Gearing Up For A Product Launch Tips

The Benefits Of Allowing Product Pre-Orders

The primary benefit of allowing pre-orders is to get a better understanding of the demand, or lack thereof, for your new product. An insight like this into consumer demand will allow you to make cost-saving decisions related to the initial order from the manufacturer.

You will have a clear idea of the potential sales and revenue your business should generate for the product over a specific time period.

A secondary benefit of this practice of allowing pre-orders is that the advertising campaigns can create a huge buzz and a feeling of anticipation in the marketplace. This “buzz” will serve to motivate old and new customers to take action immediately due to the fear of missing out.

Having a well-constructed engaging advertisement campaign, an easy-to-use website to accept orders, and a well-thought-out sales strategy will be pivotal to the product’s success.

How to Launch Successful Pre-Order Campaigns for a product

The idea of “Pre-order eCommerce”  is not new. Yet, it is a convenient way to recapture the attention of die-hard fans or dedicated users of a product who are looking for optimized or new features for improved usability.

Getting Started With Your Pre-Order Campaign

For business owners who want to DIY their campaign some of the essential components that you’ll need to incorporate after the preorder website is launched are the following:

• Local SEO – Local SEO is important for e-commerce businesses who want to conduct a pre-order campaign for a product that hasn’t been released yet because it helps drive more traffic to your website or brick-and-mortar premises through online leads.

Since these leads are from people who are specifically searching for products or services that your business offers, they are also likely to give you a high conversion rate.

• Email Marketing – Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach online audiences of people who have opted-in to your email list. 

These users may be existing customers or folks who have in some way expressed interest in interacting with your brand by submitting an email, name, or other personalized data.

This marketing channel is one of the easiest channels for customer outreach, fostering brand awareness, and nurturing customer relationships. Good email marketing will, in most cases expand your customer base while helping you to retain your existing customer base. 

Not Interested In DIY’ing The Campaign

Hiring an online marketing agency to do Local SEO, website development, email marketing or more is an option for those business owners who have no experience or knowledge about managing preorder campaigns.  

The right agency will work like an extension of you, with your goals in mind to develop an engaging advertising and sales strategy for success. 

Why do you need a pre-order campaign?

There is so much to learn from the results you’ll generate that can be used to guide your decisions about ordering inventory, marketing campaigns and product design in the future.

These types of campaigns also serve as a great source of knowledge for your customers as well. 

Pre-Order Launches Like The Big Brands 

You may be a small business but for a moment think about Apple, Inc. There is a reason why they launch pre-order campaigns on their website, and within other advertising channels between August and September.

During this time of year and through to the end of the year, purchasers are a lot less discretionary with spending. This flexibility allows for the release of disposable income at a rate much higher than at other times during the year.

The holidays that fall during the Autumn and Winter months are a great motivator for consumers to buy gadgets for themself or their families that they may not buy during other, more financially stringent times of the year.

In other words, Apple Inc. is simply launching preorder campaigns in order to take advantage of the immense amount of spending that will take place during the remaining months of the year. A Pre-order launch in August or September will ensure the buzz is growing by the time consumers begin spending money in October and throughout the month of December. 

Adopting This Method In Small Business

Like those flagship products of big corporations, pre-order sales strategy is an excellent tool in small businesses’ arsenal as well. Small businesses can use this method to: 

• To launch a new flagship product
• Announce specials and limited edition seasonal items
• Small businesses that launching a new service – Non eCommerce
• Offer huge discounts on optimized products with new features

When Setting Up Your Pre-order Advertising Plan

Set up pre-ordering advertisements and ordering capability at least 3 to 5 months before the official product launch to improve your chances of being flooded with orders before ever actually ordering any inventory.

Although, 28% of the orders will come on the first day, when general ordering is allowed, having a 60 to 120-day prelaunch will allow you to capture as many orders as possible and ensure inventory is available to ship on the official product release date. 

Plan to cope with order surge on the official product release date by ordering additional inventory. Also consider planning months ahead to ensure you have the people resources available to pack and ship orders efficiently, even if that means hiring temporary staff workers. 

Remember, An Effective Plan Includes…

Launching the preorder campaign at least 3 to 5 months before the official launch date. As well as choosing the right marketing channels for announcing and advertising the prelaunch and product release date. 

Selecting the right platforms to use for announcements and online advertisements in order to attract the right customers will depend on the type of product you’re selling and where your customers typically hangout online.

To learn more about choosing the right platforms, check out “5 Essential Marketing Channels For Best Exposure“.

Pre-order lifecycle-based timeline

In order to stay motivated and “keep the faith” about the effectiveness of your campaign it’s important to remember that the lifecycle of the pre-order campaign has its highs and lows. Order surges may slow down or even cease after a few days or weeks, and dead zones are common at 7 to 10-day periods. 

You need to plan your advertisement with this in mind. Having a solid SEO plan to leverage those dead days with organic search traffic will help to keep the orders coming and position your site perfectly in SERPs during and after the product release.

Target-oriented marketing team

From marketing to IT, everyone in the organization needs to be involved in the plan. This is to decrease or eliminate the likelihood of breakdowns in communication, or even confusion about what each individual’s responsibilities will be.

