Online sales made up 21% of all retail sales in 2020. A big part of that shift is due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, retail sales were shifting online for the past several years. The pandemic only accelerated that shift.
If you’re getting ready to launch a new product, you need to account for that dramatic change in consumer behavior. It’s not enough to showcase it in a retail store.
You need to know how to launch a new product online. If you miss the mark, you will lose out on a lot of sales.
Keep reading to learn how to plan your new product launch and get more sales.
1. Know Who Needs the Product and Why
This is the most basic part of a product launch, but so many companies miss this simple step. It’s the difference between a successful launch and a dramatic failure.
You have to be crystal clear about who will benefit the most from your product.
Why would anyone care about your new product? After all, there are probably a dozen other products just like yours.
You have to be able to convey that clearly. The message needs to be told in a way that makes consumers want to know more about the product.
2. Plan Your Launch
A new product launch takes time to plan and build if you want to be successful. You can’t just put your new product on the market and assume that people will buy it.
A product launch plan should be done months in advance. You should have a launch date set for your new product and work backward from there.
You should know how much buzz you want to create for your new product and how many sales you want in the first few weeks.
Make sure that you pick the right marketing channels, which are based on your target market. It also helps to set a marketing budget for the new product launch.
3. Start Telling Your Story
People love stories. It’s how they connect and remember things. You can take some elements of storytelling and apply them to your new product.
Your content can demonstrate how the product is used to save time or whatever the key benefits are. You can show the new product in action through videos and user stories.
Another way to tell stories is to ask for user-generated content. You can ask a question about the common problems your product solves. This is a way to get users interested and engaged with the new product pre-launch.
4. Set Up a Landing Page
You can have a generic coming soon page on your site, but you’ll miss a tremendous opportunity to turn the curious into leads.
A landing page for your new product does a few things for you. The first thing is that it communicates the benefits to your customers.
The second is that you can get visitors to sign up and get notified when the new product is available for purchase.
That is invaluable because you can now communicate directly with consumers through email. You don’t have to rely on algorithms and social media to get sales.
5. Generate Press Coverage
You can expand the interest in your new product by getting positive press coverage. You can write and send out a press release that details the basics of your product.
You can do a press release to announce the product and follow up with one on launch day.
If this is your first time writing a press release, you need to know the 5 press release writing mistakes that will out you as a rookie.
Avoiding these mistakes will help you get the coverage that your new product deserves.
6. Get Positive Reviews Quickly
Roughly 93% of consumers read online reviews and that the reviews influenced a buying decision. That’s how important product reviews are for your launch.
You have to make positive online reviews part of your launch plan. One way to go about getting positive reviews is to have a beta launch for your product.
This gives a small group of people the opportunity to get your product first and try it out. They then go online and post their reviews of the product.
You should also make it part of your post-sales process to email customers and ask them to provide reviews online.
7. Provide Excellent Service
Do you want to keep your sales high well after your product launch? That is largely going to depend on the quality of service you provide your customers.
Let’s say that you have a new customer place an order for the product. Customers have high expectations and they want the product delivered as soon as possible. If the product is out of stock or delayed, they’ll be unlikely to order from you again.
The product packaging should also be considered part of the customer experience. A package that’s frustrating to open takes away from the excitement of the new product.
Finally, you have to have excellent customer service so customers feel valued after the purchase.
Success Guide: How to Launch a New Product Online
You can’t just put a new product online, expect people to buy it, and call that your launch. A new product launch is much more involved.
How to launch a new product starts with knowing your target customer and the problem you solve for them. That dictates the rest of your product launch plan. Of course, your launch will go down the drain if you don’t follow that up with outstanding customer service.
For more outstanding news and tips, be sure to check out the other articles on this site.
