Tag: Social Media Platforms

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Social Media

How to maximise ROI for restaurants through social media marketing

Want your restaurant to become the talk of town? Then get started with social media!

Being a social media agency in Ahmedabad, if there is anything we have worked most with it is food. We have closely witnessed how social media has revolutionised the way small businesses, especially restaurants, market themselves. Social media marketing includes the use of platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more to promote products or services, increase brand awareness, engage with customers and much more.

Do restaurants need a social media agency?

Since they are direct to consumers, more than others, restaurant businesses must be active digitally, to succeed and stay competitive. But how?

Flora fountain is at your SERVICE!! 🛎️

As the top digital marketing agency in Gujarat, we have compiled the ultimate guide to restaurant social media marketing with expert tips and insights on effectively leveraging it to boost your restaurant’s online presence.

Identifying your target audience

For any campaign or strategy to resonate, you have to understand the audience. What is your target audience’s age, gender, income strata? This will give you some insight into their interests, needs and desires.

You will help you make intelligent predictions about which social media platform they are most likely to use, what time they are likely to be online, what kind of content / memes would work for them. By identifying your target audience and speaking to their interests and needs, you have a higher chance of increasing your business visibility and relatability.

A sample breakdown of target audience segmentation

Selecting the social media platforms

The mind-boggling number of posts on Instagram related to #Food

Being everywhere is not the answer. Being on the right platform in the right way is! Popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram are among the top choices for Indian restaurant businesses.Most users are likely to go there seeking inspiration and connection with a food brand. For validation, they will often seek out Google Business Profile and Zomato, since these two platforms will also have reviews.

To determine which platforms to use, consider your target audience and their social media habits. Most top social media agencies utilise Instagram as the prime social media platform for restaurant businesses. Simply because it is a more visual platform helping showcase both food and ambience. Two key decision-making factors for audiences to notice, engage and (hopefully!) eat at a restaurant.

Once you’ve chosen your platforms, creating a strong online presence on each starts with an effective digital marketing strategy. Who you are speaking to, what you should be speaking about and why they will care become the bedrock questions of this strategy. A strategy that often results in things like social media profile optimisation for maximum relatability, creating and using engaging content regularly to connect with the audience, how you respond to your audience and even which moment marketing trends your brand should latch on to.

#FloraTIP: Having your restaurant registered in popular food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato acts as an additive benefit for brand visibility.

Creating a social media marketing strategy

A 2021 report in New Times confirmed what we observed and believed, pictures of delicious-looking food can stimulate the brain by releasing those ‘happy hormones’ and creating craving. Now, combined with the 229 million Instagram users in India, this presents itself as a great opportunity for restaurants to promote their offerings to potential customers on the platform.

Now to achieve this level of desirability on a regular basis, as is the demand of a restaurant business, having a strategy is imperative. Creating a social media marketing strategy involves:

  • Studying competition to understand the market
  • Setting clearly defined and achievable goals
  • Deciding on a brand tone
  • Creating a content plan to achieve both branding and marketing goals
  • Creating an effective marketing funnel, ending in a conversion goal
  • Building a consistent brand image across platforms
  • Analysing performance monthly and revisiting strategy every three-months
No-nonsense & enticing. Relatable food post. #ClientWork

#FloraTIP: Keep your goals specific, measurable and aligned with your overarching business objectives. This way you will channel limited resources in the right direction. For instance, to increase customers’ visits to your restaurant, having a strong GMB presence can be more beneficial than having a profile on Pinterest, LinkedIn or Twitter.

If you’re a restaurant business owner reading this, we know this can sound overwhelming and you would much rather face the chaos of the kitchen. But this is where social media agencies in Gujarat like Flora Fountain can aid in achieving your marketing goals effectively.

Develop engaging content

Making reels more engaging with a poll! #ClientWork

Developing engaging content is essential for any restaurant business looking to succeed on social media. This ranges from high-quality photos and videos to customer reviews to relatable content, which is as deliciously consumable as your food. After all, content is king!

