BUILDING HYPE BEFORE YOUR PRODUCT LAUNCH IS ESSENTIAL FOR LAUNCH SUCCESS.
So, you’re ready for your big launch and your product / service is going through internal tests.
Well congrats, you’ve made it half-way through.
Now, its time to face the other half of your products journey before launch.
Product readiness doesn’t mean that it’ll become successful on launch.
In fact 75% of consumer packaged goods and retail products fail to earn even $7.5 million during the first year.
This goes to show that a proper launch strategy is important to be successful at launch.
Here we should bring in hype for our products / services.
How to generate Hype?
Hype can be defined as a way to create demand for a product by any means.
But, in order to build hype we need to first identify our product or service.
Typically, the best and most successful forms of viral marketing can derive from desire.
BMW Advertisement (Source: BMW)
Let’s analyze the advertisement from BMW above.
First, we can note that much of the space is given to the car. Hence, creating an interest in the object we’re promoting.
Second, the text reads “My bonus is faster than your bonus”.
Now, this text to most might sound like an ego boost.
But its much more than that. The text above is giving motivation, and creating an urge to try harder.
What BMW tried to express in the marketing text mentioned above is.
That their product is a sign of Progress.
The feeling amongst most BMW drivers is mutual. BMW wants to be known as the brand for achievers.
From production quality to the public perspective, everything is meant to be elegant.
This is one of the many aspects that a brand promoter can use to capture their audience.
By tapping into the emotions of your target audience, you’re going to grab their interests.
Even if you don’t make much conversions directly, you can deliver a brand image to drive the value of your organization.
So, we must apply this to our pre-launch strategy.
First, by applying an emotion to our promotional marketing strategy.
To do this we should look into how our product(s) or service(s) can apply on our users life.
Let’s say we’re introducing an e-commerce brand that provides superior quality products for affordable prices.
Our ideal consumers would be the middle-class that seek for reliance, let’s explore why later.
So in our promotional videos, social media posts and etc.
We must express the ease of usability and trust that our platform can provide the users.
By building our brand on an emotion we can trigger the curiosity of our brand.
So this will be sure to grab their attention. But, we’re not still at HYPE level yet!
Mystery Content
There’s no doubt that the unknown is more intriguing than what’s familiar.
Almost every successful brand that drives its presence based on hype includes mystery for its product.
Bella Hadid Instagram Fyre Festival Post (Source: Forbes)
Who else remembers Influencer Marketing’s biggest horror story the Fyre Festival.
Although the Fyre Festival was a major failure.
It did bring light to the power of hype marketing.
Obstacles the Fyre Festival Overcame
Here are three points on why the Fyre Festival Marketing strategy was super effective.
#1: The Fyre Festival hadn’t a previous iteration and wasn’t well known before marketing.
#2: The Festival wasn’t distributed by a well reputed company in the entertainment industry.
#3: They never revealed too much in their marketing campaign, but just enough to create interests.
Despite all these difficulties, The Fyre Festival still gained the attention of thousands and got sold out soon.
A part of the reason for this is the mysterious Orange Square that Fyre Festival used to grab the attention of influencer followers.
Whilst many sponsored posts were filled with a clutter of products, rich graphics, texts and etc.
The Fyre Media team decided to use just an Orange Square to promote their festival.
This obviously created a mystery to the campaign and made people wonder what it was.
If your product or service is yet to launch, be sure to create some mystery around it.
Identify Your Audience
Your audience should be fitting your brand.
Let’s explore the e-commerce example I gave in the “How to generate Hype?” segment.
By simply researching on our competitors and identifying what the climate is like for our business.
SWOT Analysis (Source: Investopedia)
We came to the conclusion that the middle-class would be the ideal audience for our brand, but why?
First we conduct an analysis on the field in which our product is going to be based on, which is “E-Commerce at Affordable Rates”.
Our Competitive Research will bring about a vast range of information about our audience in general.
But, the most important point to note is that our audience’s financial standpoint.
When it comes to e-commerce usage. People will typically use the giants that dominate the marketplace such as Amazon and eBay.
But, the only reason they might prefer to go for another e-commerce brand is for specific reasons.
This can range from affordability, usability, customer service and etc.
So, we need to figure out what strengths and weaknesses we have.
By ranking in the factors we take from the Porters Five Forces, we can make use of a strategy to dominate this marketplace.
Announcements at Special Events
From Conventions to Special Announcement events.
Many top brands have utilized the hype they’ve generated so far using the promotional means explored earlier.
This can be considered the final straw on your pre-launch strategy.
In an announcement event, which could either be in a convention that’s taking place within your industry or your own hosted event.
You can give out further detailed explaining your product or brand.
Keep in mind, that this strategy is not practical for brands that have not yet set foot in an industry.
Rather, this must be a means to promote a newer product for your suite of existing products or tools.
Let’s take Apple for example, and the infamous WWDC (WorldWide Developers Conference) events.
Steve Jobs Key Note Example (Source: WIRED)
Most of us can’t forget the SteveNote that was presented during the WWDC keynote speeches.
These keynote speeches that began the entire event was key to identifying the important aspects of the entire event.
By constantly giving out surprising product launches, software announcements and allowing for one-on-one engagement for attendees with developers.
Apple had created a hype for this event, so much so that even the event itself is looked forward to the most.
With the scarcity of tickets available, many developers and journalist from across the globe work hard to get a ticket.
Which is usually priced at $1599, to hear what apple has to announce.
For some this may seem as a rip-off, or that apple is just taking advantage of “dumb people”.
But the truth is the Return-On-Investment from attending this event is undeniable.
There are many benefits to meeting apple engineers and discussing with them the benefit of the latest software feature announcements.
From Gaming Developers to App Store Developers, everyone likes to get the best insight they can to grow their products.
So, let’s steal a page off of Apples marketing book and create hype for not just our products, but also our announcement events.
This will generate more interests in our brand as a whole.
And we could do this by including interaction with our audiences during the event.
Always creating a wonderful journey-like experience during our announcements will help to increase attention.
Don’t make your announcements traditional and typical. Utilize your brand image values and include it in your announcement events.
Tip: Elevate the Industry
If your product is disruptive, you must explore the means to express your brand features.
An important point to note if your product is looking to change an industry is that your key differences must be expressed properly.
You need to show what you’re capable of doing for your potential consumers.
And your brand must be displayed as an organization that can elevate the Industry.
Which means that you need to raise the bar of standards with your products.
Now, standards can typically mean many things, such as Quality, Affordable, Customization and etc.
Whichever your organization wishes to persuade on, you must be expressive.
Your brand needs to talk to the masses.
To do this you must utilize a marketing technique most frequently used by Apple, Storytelling.
Storytelling is the marketing method of explaining your product under a story-like manner.
Apple uses storytelling by explaining the use cases of their products for their consumers on a daily basis.
Be sure to express your brand on your pre-launch strategy and let those who seek for more content get the right information.
Your pre-launch marketing campaign must definitely build hype for the product, to satisfy the entire journey so far.