How to launch a product on social media: Strategies for success

A successful social media product launch should always tick a few boxes.

Cost-effective? Check. Scalable? Double-check. Positive return on investment (ROI)? Triple-check.

According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 68% of consumers follow brands on social to stay informed about new products or services. The data shows consumers are discovering and researching new products on social media platforms, making it a popular way to announce your latest offerings.

The aim for a social media product launch is to generate excitement, drive sales and boost brand image. But with so much competition, it’s important to get the fundamental parts of a product launch right.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key steps and strategies to ensure a successful social media product launch. From setting goals and choosing the right platforms for your social media marketing strategy to measuring results, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make your product launch on social media effective.

Optimizing your social media product launch strategy

To launch a product on social media successfully, brands must start by setting clear goals and building a solid strategy.

Define clear goals and KPIs

According to the Index, marketers plan to connect the value of social campaigns to business goals, with 60% of marketers aiming to quantify the value of social engagements through potential revenue impact.

Before publishing a single post about an upcoming product launch on social media, clearly map out your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the campaign. Are you on the hunt for mentions and new followers? Engagement from your community? Direct social sales?

Start by outlining what you want the campaign to achieve and linking these goals with KPIs that matter.

Choose the right social media platforms

Every social media network has different audiences and uses. Before launching a product, align on:

• Your target audience. Understand where your target audience spends their time online, as some demographics and interests are more present on certain channels than others.
• Network strengths. While TikTok is a great option for product launches involving videos and influencers, LinkedIn is well suited for corporate products or targeting larger businesses.
• Campaign goals. Do you want to build brand awareness or drive people to buy a product immediately? The main goal for the campaign will help you decide which social media networks to focus on.

Craft a compelling product launch narrative

Strong brand messaging is the key to making a product launch stand out. It helps the campaign focus on what you’re selling, and why it matters to your target audience.

Highlight the benefits and unique features of the new product, but the main message should focus on connecting features to your audience’s pain points. When Grammarly launched Grammarly Authorship, its messaging focused on solving the challenge of balancing AI-written content with human oversight instead of just features.

This product launch narrative fostered an emotional connection between the audience and the product (spotting AI-written words) rather than focus on the technical aspects of how the feature works.

Building anticipation on social media

Creating excitement for a new product on social media is a large part of a successful launch. It requires a well-crafted plan full of engaging content that’s published at strategic times.

Create a launch timeline and content calendar

Teaser posts, stories and social activities leading up to the product launch are all pieces of a product launch timeline.

Although you might need all of these deliverables for every social media product launch, you will need to plan accordingly. Having a defined social media content calendar and asset library puts all of your social media marketing assets in one place, so you avoid having to scramble to fill in the gaps during a social launch.

Below is an example of a social content calendar in Sprout, which enables you to schedule your content across networks based on your timeline. This helps you align your messaging and timeline so your product launches successfully. You can also access all of your brand assets using Sprout’s Asset Library.

Use anticipatory content to promote your product launch

A good product launch doesn’t reveal too much too soon. Use a mix of “coming soon” posts, countdowns, product previews and early giveaways to drive social media engagement and excitement.

This speaks to the importance of putting together a launch timeline and your marketing creatives well before your launch to make sure your messaging is consistent.

For example, check out this email from Graza announcing its latest food product. The email previews a granola made with olive oil, natural ingredients and a limited number of boxes available to purchase.

Days later, Grazola followed up with a teaser post on Instagram asking followers to guess what the new product would be to generate interest.

Partner with influencers to generate buzz

Influencers are an ideal way to reach your target audience through someone they already trust. As long as an influencer has a strong following that aligns with your target market, they can broaden the reach of your product launch.

The main hurdle when building a partnership with an influencer for a product launch is finding one that aligns with both your brand and target audience. Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger) helps you connect with top creators in your industry to plan and execute product launch campaigns and measure success.

With Sprout, you can find the right influencers with a target audience match, negotiate contracts and generate content calendars for your product launch. The platform also analyzes post performance across each social media network so you can measure ROI from each paid influencer you engage with.

Launch day and beyond

Launching a product on social media isn’t just about creating a buzz. It’s about executing strategic plans, promoting to the right audience and maintaining momentum after publishing your posts.

Executing your social media product launch

Successfully executing a product launch on social media is all in the details.

According to Greg Rokisky, Senior Social Media Strategist at Sprout, strong partnerships across internal teams are the best way to make a splash on socials. When Sprout recently announced its integration with Salesforce’s Agentforce assistant for Service Cloud, their teams worked cross-functionally on the launch from the moment they knew it was coming.

Sprout’s team shared information about Agentforce on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram Reels to help with the launch. The launch strategy involved brainstorming between the Creative and Product Marketing teams. These sessions resulted in creating social video assets that could be used across Reels, TikTok and Linkedin.

