SCALING DIZZY HEIGHTS POST-LAUNCHMAINTAINING POST-LAUNCH MOMENTUM AND

ACHIEVING A STATE OF CONTINUOUS EVOLUTION

You’ve got the attention of your audience, and now you need to turn your prospects into customers. The priority is to maintain an ongoing buzz to keep them interested, intrigued and engaged – in other words, taking them from launch to love. While instant ‘love’ might seem like a natural progression from your big Roar campaign, a person might actually interact with your brand multiple times before making a purchase. So, it could well be your post-launch strategy and activity that converts them.

It is clear, then, that your launch is only the beginning. The next step is to transform launch engagement into sales by harnessing the excitement and energy of your launch campaign to create a state of continuous evolution (a constant series of mini Buzz, Rumble and Roar campaigns). Doing so will help you turn customers into loyal fans that love your brand, share your content and keep coming back for more.

SO, YOU’VE SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED YOUR NEW PRODUCT OR BRAND.

BUZZ

RUMBLE

ROAR

Achieving success at the post-launch stage is all about having a realistic, forward-thinking and creative strategy in place from the start, so that when you launch, you know exactly where it’s going. This is a simple idea that many brands overlook – getting so wrapped up in the big Roar that they don’t think about what will happen afterwards.

Neglecting the Buzz is just one of the common reasons some brands falter at this stage. Other stumbling blocks include not allocating sufficient budget to cover post-launch activity, not aligning internal teams with the ongoing Buzz strategy, having agencies that are not working collaboratively (and in the brand’s best interest), and not clearly defining a connected purpose (this should be at the heart of post-launch activity for the next three to five years).

STUMBLING BLOCKS

SUFFICIENT BUDGET

INTERNAL TEAMS

AGENCY COLLABORATION

CONNECTED PURPOSE

There’s no sense in crafting an all-singing, all-dancing launch that just fizzles out with no long-term benefits to show for it. Therefore, you need to create an effective landing pad that delivers real, ongoing benefits. Your landing pad is all about forming communities and an ongoing dialogue with your audience to make sure you’re at the front of their mind when they come to buy (particularly for high-end products that have long purchase

cycles, such as cars). This could be done online, through an app, via social channels or even face-to-face (through events or experiential activities).

Electric car manufacturer Tesla, for example, has created a simple but popular online forum where fans can talk all things Tesla. As such, the brand has cultivated a loyal and active community that

gets stuck into a wide range of topics, from where the car industry is going to the latest controversies within the Trump administration. Importantly, not all of these fans are, as yet, Tesla owners. But, by creating a passionate community, and giving them a platform on which they can engage with the brand, Tesla ensures it is front and centre in car fans’ minds – and that’s something they’ll remember when they come to purchase their next car.

OVERCOMING THE STUMBLING BLOCKS WITH AN EFFECTIVE LANDING PAD

BE TRUE TO YOUR CONNECTED PURPOSE: Your connected purpose (the space where you and your customers come together) is crucial post-launch, as it will help your audience to build deeper, longer lasting connections with your brand. Create content that resonates with your users’ values, as this connection is something that can live on beyond the launch. For example, Molson Coors Brewing Co.’s red beer fridge campaign, which promotes multiculturalism in Canada (and in the world generally!), found new relevance recently, in light of President Donald Trump’s immigration ban in the US.

INCENTIVISE YOUR CUSTOMERS: Offer your audience rewards for interacting with your brand. As well as keeping them happy, it provides valuable data that can be used to further personalise experiences. Anchor Butter’s Good Stuff Hub, for example, lets their audience share ideas, inspiration and recipes, and gives them exclusive access to promotions – this is a great example of both building a community and incentivisation.

DEVELOP AN ECRM STRATEGY: Don’t forget about email. Use it to offer your audience entertaining or informative content that builds loyalty with your brand, encourages them to purchase or leads them to your community. If you’re going to retarget users, make sure the content is still relevant.

