Pre-launch strategies for your upcoming eCommerce brand

There is a need to sell a story around your brand and connect to the audience effectively. Building an effective market buzz around your product is a pre-requisite to launching your brand online. When the audience is interested in your brand, it becomes easier to sell products. With the current marketing tools in your arsenal, you can generate hype and awareness for your latest venture. Take the eg. of Apple, the iPhone 3G sold over a million units on its launch weekend, while the iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units, all due to the pre-launch hype created by Steve Jobs that focused on communicating the solutions that the device offered rather than the specifications. 

While not everybody is a marketing genius like Steve Jobs, there are a number of strategies any brand can employ to launch its product among enough fanbase and a huge success.

• Landing page

Getting the landing page ready to capture leads is an essential part of every pre-launch campaign. Marketers use landing pages to urge visitors to complete a single action. Use a compelling Call-to-Action (CTA) of either Sign-Up, Apply Now, Buy Now, Learn more, etc. in pre-launch campaigns, it usually serves as a waitlist to notify once the products are launched in the market. Communicate in a clear, natural language without industry jargon to get your points across. Focus on communicating the solution that your product offers and write around it. The audience is interested to know the benefit of the solution, so don’t beat around the bush to get your message delivered successfully. Nail your unique-selling proposition to keep the audience interested and engaged. Remember that less is more on the landing page and hence remove distracting text and images. Use exit-popups on your page to compel the audience to take the intended action. Exit-popups are like a last-ditch effort to try to get someone to engage with your website.

• Focus on the people

Rarely do big and established brands talk about their product, its features, and how excellent or revolutionizing the brand is. The #1 goal is to communicate to the audience how the product affects them and can change their world. It is important to create a compelling story keeping your target audience in mind of how your product is the perfect solution to their problems. If the product doesn’t build that compulsion, it is highly unlikely that it will open to great sales. If your audience isn’t convinced, your brand will not take-off the way you imagined it to. When you launch a product, everybody associated with the brand is probably excited to show off the features, or talk about the amazing specifications, etc. However, it is important to make the audience feel connected to your brand and emphasize how your product is the perfect solution they have been looking for all along. Such a strategy will make your launch drastically more efficient and effective.

• Get people talking about the brand

25% of US shoppers consult social media before buying a gift for friends and family. (nChannel)

To create a successful market buzz and get people interested in your brand get bloggers and thought-leaders onboard who can create a positive word around the brand in your industry. Get micro-influencers who exercise certain power over the niche to talk about your brand and product. Create a marketing campaign around them using various social media channels. You can start working with the media prior to your product launch to generate enough interest among the public. Working with them won’t break your bank while generating enough traction for your brand. Beware of working with influencers who have fake followers and command fake clout. 

• Content marketing

Worldwide ad spending on Facebook and Instagram combined will reach nearly $95 billion annually in 2021. (eMarketer)

A robust and modern content marketing strategy is highly effective in keeping the audience engaged. It is a very inexpensive mode of marketing and the easiest to disseminate information among the audience. The power of content marketing can be leveraged using plenty of platforms and tools. Content marketing has several forms that a brand can use to successfully create a market interest around the product. Examples include webinars, videos, entertaining posts, blogs, infographics, case studies, etc. Content marketing is about educating your audience and building trust regarding your products and brand. Communicate the story around the brand, its inception, and the problem it addresses. Reach out to the audience empathically focusing on the solution your brand provides and segregating it from other competitor products. Publish content around it and don’t keep it limited to one single form, improvise and improve. The possibilities are endless when it comes to content marketing and a brand should not shy away from choosing the best tools to market its product to the audience. Create a hype that interests your target audience. 

• Social media calendar

The average order value for customers referred from Instagram is $65.00, followed by Facebook ($55), Twitter ($46), and YouTube ($38). (Shopify)

The power, reach, and influence that social media yields in the present age are immense. As a brand, especially one that is looking at launching its product shortly in the market, you should definitely check out the social media tools and leverage the same to gain maximum traction. To nail social media effectively, it is wise to design a social media calendar or an editorial calendar that allows you to plan your marketing activities. Say you have your content ready but get muddled up when it comes to sharing the same. Create a calendar that divides all the content to be shared day-wise along with the exact timing of sharing with the platform specified. For eg, you want to share a video on Instagram and Facebook, a Blog on LinkedIn, and create a product poll on Twitter. Having it all neatly segmented and planned helps in the effective dissemination of information all the while ensuring that you have your audience engaged on all the platforms. Study the correct timings of posting based on your geography and audience perception. Various social media apps like Hootsuite, Buffer, etc help in scheduling posts so they can be posted at the appropriate time. Learn what formats work best in which platform, and use these insights to create a more compelling social media buzz. Come up with trending hashtags, collaborate with influencers, and create a conversation around your brand. 

Launching a new product can be jittery. But having a strong pre-launch strategy can greatly ease off the pressure. Plan your strategy, focus on clear communication, keep the target audience in mind and create meaningful conversations around your brand. A positive market buzz in today’s world is half the battle won. People talking about your brand even before its launch does great wonders and adds tremendous value to the success of the brand. While the ultimate success of the brand will depend on its user-friendliness, features, durability, and other technical specifications, one can never ignore the power of a strong pre-launch marketing strategy. Running a pre-launch campaign is a must for any entrepreneur regardless of the size of their business. A successful plan is launched much before the launch day as it takes time for the marketing campaign to generate actual results. 

Plan the information you wish to communicate, decide on the publishing strategy, deliberate who you are talking to, and turn your product launch into something worth talking about. A pre-launch strategy doesn’t necessarily mean spending big bucks, a creative and smart strategy goes a long way in getting the audience talking about your brand. Building a great product alone won’t bring you sales, but a sound marketing campaign is one of the biggest factors that determine the long-term success of the brand. Don’t undermine the ramifications of a great campaign and the wonders it can do to your brand. 

If you think it is challenging to set up an eCommerce store all by yourself, then we are here to assist you. Citytech Software has extensive experience when it comes to developing an eCommerce store for online vendors. Having worked on technologies like Magento, Kentico, OpenCart, nopCommerce, etc, Citytech has helped numerous companies become scalable and profitable by developing their online stores from scratch. To get started, contact us today, we are just a click away: https://www.citytechcorp.com/company/contact-us/