Content curation includes a wide set of industry practices like utilising high-quality images, smart call-to-actions (CTAs), resonating with the audience’s language and even catchphrases that build a strong brand recall value.

Simply put, every post should either educate or entertain.

It also helps to connect with your followers by responding to their communication, in the form of DMs and comments, with empathy and (sometimes) humour.

#FloraTIP: To make your customer feel special and increase credibility, re-share content created by them such as reviews, reels or posts on your page. This is called UG or user-generated content.

Monitor your marketing efforts

No matter how much you strategise and plan, it all boils down to success in the end! This involves tracking metrics on each platform including reach, engagement, follower growth, and in some cases, conversions.

By monitoring these metrics regularly, you can see what works and understand what needs improvement, helping you make data-driven decisions about your social media marketing strategy. Time and again, we have seen this data-driven approach, optimise social media marketing efforts, driving up business and ROI on the marketing investment. More business is a happy client. And a happy client is a happy us. 🙂

Upward growth of an Ahmedabad-based Italian restaurant #ClientWork

Hire a social media marketing agency

Working with a social media marketing agency is essential for any restaurant business looking to succeed in today’s digital age. A social media marketing agency can help you develop a comprehensive marketing strategy, create engaging content, and track metrics to measure success.

When choosing the best social media marketing agency in Ahmedabad, consider their experience, expertise, industry knowledge, social media proficiency and track record of success.

The benefits of working with a digital marketing agency in Gujarat include access to a team of experts who can help you optimise your social media presence, save time and resources, and ultimately drive more business to your restaurant.

To conclude…

Take your restaurant business to the next level with these valuable insights and industry tips. Remember, from identifying your target audience and choosing the right social media platforms to curate engaging content and measuring success, there are many important factors to consider.

We recommend working with a reputable digital marketing agency in Gujarat to help you achieve your marketing goals and build a strong online presence. If you still have questions, drop us a hello at hello@flora.ffteam.in to start a conversation.

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Social Media

5 Simple Steps to Master Customer Relations on Social Media.

Customer Relations on Social Media.

“You are in queue, please wait.”

“Aap qatar mein hain, kripya pratiksha kijiye.”

If this makes you feel angry and helpless all at once, then congratulations, you too have experienced the good ol’ customer service of the 80s and 90s. An era when customer service was king and all the customer could do was wait and wait and then wait some more to finally be heard and sometimes maybe served.

Contrast this with 2022.

Airline lost your luggage? Tweet at them.

Your favourite tea brand did not live up to your expectations? Slide into their DMs.

Had a great customer experience at your local coffee shop? Make a reel on Instagram with your favourite barista as collaborator doing his moves to the latest Harry Styles song and tag the coffee shop so they can reshare it too.

As you might know, building a successful brand is about consistency. Small steps performed regularly to bring brand reality closer to brand goals. In the digital world, these steps often involve marketing to new eyeballs on social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube etc, and search engines such as Google and Bing. But one of the most important steps to ensure that these new eyeballs and customers stay is to build and nurture a lasting relationship with them with genuine and helpful customer service.

For customers and businesses alike, social media has become an easy and effective way to connect and engage with each other. Whether it is feedback received in-the-moment of the customer’s experience, the launch of a new line of products, the brand’s stand on a social issue or even engaging with other brands. Social media has made it easier for brands to become more human. By standing out and staying connected. But you might be wondering: how does one begin treading these social media waters as a brand? How much is too much? And what tone should a brand adopt?

The digital marketing mavericks from Flora Fountain, the top social media marketing agency in Ahmedabad have come up with some simple steps for brands to follow on social media to build customer relationships that last. Let’s

Social listening

It is important for a brand to have its ear to the ground on the internet to know what people are talking about it online, what trends are being followed by its potential customers. This activity of monitoring various digital platforms, topics and keywords to identify important mentions of the brand and its related topics is called Social Listening.

promotional campaigns

Brands can modify and enhance their promotional campaigns and customer communications based on this information collated through social listening. While there are many paid online tools available to assist with this actively, the top digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad Flora Fountain does it the old school way, by regularly scouring through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. through targeted keywords, phrases and topics.