CREATE COHESIVE DIGITAL EXPERIENCES:Think about abandoned cart strategies, data collection processes and having customer service infrastructure in place that is robust enough to respond to high volumes of queries. It’s about understanding what questions your audience may have, where they could go next, and having all your bases covered.

GET SOCIAL: There are many ways social media can help you gain feedback on your launch and enhance your post-launch activity, such as using social listening tools. Dark social (e.g. instant messaging and native social apps) can be a huge source of referral traffic, and, by integrating sharing widgets and URL shorteners, you can track the use of your content within these channels. Snapchat and Instagram stories can be a great way to share raw content that keeps people engaged, or to roll out an influencer strategy to gain endorsement and spread the word wider.

TAKE IT OFFLINE: Experiential marketing helps to sustain post-launch momentum as it gets people talking and creates a Buzz – like when Cadbury sent its Double Decker bus (complete with conductor) around universities during Freshers’ Week in September 2016. As well as free chocolate, the bus enticed hungry students in with a fun slide, ball pit and soft play area. Why not organise a scavenger hunt that integrates with social media, or hold special in-store events and offers to create an experience that your customers can get on board with.

Every brand is different, so the ideas you have for your post-launch strategy will probably not be the same as another brand’s (this is a good thing!). Saying that, there are some tips all brands can take note of to help them maintain momentum. Here are just a few;

HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM POST-LAUNCH MOMENTUM

Nailing the post-launch stage is about always keeping an eye on the bigger picture and thinking about creating an ongoing series of mini-launches, rather than seeing the launch as a one-off main event. Consumers live in the Buzz state, not a constant Roar state. And this is where the majority of their purchasing decisions are made, so your launch efforts should ultimately lead to here. By achieving a state of perpetual launch (with mini campaigns to keep up the momentum) or continual evolution, your brand will stay competitive, exciting and relevant in a constantly changing world.

Just look at Sport England’s “This Girl Can” campaign, for example: following a huge Roar around the launch, it created a state of perpetual launch where it introduced the hashtags #ThisGirlCan and #MyReason and enabled users to create their own campaign videos – helping to maintain momentum over a long period of time. Two years since the original launch, it has just released a second advert that builds on the original message.

This campaign also confirms how important a connected purpose is between a brand and its consumer. Sport

England’s unwavering commitment to its connected purpose means that “This Girl Can” has become a way of life for many women – a place to share their achievements, support others and seek inspiration.

This type of ‘big push and sustained love’ strategy is largely used by brands that want to boost awareness of a new product, brand or service, while continuing to be present during consumers’ everyday moments. Crucially, big push and sustained love strategies influence the overall marketing strategy, not just launch-specific plans. They involve developing a community that users want to be part of, usually via some sort of social media participation, like #ThisGirlCan.

As a brand, Sport England doesn’t need to keep re-creating or re-positioning their message – their core brand essence platform overarches every single campaign, everything they do lathers up to the same connected purpose. This is the ultimate state for brands – executing the big Roar launch with a connected purpose so unwavering that the Buzz lasts for three to five years and underpins everything the brand does going forward.

SHIFTING YOUR MINDSET TO CREATE A STATE OF CONTINUAL EVOLUTION

In summary, maintaining post-launch momentum and shifting to a state of continual evolution is all about channelling the excitement of the big Roar into a well-thought-out post-launch strategy that keeps your audience interested and intrigued.

REMAIN TRUE to your connected purpose, which helps you build more meaningful relationships with your audience.

REWARD CUSTOMERS for interacting with your brand.

SUMMARY

To successfully pull this off, you’ll need to:

Developing a robust landing pad for your launch gives direction to your launch (not the other way round), and makes sure it is as impactful as possible. By always listening to your audience, understanding their journey and challenging your connected purpose, you can be sure to create an ongoing dialogue that users love, and that keeps them coming back to your brand again and again.

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ENTERTAIN AND INFORM your audience with winning content.

CREATE A COHESIVE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE that clearly maps the customer’s journey and the questions they ask themselves.

ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS online, particularly through social media and dark social channels; and offline, by creating experiences they won’t forget.

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