When you’re launching a product on Instagram, it takes a lot of planning. However, doing so can help you reach a wide audience, and through it, you can gain new followers and increase the sales of your product.
To help you launch your latest products on a social media platform such as Instagram, we’ve put together this guide. It includes everything that you need to know to launch your products effectively on the platform. Let’s get started.
1. Define Your Goal
The first step of launching a product on Instagram is to define your goal. Without a clear goal in mind, you won’t be able to ascertain the success of your product launch on Instagram.
Your goals can help you decide on the key performance indicators (KPIs) through which you can track the progress of your campaign.
The goals that you set should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) as well. Based on these goals, you can start designing your strategy for launching your product on Instagram.
While it’s natural to have sales as the goal of your product launch, it’s not always the case. Your goal could be to build brand awareness, increase engagement, or even grow your email list.
You need to first determine your goal and accordingly plan your product launch.
2. Set a Timeline
Getting your timing right is crucial for success on social media platforms such as Instagram.
You must know when you should be launching the product on Instagram for maximum impact.
This can be ascertained by going through your analytics.
Find out when most of your followers are online and set that as the time of your product launch.
That’s not all; you need to backtrack and plan out all your events that lead up to your product launch on Instagram. You need to start building a timeline of events through which you can reach your launch date completely prepared.
By setting a timeline, you’ll get a clear idea of the lead time that you have before the product launch. Accordingly, you can plan out your activities and pace them as well.
If you’ve got a tight deadline, you might need to reconsider some of your more ambitious plans for your product launch. On the other hand, if you’ve got enough time, you can use it to create a bigger launch than you had originally planned. One unlike anything that social media has ever seen.
It’s also necessary to decide how long your product launch campaign will run on social media. Your goal should be to make it short and engaging. Stretch it out for too long, and its effects might wear off.
This is why your strategy must include a detailed timeline of events. It can also help your team pace their activities and it will help keep everyone on the same page.
Ideally, you should have a timeline of at least a month or two before the product launch.
You can further split up the timeline into pre and post-launch sections to give a clear overview of all the activities involved.
This way, you’ll be able to come up with creative content both before and after the launch.
3. Decide on the Look of Your Campaign
Once you’ve set your goals and planned out your timeline, you need to plan the creative aspect of launching a product on Instagram. It’s crucial to decide how your campaign will appear on the social media platform.
Be clear on the creative direction. Consider creating content that will help set your product launch campaign apart from your regular posts on Instagram. Uniqueness can help you gain the traction that you want your new product to have on the platform.
This is especially important on a visual social media platform such as Instagram. You need to plan the visual style of your campaign.
This includes your color palette, style guide, and design templates. You could also choose to keep your color palette similar to that of the product you are launching on Instagram.
The second thing that you need to plan is your campaign message and editorial style. While the editorial side is pretty minimal on a visual social media platform like Instagram, it’s still important, nonetheless.
The campaign message, on the other hand, is the final message that you want to deliver to your audience through your campaign for launching a product on Instagram.
You will need to keep this message in mind while designing the visual elements and editorial sections of your campaign.
4. Create Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
When you’re launching a product on Instagram, you should definitely come up with an influencer marketing strategy.
By partnering with influencers, you can take your campaign and product’s reach to the next level. This can help boost the results of your campaign.
You could have influencers mention your latest product in their posts or Instagram Stories. This can be done on the day of the launch and also during the pre and post-launch periods.
Through these posts, you can reach the influencers’ audiences as well. As an influencer’s audience trusts their recommendations, there are good chances that they’ll check out your product launch as well.
However, for this to work, you need to find genuine influencers who connect with their audiences well. For this, you need to vet influencers first.
To simplify the vetting process, you can use iFluenz. You can create your influencer marketing campaign on the platform with ease. Interested influencers can then apply to your campaign, and you can go through their profiles and accept or reject them.
The tool also shows you different influencer analytics, such as their audience demographics and engagement rates.
Once your campaign begins, you can use the platform to track the performance of your influencers’ posts in real-time. This can help you figure out the effectiveness of each influencer too.
Through iFluenz, you can also choose to purchase the content of your influencers and use it to promote your product on Instagram.
For instance, HSI Professional collaborated with an influencer, @christinaeileen, to promote the launch of their new product on Instagram.
5. Schedule Your Posts
Next, you need to start creating content and scheduling it. Based on your timeline, you need to come up with a content calendar leading to the launching of your product on Instagram.
You can schedule all of your posts according to this content calendar using a scheduling tool such as Buffer or Later. By doing so, you’ll be able to post your content at exact times for maximum impact. By scheduling your posts ahead of time, you can also focus all of your efforts on the launching of your product on Instagram.
6. Go Live!
On your product launch day, you need to capitalize on all of the attention that your content and the content of influencers has drawn towards the event.
You should go live on Instagram and introduce your new product to your viewers in style. Monitor their excitement levels, engage with them, and answer their questions to increase their involvement in the product launch.
You could also provide them with a link to purchase the product during the product launch. Alternatively, you can update your Instagram bio and add a link to your product there.
It’s also a great idea to add your product launch to your Highlights. That way, the launch of your product on Instagram can also be seen by users who missed your live broadcast.
Additionally, you should come up with a hashtag for the launch and encourage your viewers and followers to create posts using the hashtag.
Don’t forget to track your KPIs and other metrics to determine how successful your product launch on Instagram is. Based on those insights, you can optimize your next product launch campaign on Instagram.
Final Thoughts
Social media is a great place to launch your products, and doing so on Instagram can help you build traction as well.
For your campaign to be successful, you must set your goals beforehand and figure out the KPIs you’ll use to monitor your progress. You should also create a timeline for the launch of your product on Instagram. It’s also necessary to plan out all of the creative aspects of your campaign beforehand.
You should consider partnering with influencers to help spread the word about your product launch and to increase your reach. Additionally, you should schedule your posts in advance so that you can focus all your efforts on the launch.
Lastly, go live on the launch day and engage with your audience. Don’t forget to track your KPIs. Based on those insights, you can improve your future product launches on Instagram.
Do you have any tips or insights to share about launching a product on Instagram? Let us know in the comments.
Yes,I agree with you on scheduling our post on Instagram because in every country there are a fix time for using these social sites in a day.