Digital marketing is more important today than ever before. Over 266 million American consumers shop online — that’s around 80% of the total US population.
Digital marketing is particularly important during your product launch. Without a clear digital marketing strategy, you may lose out on consumers who exclusively shop online.
A clear digital launch strategy can also improve your brand presence and help you connect with new audiences. Digital materials usually reach a wider audience than physical ones and you can use data analytics to record consumer characteristics for use in the future.
Digital Marketing Basics
Before you start working on your next product launch, you must understand the basics of digital marketing. Digital marketing can be more complicated than physical marketing, as you have access to more data and insights thanks to digital analytics that track user behavior.
You can take digital marketing courses to get up to speed. Digital marketing courses will teach you skills like how to make use of Google Analytics and the basics of Photoshop. Having a broad understanding of digital marketing is essential if you want to make the most of your next product launch.
Start by familiarizing yourself with Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you an insider’s view of your digital marketing campaigns. This is particularly important in the lead-up to a product launch, as you’ll need to understand how to turn data into information to create marketing materials that help you stand out online.
Stand Out Online
Digital marketing is a huge opportunity for your business. However, getting noticed in the digital realm can be tricky. Many of your competitors may have a distinct digital presence. This makes it more difficult to get noticed online, as your competitors may have outbid you on keywords and other relevant SEO metrics.
Start by creating a clear business strategy for the digital age. A clear strategy will maximize your ROI and improve the effectiveness of your product launch. This may change the way you operate entirely. For example, you may need to create a position for a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) to improve digital awareness and claim more of the digital market for yourself.
Redesigning your business strategy to embrace the digital age can be nerve-wracking. However, innovative leaders embrace uncertainty. This may mean that you make a few mistakes but, in the long run, a switch to adopt digital marketing will almost certainly pay off.
Embracing change gives you a chance to stand out online. Your competitors, who may be slow to adopt data-based marketing, will be behind the curve in years to come if you have adopted a “Digital Age Council” and successfully integrated “Digital Natives” into your leadership teams.
Consistent Branding
It’s easy to get carried away during a product launch. You want your new offering to stand out and will do almost anything to get extra eyes on your web pages and socials. However, before you head in an entirely new direction, be sure to check in with your branding officers first.
Consistent branding ensures that consumers know who you are and what you represent. This is as true in the digital world as in the physical one. However, when you create digital materials for a product launch, you have a wider range of content options to choose from.
For example, let’s say you are interested in filming value-based marketing content. Before you start putting together storyboards, consider your branding and pre-existing company values first. This will ensure that your content feels authentic to returning consumers who discover your digital launch.
Remember that you can borrow from physical marketing, too. Your social media posts can borrow effective design elements from fliers or other promotional materials you use IRL. This will save you time during the design phase and ensure that your materials feel consistent across platforms.
Customer Feedback
Traditionally, customer feedback was hard to come by. You could send out surveys and conduct questionnaires, but gathering physical feedback is almost always a labor-intensive process. Digital marketing allows you to gather pre-launch customer feedback quickly and effectively.
You can gather traditional forms of feedback online. Embedding links to surveys hosted by SurveyMonkey, Facebook polls, or Google Forms can still be highly effective. However, these strategies still rely on user engagement and participation.
Instead, consider gathering customer feedback through strategies like A/B testing. A/B testing involves hosting two versions of the same launch page and assessing the effectiveness of each page.
For example, if you are about to launch a new range of ice cream flavors, you might run two versions of the same site for your consumers. One version might show off your new raspberry ripple flavor. The other might display images of your mint-chocolate flavor. Gather analytics like bounce rate and dwell time of both pages to determine which resonates the most with consumers.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a must-have for your next product launch. Creating a strong digital presence will introduce you to new customers and may have a lasting impact on your business operations. Start by training yourself to understand the basics of digital marketing and consider running A/B testing to see which launch will be more effective.
By Indiana Lee, BOSS contributor
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