Successful Product Launch Strategies for your Holiday Collection

The holiday season is going to be here before we know it. So, now is the time to start thinking through what your holiday product launch strategies are going to look like. 

Many times, I see people just put their products out there and they don’t have a launch strategy to create buzz and excitement around their new product launches.

That means that you are really missing an opportunity to really make a big splash with your new releases. 

Today, we are going to talk through 4 strategies when it comes to launching your products.

Why you need to be setting goals for your launch, your prelaunch preparation, your launch day execution, and your post launch follow-up. 

Setting goals when it comes to your product launch

I have never been a huge numbers girl but when it comes to business, you really have to be.  

If you want to see how far your business is coming and making sure that you’re headed in the right direction then you need to have goals.  

And so, I have learned to love the gold mine that numbers are.  

And so, I want to set the stage there because when you are working through your product launch strategies, you want to make sure that the strategies you’re implementing are going to provide a great return on your investment.  

So, what are your goals for your product launch?  

Obviously, we want to have increased sales. So, what are those sales targets? I always recommend setting realistic, achievable goals, but I also recommend setting stretch goals.  

If you go back to episode 3, I talk about my journey from corporate life to entrepreneurial life, and I set a goal for myself to be in 4 wholesale boutiques by the end of the year.  

And what happened was, I was in 120 wholesale boutiques within 3 months.  

I obviously sold myself too short.  

And so, I always push my clients and myself to set stretch goals.  

What does that look like when you push yourself and your team to really dream big?  

And taking that a step further, how will you celebrate when you achieve that goal?  

Because so often, we just cruise right on by, and we never stop to really celebrate.  

So, I want you to set the stage as we are preparing and setting our goals to actually think about how you are going to celebrate when you achieve your goals.

And yes, have the mindset that you are going to achieve your goals.  

Your Prelaunch strategy

The second part of this is the prelaunch preparation building anticipation.

1. Host a giveaway – I love utilizing KingSumo* (Join via Appsumo). What KingSumo does is it is an all-in-one platform that your customers can enter in their contact information, and then there’s different ways that they can enter the giveaway. And what is creative about this is not only did you just capture their contact information and you’re building your email list, but the way that they enter the giveaway is by sharing your product information and your product launch information with their audience.  

So, you are literally leveraging their audiences to grow the buzz and the excitement about your upcoming product launch. I love this strategy and it’s worked really well for me in the past, and it’s also exciting for your customers to be able to have a chance to win something, and to win one of your new products.  

2. Leverage your waitlist – Sometimes I’ll open up my wait list and let them shop early, maybe a day or 2 early before the general public, especially if I think I might sell out of my product launch. This generates the scarcity and the urgency, and it’s just a fun way to reward your customers that are loyal followers of your brand.  

3. Partner with influencers – You can find some influencers that align with your brand and your values, and they have a good number of followers. And so, you can reach out to them and provide them with an affiliate link for your products.

Your launch day strategy

On your launch day you can hold an event, be that virtual or in-person or maybe a combination of the two. 

How are you going to engage your audience through these events?  

Maybe you’re going to go live on your social media platforms, or maybe you’re going to have an in-person event.  

If you sell candles and you can do a candle making class, and/or a sip-and-shop at a local boutique that sells your products. 

Or maybe you’re going to have an exclusive offer for anyone that attends your live virtual event.  

So, get creative and think outside the box of how you are going to do a virtual launch event to really celebrate your launch day.  

You’re also going to want to be mindful to monitor social media, and customer feedback and capture that and save that.  

I love capturing social media testimonials and saving those for marketing purposes. 

Also, make sure that you’re responding to any customer questions and inquiries. As well as managing any issues that could arise on launch day quickly, so that you can address those and provide a smooth and seamless customer experience for all of your clients.

Your post follow-up product launch strategies 

This is where we go back to our data and we analyze how our strategies did for us during our launch plan.  

We review our sales data, we our customer feedback, and then we really adjust these strategies based on our performance metrics.  

And it’s also important that we follow-up with any customers and we nurture those relationships that we created during the launch event.  

I also highly recommend that you create an automation strategy for gathering testimonials about your products.  

If you need help with this, then go back and listen to episode 123 with Dolly DeLong.  

She gives a lot of good information about how to automate this process, and you can set this up well before your launch event so that you have a workflow that is seamless and going out to your customers, asking them for product testimonials, and gathering that for use in your marketing efforts down the road, and you can use it for your next launch event.  

Then of course, you will want to analyze what went well, and what could you improve on.  

And now that you have a product launch event under your belt, you can rinse and repeat for your next product collection launch.  

Learn from what didn’t work and what did work, and of course, celebrate your wins.  

Take the time to rest and celebrate. 

4 Strategies for your next launch 

1. We set clear goals and we challenged ourself to stretch those goals.  

2. We took the time to prepare our prelaunch strategy and really build anticipation, buzz, and excitement around our product launch collection.  

3. We had a launch day execution, whether that is virtual or in person, and that is really the culmination of all of our hard work that has probably been weeks months ahead of time.  

4. And then of course we have the post launch follow-up where we’re analyzing and seeing if our strategies actually provided the return on investment that we were anticipating and how we can improve and how we can improve for our next product launch event.  

So, if you would like to listen in on the full podcast episode so that you can implement these product launch strategies in your business to really boost your sales on launch day, press play and let’s boost those sales!