“We wanted it to be very lo-fi, so we were able to align with our product marketing, internal communications and creative partners on asset direction and who would film talent. We used Sprout’s Employee Advocacy tool to have something ready the morning it went live as well as having assets in a timely manner to be able to schedule it in Sprout at the optimal send times on launch day,” Rokisky says.

“All of this to say that to be prepared for a social-first product launch, it starts well before launch day,” he says.

Use paid advertising to promote your campaign

Paid advertising can amplify the reach of social media campaigns. It’s an investment, but can return dividends in exposure and engagement.

Decide what demographic and channel to invest in and then narrow down your audience using your chosen channel’s ad tools. For example, if you want to set up paid ads on Facebook for the product launch, you can choose to target people living in a particular country. It’ll then calculate potential reach based on your parameters and budget.

Once these parameters are built, turn your attention to crafting a message that makes your ads stand out.

Monitoring social media conversations

During a product launch, it’s crucial to have all hands on deck when it comes to customer care. This isn’t just about catching negative remarks—it’s about engaging with your audience to gather early feedback.

Since social media interactions are transparent and forward-facing, you’re not just answering them for one customer: You’re likely answering for multiple followers curious about what you’re selling.

If you are jumping between multiple social networks or have multiple people on your support team, tools like Sprout’s Smart Inbox keep all of your customer interactions on social within a single platform, all the while enabling teams to work together at the same time.

Sprout’s Listening tools can also track keywords related to your product launch to track whether audience sentiment is positive or negative.

Measuring and optimizing your results

What happens post-launch is equally important as the product launch itself. Understanding campaign performance using the metrics and KPIs you identified at the start is the best way to know how to optimize future product launches.

Analyzing your social media metrics

As your launch wraps up, use social media analytics tools to track the performance of your launch to reflect on what worked and what didn’t. This brings us full circle as you think about your goals and KPIs.

Did your social efforts result in direct sales? Did you improve storefront traffic from social? Did your mentions increase during your launch?

These answers and more can be determined through your analytics tech stack including social media analytics. Google Analytics can attribute website visits and conversions to various social networks. Meanwhile, native social analytics and URL tracking can attribute specific clicks to your social campaigns.

Sprout’s suite of social analytics tools provide a breakdown of performance across networks, including impressions, reach, engagements, conversions and clicks. With automated reporting, you can explain which social networks were most successful and demonstrate the ROI of doing a social-first product launch.

Making data-driven improvements for future product campaigns

Campaign analytics will give you the data needed to optimize your live launch activations and reflect and improve. The data collected throughout the launch will clearly show which social media posts generated the most buzz and if certain networks performed better with your audience. Incorporating these insights will help you pivot and tweak based on what the product launch campaign data tells you.

Social media product launch post ideas to inspire you

Launching a product on social media isn’t just about announcing your new product. It’s about telling a story that engages your audience. Here are some examples of brands that used storytelling to successfully launch a product.

Wilson x Caitlin Clark Limitless Collection

2024 was the biggest year in WNBA history for brands and advertisers and Wilson didn’t miss a beat when the sporting goods brand partnered with rookie Caitlin Clark to release an exclusive collection of basketballs.

The collection was highlighted on the brand’s social media for weeks, telling the story of how Clark dreamed of getting a basketball scholarship and one day making it to the WNBA. One of the special-edition basketballs featured Clark’s childhood handwriting.

To get a chance of buying a ball, people had to sign up for exclusive access and were notified when the collection dropped. When Clark’s signature basketballs finally went on sale, it sold out in less than 40 minutes.

The lesson from Wilson’s product launch is simple: Tell a story, know your audience and build up hype by making the product an exclusive offer.

ClickUp’s answer to Slack

When project management software company ClickUp launched its alternative to the communication platform Slack, they did so by going viral on LinkedIn.

The brand created a campaign called #CutTheSlack to directly challenge Slack by offering its own messaging tool as a better option. The campaign caught traction on social media because it used sarcastic humor and dared to be different in the software industry.

Not only did the campaign go viral, it also earned mentions in publications like VentureBeat after it launched.

Magic Spoon’s limited-edition launch

When Magic Spoon’s cereal started making noise in 2019, it was a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand that could only be purchased online. It focused on marketing its product by sponsoring podcasts, making TikToks and harnessing influencers to promote its cereal online. However, the market was saturated, so it needed a way to stand out.

The brand decided to launch a limited-edition bowl and spoon for its third birthday.

The tactic worked, and the bowl went viral. Magic Spoon now re-releases the bowl in limited edition numbers and demand is always high.

Your product launch success story starts here

Launching a new product on social media is all about the planning.

It’s crucial to get your team aligned on the goal of the launch and which networks are the best for your content. Partnering with influencers to create engaging content is a great way to generate buzz for your new product, and using paid promotions can give more exposure to your target audience.

To give your next campaign the best chance of success, we put together this product launch checklist template to make sure it gets the social promotion strategy it deserves. It’s designed for creating a social-specific product launch campaign brief and setting up post-launch metrics that matter most to your brand.