This way, the social media managers are able to assist their clients in resolving their issues by offering insightful responses to their inquiries, and make better educated selections.

Read more Marketing on Snapchat! Yeah..we’re not kidding.

Taking feedback & acting on it

Feedback helps brands understand what their customers like, what are their pain points, evaluate how their target audience perceives them. With social media making communication between customers and businesses all the more direct, the cycle of feedback has become quicker and hence brands have to be all the more quicker in responding to them.

Show the customers that their inputs are valued by putting their suggestions and requirements into visible action. From launching new products, services or any interesting and useful feature, implementation of customer feedback received through DMs, reviews and other avenues can help brands gain their trust and loyalty. It shows that you hear their concerns and needs and you’re willing to act on it for their benefit.

Be relatable

Another great way to maintain a great relationship with customers is to be relatable to them, their thoughts, conversations and ideas. Make social media a fun place to be for the customers by aligning the brand’s voice with that of the customers, is what every digital marketer working with the best digital agency in Ahmedabad or anywhere would say.

Kamaii, a homemade meals ordering app partnered with Flora Fountain, a social media marketing agency in Ahmedabad to tap into the local audience with some fun and puns. They share humorous content, jump on memes they can relate back to their brand, and they take any opportunity they can to champion the comfort of fresh, home cooked meals.

Read more Kamaii ki Kahani – Marketing a home-cooked food ordering & delivery app

Sharing User Generated Content

People love sharing pictures of the various products they use and tag brands on their respective social media handles. This is called user generated content, that can be utilised by brands on their social media pages to reinforce the love and trust the user has on them, and build a community of such loyal customers.

The best example for this can be found on the social media pages of Wagh Bakri Tea, India’s most trusted tea brand. Backed digitally by the top digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad, Wagh Bakri runs campaigns where users and creators can share pictures and clips of them enjoying a piping hot cup of their tea, and Wagh Bakri shares the best ones on their pages. It’s important though, that brands seek permission before reposting a users’ photograph onto their account.

Provide value and solve problems

Social media platforms are of course a great place to advertise products and service, but customers value a brand more when they do more than just selling. Solve problems of customers, answer their frequently asked questions, share their good reviews. This is another great way to build a strong relationship with the customers.

One of India’s top car detailing franchises, CarzSpa Detailing Studios have a great mix of posts on their official Instagram page. They showcase their products, visuals from the various detailing activities that take place at their studios and further share informative posts that busts myths, answer FAQs and some fun questions to engage with their audience while educating them.
Ensure there’s a good balance between your promotional content and the educational and free value you provide to your audience.

Feeling all set to build a thriving community of customers on your social media page too? Get the backing of the best digital agency in Ahmedabad to help you navigate your relationships online and add great value to your brand and business. Reach out to us on hello@flora.ffteam.in today.

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Digital Marketing Agency

Social Listening: Why You Must Know What Customers Are Saying Online

Social Listening

3.6 billion in 2020 to 4.55 billion people in 2021!

No, that’s not the increase in population but the increase recorded in social media users.

4.55 billion people, or about 57.6% of the global population, today use social media.

users to pay more attention

This ginormous population is constantly interacting online, collectively creating (and bringing down) trends, fashion, memes and also brands! Whether they are B2B, B2C, B2B2C, every brand today needs to know what people are talking about them and their competitors online. They also need to know where to find the users who are talking about them, and which users to pay more attention to.

How? Through social listening.

Let one of the best digital marketing companies in India, Flora Fountain help you hit a gold mine for customer service and product development through social listening.

Social Listening

Social Listening is a strategy used by brands to monitor and track all the public conversations taking place on any social media platforms related to their brand or product. These conversations or mentions are analyzed for insights to evaluate customers’ feedback.

In simpler words, it helps a brand understand why, where, and how online conversations are happening, and what people think of the brand.

Why do brands need it?

