same time. You can generate great UGC from these events that can be shared by influencers and on brand accounts. Events give you a chance to get early feedback on the product and address any questions before you do your full launch.
Many events have moved online in the last several months, but you can still create an awesome (digital) experience for your influencers. If your influencers have already received their product samples through pre-seeding, a virtual event can function as a how-to or product demo. You can also treat a digital event like an interactive campaign brief with teasers about the product and featured guest speakers from your brand and the industry. Give influencers a chance to engage during Q&A sessions so they can get to know more about your brand and the product. Share fun, branded backgrounds for virtual events that attendees can use, and take advantage of the flexibility online events offer.
Launching a new product is exciting, and seeing early conversions is all about the buzz. By partnering with influencers, brands can get the word out about new products, generate excitement, and drive brand awareness. To make your influencer campaigns successful for a product launch, pre-seed the product early to create great UGC and spread the word. Ask your influencers to write product reviews to provide useful information and social proof to customers. Activate your campaigns with fun events to create excitement about the launch and give influencers a chance to experience the product. With these three influencer strategies, you can make your product launch a success!
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