Not only does your marketing and IT team need to be dedicated to creating effective strategies but they’ll also need to be able to think outside the box in order to capture audience attention in competitive industries.

Having a deep understanding of the product, and its use cases along with being passionate about the product’s ability to solve a problem will help to solidify team member motivation and campaign success. 

Creating scarcity and value

FOMO, or “fear of missing out” is a strategy often used by clothing lines and tech product companies. This strategy is all too effective because it allows you to leverage the customer’s feelings about losing access to or simply not having the “latest and greatest” version of a product if they don’t act now.

FOMO is typically a feeling that comes about when marketing teams create the feeling of scarcity that induces an influx of preorders, boosting sales, because the consumer will want to make sure they don’t miss out.

Stand Out From Your Competitor

Another option for boosting sales is by adding unmatched value. Positioning your product as one that has all the bells and whistles that they’d wish to have in a product, that your competitors don’t have.

Take care to include in advertising copy all of the features that make your product different and better than your competitors. Offer extra value and increase buyer motivation by including extra discounts or gifts to the first 100 or so purchasers to incentivize the customers.

Active social media platforms to create buzz

Around 71% of customers buy new products based on social media referrals. Thus, creating a buzz using social media might very well be the most important part of your e-commerce campaign.

Prepare your social media channels 2 to 3 months before you begin advertisements about the prelaunch and the official release date. Doing this includes building upon your following by way of social media PPC advertising and creating organic posts.

Organic posts and well as advertising at this stage should focus heavily on videos that users find share-worthy, helpful, and relevant. Be sure to add your website link to your profile to make it easier for you to gain email subscribers from your actual follower base.

Awareness driving campaign 

Social Media isn’t the only way to tell potential customers that you are launching something new and that they have exclusive access to order it early. Use other channels, otherwise, your eCommerce store may not get the visits you need to boost preorder sales.

There are many channels that can be incorporated in launching a preorder campaign. Advertisements on digital platforms like YouTube, and Google are some of the most effective ways to get the word out.

How to set up pre-orders for your product in 5 steps?

Create a Product Page

Once your website is up and running you’ll need to create a specific page, also known as a Landing page that allows users to learn more about your product, its features, the release date and serve as a place to process preorders.

This page will aid in creating buzz about your product while also making it easy for you to share a one-page link directly to product info rather than have to share a link to your home page. Sharing this link rather than the home page will help users quickly find the information they are looking for rather than having to scour your site to find information they are looking for.

This method of using a specific landing page can help you to decrease the risk of users leaving the site because they are unable to locate the preorder product information.  

Be sure your landing page is well-designed, easy to use, and allows customers to order easily.  Advertising ANY other products on this page will not be pre-order best practices.

To learn more about the benefits of using a Landing page for preorder campaigns see “SEO VS. PPC Landing Page (The Benefits & Differences).”

Set up Payment Processing

Like the new page for ordering, your payment processing buy-in step will need to be easy to use and handle order surges during the times when the surge is high.

While you are tailoring the marketing strategies, keep in mind the importance of this component of your sales strategy. It can not be difficult to use or be composed of too many steps or potential customers will surely walk away before completing a purchase. 

Test the Pre-order sequence before launching

No ordering process is perfect, and things happen, but, taking the time to walk through or do the actual clicking through on your website to test out your ordering process will help you to eliminate problems in this part of the buying process before any website users experience them. 

Try going through the ordering process in the same way that your website visitor will. Also, having other team members complete these steps will be helpful. Once problems display themselves assign resolving them to a member of your tech team before launching your campaign.

Keep track of the order and the customers

Using a CRM system during and after your preorder campaign is launched would be very helpful. It allows you to easily keep track of all orders and customers, as well as their satisfaction levels. Additionally, you can use the contact information to offer any future discount programs.

By inviting early-bird customers to provide testimonials before launching new products or services, you can give your future preorder campaigns a boost.

Business is all about nurturing not forgetting

It’s not enough to simply announce your product launch and then wait until the launch day. In the time between your initial announcement and the first order, it’s crucial to take action and spread the word about your product launch and early order campaign.

Make use of all available resources to ensure that your strategies are effective and the execution is top-notch. By nurturing your business idea throughout the development phase, you can ensure that it will bring in revenue for you once it reaches maturity.

Generate Buzz That Leads To Revenue

Pre-order campaigns are a great way for product-based businesses to generate revenue, create buzz and build excitement around a new product release. Offering pre-orders can help you gauge demand, make cost-saving decisions, and develop an effective advertising and sales strategy.

Some essential components of a successful pre-order campaign include local SEO and email marketing. Hiring an online marketing agency is also an option for those with no experience or knowledge in managing pre-order campaigns.

Overall, pre-order campaigns can be a powerful tool for both small and large businesses to launch a new flagship product, announce specials, and offer huge discounts on optimized products with new features.

The Best Website or Landing Page For Preorders!

It’s crucial to have a well-designed website or landing page to capture leads and convert them into sales. If you’re planning a pre-order campaign and need help building your website or landing page, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. Let us help you create a compelling online presence that drives results for your business.