Social listening can help brands understand and thrive in a dynamic industry that morphs faster than a Power Ranger.

A. Brands can learn about their audience & create better content

If a brand actively practices social listening, it can learn a lot about what its customers desire. The strategy helps the brand discover where their audience is most active and which social networks they predominantly use. Also, brands can understand what their audience wants, where their interests lie, and questions they have, based on certain topics and keywords. Knowing where your company falls behind and knowing where you exceed customer expectations will allow you to perfect the areas you’re already succeeding in and build a plan around the areas that are in need of improvement.

B. Brands can build better social media marketing campaigns

Once brands learn the various important aspects about their audiences, this information can help build a better digital marketing campaign. Because the best digital marketing companies will always make campaigns focusing on topics that are relevant to the target audience, so they sit up and pay attention.

Social listening helps a brand uncover such relevant topics by analysing all the social conversations based upon such keywords.

C. Brands can get a better understanding of their competition

Social listening also enables a brand to get a better understanding of how audiences feel about their competitors and the industry in general. This data gives an insight into where the brand fits in the market. It might also reveal competition, direct or indirect, that the brand didn’t even know existed.

D. Brands can find relevant social influencers

Finding the right influencer for a brand is not a piece of cake. But social listening helps brand identify people with a strong following on social media and other online platforms, that match their target audience. Because when the right people talk about the brand to the right audience, chances of higher sales and customer retention increases.

But how does one practice “Social Listening”?

Users are unafraid of sharing their opinions online. So, in order to keep up with them, a brand must listen to them. This can be done by either hiring a team or a social media agency to keep a tab on trends, or by using specialized software or online platforms that offer social listening tools, that give businesses access to more detailed forms of information.

Read More: Tips For Writing Social Media Captions

1) Start with a ‘Goal’ & know whom to listen to

What is it that the brand wants to achieve with promotional activities on social media? Higher sales? Explore new audiences? Improve customer retention or form a new channel of sales/revenue? Once this is clear, it becomes the GOAL of the brand.

Next, the brand must figure out where should they put its ear on. In simpler terms, a brand should know which platforms they need to pay attention to. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google searches, LinkedIn, etc.

Thirdly, how to identify these conversations. Through direct mentions of the brand, social media handles, and/or product names, hashtags, campaign names and relevant keywords, names of important people in the company, and topics related to the brand. And all these points to study the competitors as well.

Starbucks

A great example of it is the following post, where Starbucks was not tagged with its official twitter handle, yet the brand was able to identify it online thanks social listening and respond to it, thus improving their customer engagement.

2) Empathize with the audience & respond fast

The audience needs to feel that they are being heard.

And in order to do that, the brand needs to engage a little more with its audience. Be it negative or positive, the brand needs to empathize with the audience.

brand gets positive feedback

If a brand gets positive feedback, then it needs to figure out what the audience loved about it and build marketing campaigns on that basis. And if the brand gets negative feedback, it needs to know the pain point of the audience in order to solve it.

3) Choose the right listening tools!

As kids, everyone is taught how active listening is important, but when it comes to brands, they haven’t always had the right tools to do so at a large scale. But now, there are many that can help brands in collecting and analyzing data in an easier way. Here are some that work across major social media networks:

Sprout Social Report

Sprout Social:

This tool provides brands with in-depth analytics and insights for organized social listening. One of its features shows the hashtags and topics that are trending across the mentions of the brand and replies on behalf of the connected brand. The name of the people and brands that most frequently talk about and get mentioned with a particular brand surface on the tool.

Hootsuite:

Brands can use this tool to monitor conversations, keywords, and mentions, along with hashtags, and respond to them. The tool helps a brand to analyze many real-time conversations taking place on digital platforms.

Hootsuite

HubSpot:

hubspot report

Brands can monitor social interactions and connect with the right people. It allows a brand to link data from social media with contacts in their database in order to create custom keyword monitoring, email alerts, mention notifications, etc.

Other than these, there are tools like Lately, Brand24, Brandwatch, Buffer, TweetDeck, Mention, which come with comprehensive features to help brands collect brand mentions across major social media networks.

