Can’t stop, won’t stop – don’t stop! How to keep up momentum after a launch
After the stress, exhaustion and thrill of a launch, it’s easy to want to take your foot off the gas. After all, you got the word out, created touches with consumers, got press clips and achieved some real results.
Now comes the hard part: maintaining momentum.
This doesn’t mean you need to do a full-court press. But you can’t just disappear, either. A good strategy to keep up the progress is like committing to go to the gym a few times a week. And maybe eating well, too.
You don’t need to pump iron for three hours, six days a week. But doing your 30 minutes of cardio combined with strategic weightlifting, and a healthy diet, will do wonders for your body. And the same philosophy can be applied to marketing.
You’ll want to continue to create touchpoints with your audiences: media, potential users and those who have already expressed interest.
Media will be the toughest one, because much of the interest and excitement surrounding a launch will disappear. But that shouldn’t deter from being creative and helpful while you stay top of mind. Say you’re an ice cream shop – Ike’s Ice Creamery – that had a grand opening a month ago (forgive the mixed metaphor with the workout notion above). You can still achieve press visibility by, say, debuting a Halloween flavor ahead of Oct. 31, or sponsoring a Little League team, or holding a fundraiser for an important cause. Promotions like this give media a reason to pay attention to you, create goodwill in the community and a natural way to promote your brand.
There are a hundred ways to stay visible to potential users. In-store promotions, guerilla marketing tactics, corporate partnerships, giveaways and street teams, and advertising are just a few. Today there are more ways than ever to reach your target audience down to the ZIP code through advertising on social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Google. While each medium has audiences that use the platforms in different ways, there are likely ways for you to take advantage of their interests, desires and problems.
How might Ike’s do that? Let’s say Ike’s is located in Naperville, Illinois, a large, affluent suburb of Chicago. The time might be right for a Google Ads campaign – where the intent of the user is clear: they’re looking for a solution – where they’re positioned as an “ice cream shop Naperville” or something similar. Ike’s is marketing itself to its neighbors who might not know about it, but have a taste for some sweet, sweet ice cream. (By posting content on its website and having a good SEO presence on its site, Ike’s can do even better with organic Google searches.)
A series of visually enticing ads on Facebook and Instagram, offering coupon codes, special deals and the like, aimed at Ike’s target demographic would expose them to the shop, if not entice them to try it out. Add that to a consistent social media campaign – not a paid strategy, but organic – in an effort to build more exposure, capture emails and build an online customer base, and Ike’s is on its way to some sweet rewards.
Oh, and there’s that existing customer base, too. Hopefully Ike’s is doing its best to capture email addresses and birthdays so that it can continue to market to its existing customers, turning them into loyal customers. Ike’s can target those folks, specifically, on Facebook (if there are enough of them). It can communicate to them through a newsletter, establishing loyalty, growing its social media base and inspiring word-of-mouth sharing about this great new ice cream shop.
To keep momentum, business as usual means keeping the pressure on.
And now I need an ice cream cone. Got any recommendations?
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