It feels right to prepare a huge launch after spending months trying to develop your company's perfect product or service. Who doesn't want to hype up their products? No one.
But, you have to prepare to give your product the debut that it deserves. This is tricky, considering we're in the middle of a global COVID-19 pandemic.
The lockdown has affected the budgets of many businesses out there. This effect also caused postponement in product launches for both online and offline platforms.
There sadly won’t be any trade shows, pop-ups, and parties in real life for your latest product.
However, some brands have still chosen to push through with introducing their product to the world. They changed the norms when it comes to product launch activities by adapting it into online means to keep people away from the risks of COVID-19.
Like Glossier, which introduced its hand cream back in April. The beauty brand gave the product away to medical frontliners who religiously sanitize their hands with drying products. This online community-centric product campaign was a success and even became a topic among fashion news websites. Genius, right?
To help you reach your objectives, we rounded up some of the most effective marketing tools you can use for your online product launch.
Product Launch Tools for Online Success
One of the biggest pitfalls of product launches is the lack of preparation. According to an interview by Schneider Associates by Harvard Business Review, "companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game."
You want to prepare and get all the help you need when you’re launching something for your business.
When used right, the tools in this list can give your existing product launch plan or new product launch strategy an extra helping hand. We've listed down various tools for you, from data analytics platforms to social media listening tools, down to easy one-page website builders.
Carrd
For new businesses, acquiring a website can be costly. Carrd is a one-page website platform that you can use as a landing page for your campaign. The service is free and full-customizable. However, the brand also provides website templates to let you have a great design even if you have no graphics experience.
Upgrading your plan to Carrd's Pro version gives you access to features like forms, widgets, and more.
Drift
Searching for leads can be done without using the traditional methods of cold calling and emailing. Drift is a conversational marketing platform that provides artificial intelligence (AI). You can use this system to talk to every single one of your website visitors in real-time. Doing so helps you convert visitors into leads and, ultimately, shorten sales cycles.
Notify
Staying on top of every mention becomes a handful for brands with small marketing teams. Notify lets you know anytime your band gets talked about on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, among other sources.
The platform shoots you an email or a Slack notification. It is up to you to select the keywords and accounts you want to monitor. This is a great tool to help you research your audience and measure your social presence.
Instapage
Consisting of six different tools, Instapage lets users more relevant landing pages for online ads. It lets entrepreneurs and marketing professionals visually edit a page. You can create a website without developer know-how.
You can use it for multivariate testing, ad campaign analytics, collaboration, and more.
Mixpanel
For product testing, you can check out Mixpanel. It is used by brands like Uber, DocuSign, and more. The tool features analytics for user conversion, activation, retention, etc. You can also use this for various activities, such as keeping track of data and report making.
This tool allows for integrations, too. The in-house dedicated developers in your team can connect data from your customer data platform, internal pipeline, or its software development kit.
Qualaroo
eCommerce UX designers utilize Qualaroo for automated research. You can use this to get insight into your website, app, product feedback, conversion rate, and UX.
The responses are given in real-time, unlike the traditional email surveys. Qualaroo tool lets you target participants according to their movement, pattern, location, cookies, and other factors. This advanced targeting method helps you acquire better data.
Zapier
Accessing multiple websites such as Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Twitter, and more with one site is possible with automation platforms like Zapier. Zapier lets you streamline 2,000 web apps and organize them for better collaboration.
The site lets you have "Zaps," which are repetitive tasks that you can automate like sending emails.
Airtable
Airtable is a smart spreadsheet that gives brands a choice to store and organize data. It can be likened to Excel and Google sheets, except that this tool is more customizable.
This makes it a powerful tool for product management monday, creative communication teams, and more. Brands like Conde Nast Entertainment, BuzzFeed, Penguin Random House, and Time are some of its most notable users.
Domains Bot
When selecting a name, you want something that is relevant, original, and appropriate. You can get suggestions for your website name in over 10 different languages.
This tool gives you semantic-based solutions for your website. In simpler terms, Domains Bot generates name ideas for your domain.
Name Mesh
Name Mesh is another domain name generator you can use to find original and available name ideas. The tool also runs checks on hyphenated versions of your name idea. It allows you to use different methods like collocations, synonyms, portmanteau, phonetic variations, etc. to get more options.
Conclusion
With the right tools and approach, your business can let people know about your freshest product amid the lockdown. Every tool we've featured in this list gives you an edge when it comes to organizing your team, data analytics, and streamlining activities.
Don't forget to give your new product launch strategy some well-designed graphics to go with it.
From event posters to t-shirt design, you can achieve your branding goals with the help of a design contest. DesignCrowd continues to help small businesses work alongside talented designers through crowdsourcing contests. Connect with the community here.
If you're still in the early ages of your product development, BrandCrowd's logo maker will help you set your business up. You can create a visual identity for your brand in minutes. It lets you customize a ready-made design related to industries such as tech logos, fashion logos, food logos, and more. Try it today.
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Written by DesignCrowd on Friday, October 16, 2020
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.