As one of the top full-service digital agencies, Flora Fountain provides digital marketing services in Ahmedabad, India, and across the world. Drop us a message to plan some insightful social listening strategies for your brand.

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Social Media

Advertising on Social Media: Why you need a separate game plan

Advertising on Social Media

Who would have thought that the platforms created to let people share stories from their lives through pictures and videos would turn out to be such great tools for audiences to discover new products and services and for brands to find these new audiences. And the pandemic has only made it more so!

It is time to go deeper into the social media rabbit hole.

Social media marketing and social media advertising. Always knew they were different, but didn’t know who to ask? Read below for some insights from Ahmedabad’s best digital marketing agency!

First things first, social media marketing is purely organic activity, which involves posting pictures, publishing stories, responding to comments and inquiries on messages and sharing the posts in various groups and communication channels.

While social media advertising comprises all paid marketing activity on various social media platforms through the means of sponsored posts and boosts, done over and above the usual social media marketing activity such as posting and creating stories.

While there is an overlap between the two in terms of results and goals, advertising on social media is a different ball game altogether, with targeted budgets, a keener understanding of target audiences, and a smart selection of the content that should be boosted.

Because of the difference in strategy and skills required for the two, the top advertising agency in Ahmedabad suggests that a mere social media strategy or calendar does not cut it for a brand. Serious brands must have a separate game plan for the two. Read on to know why and everything else about social media advertising.

WHY ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media advertising is an all-encompassing format of marketing for a brand. Since social media is a place where the people are a bit chilled out, it gives marketers the opportunity to go out of their way with creativity to make their brand stand out.

The regular advertising in the digital world includes the usual suspects, like pay-per-click ads, website display ads, video popup ads, digital billboards, etc. But social media has promotions and boosts, which offers them great flexibility in tweaking the audience, its reach perimeter, the budgets, and putting a pause or restart as per the brands requirements.

Even the best digital marketing agencies in India believe that organic reach is hard to achieve, hence if a brand has the bandwidth and resources to spend, they must consider social media advertising for quick win and turn around.

HOW TO ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Different platforms have different ways to let businesses and individuals promote themselves and their services to a large swathe of potential customers with interests that align with what they sell.

Listed below are the various kinds of paid promotions a brand can run on different platforms.

Twitter Promotions

With Twitter Promote, the Twitter algorithm automatically promotes Tweets to the brand’s specified audience. It promotes the first 10 daily organic Tweets that pass the Twitter quality filter. It also promotes the brand account to attract new followers.

Marketeers can focus on up to 5 interests or metro locations, and let Twitter do the rest. Unfortunately, with this feature, marketers can’t choose which Tweets to promote. (That’s why creating great content on a regular basis for every platform is important).

Facebook Ads


Facebook Ads
With over 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook is popular across many demographics. Just as many teenagers use Facebook as their parents—and seniors are quickly catching up. With ads, brands can direct users to its Facebook Page or the website as a part of the sales funnel. One such great form of advertising is Carousel ads on Facebook timelines.

Carousel ads work well to showcase different features of a product, or to explain a step-by-step process. They’re also a great way to present multiple products or services.


Showcase a Variety of Products
Sometimes, brands can showcase a variety of products in a single carousel chain, and every picture can have a customised purchase or inquiry link. This way, it can not only be a great sales and data collection tool too.

Instagram Promotions

Instagram is most popular with millennials, they say. Well, this platform is popular with people of all generations. Instagram has millions of Gen Z and GenX too, who create and consume content in the form of posts, reels, videos and stories.

Instagram currently has over 1 billion active users, a large majority of them using the app on their mobile phones. What’s interesting is that 71% of their demographic are users who are under the age of 35, who spend an average 53 minutes per day.

And what more, post the pandemic, where online sales have taken off and crossed the stratosphere already, it was found out that 80% of consumers use Instagram to help them decide on a purchase.

Just like Facebook, brands can target their ideal viewers with customised targeting options. Create lookalike audiences, define the audience’s behaviors and activities, interests, and demographics.

Seen above is a great example of a carousel ad on Instagram, that blends in smartly with the other content on the feed of the Instagram users.

Instagram Promotions

YouTube Promotions

Let us start by sharing a startling fact about this video streaming giant. YouTube is the second most visited site on the internet, and netizens consume close to 6 hours of video content every day.

Advertising on YouTube requires a Google Ads account, using which it uniformly helps brands create ads on multiple spots on the YouTube streaming page.


YouTube Promotions
The different types of ads on YouTube include short clips that play before the actual video, banner ads that get displayed on top of the playlist and clickable links that display in the corners of the screen.

Brands can set their budget and target the desired audience on specific YouTube channels. There’s no minimum price to run an ad – and brands can change their ads, targeting and budgets at any time.

LinkedIn Boosts

LinkedIn is much more business-oriented than other social networks in this post. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications like job title and seniority.

Single images, videos, or carousel ads are all different options for sponsored content advertising on LinkedIn.


LinkedIn Boosts
Brands that are looking to target talented individuals to join their workforce, hiring agencies that have a large number of positions to fill, or companies who wish to talk about their achievements and attract more followers whose interests align with their brand, ideally choose LinkedIn Boosts. It has been noted that boosting on LinkedIn costs way more than its peers.

Get started with Flora Fountain

The team of experienced digital advertising and social media marketing experts at Flora Fountain have paved the path to success for many local and national brands to tap into a large swathe of unexplored audiences online, especially on social media.

Drop us a line here and let us invite you over for a cup of coffee and a riveting conversation on your brand’s future online.

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Social Media

The ultimate guide to LAUNCH a product on social media

Social Media

Remember the last time you scrolled through your Instagram feed and thought “Hey, how did they know I was looking for this sneaker/hoodie/blender/fill in the blanks?” More and more people are discovering new products and services online through social media, over traditional methods of discovery like TV ads, newspaper ads, hoardings and billboards. And this is even more true after the pandemic, with an increasing population comfortable spending time and money online.

So it is imperative, when a brand has a new product ready for launch, to create a big buzz online. Brands have to get people curious about the product and the idea behind it. However, with over 3.6 billion people active on various social media platforms, spending an average of 2.5 hours every day scrolling and messaging, there are chances of a brand’s messaging getting lost in the din and noise made by almost everybody online.

So here’s the ultimate cheat sheet (or guide, if you will) created by India’s top social media marketing agency, Flora Fountain, to make some noise, stand out and attract the right eyeballs for a new product or brand launch online.

1. First thing first, Identify the audience

The first thing a brand must do before planning a new product or starting any form of marketing activity for its launch, is to understand “WHAT DOES THE MARKET WANT?” and “WHERE DO WE FIND THIS AUDIENCE”

It starts with market research, where the ideal customer is identified based on various demographic points like age, gender, interests, income, region, etc. It can start from something as simple as a Google search of a product similar to the one about to be launched by the brand. Simply going through the kind of people that the competition brands are addressing through their content, images, and the reviews on their shopping platforms can give a rough idea about the ideal customer.

If the product is targeted towards young people in their 20s who love following trends, then Instagram is the place to find them (well, isn’t everyone on Instagram now!). If the product is more service-based, priced higher and is targeted at a somewhat older audience, Facebook can be the place to target such an audience. If the target is business communities, or art lovers, or musicians, there is a platform for these too. But it all starts with knowing who the product, service, brand or idea is meant for: the OG TG.

2. Plan out the online content calendar

Ray Ethnic Fashion Brand

Having a launch timeline is very important for the brand to chart out every move, every post on the various digital platforms it is active on. While it may sound like a task as easy as taking a picture and posting it on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest with a caption stating check out our newly launched collection, it is way more than that…

Think about it, the product pictures needs to be clicked, they have to be named (if not done), banners and creatives for website pages and posts are to be made, captions as per the platform (hashtag heavy for Instagram, long yet linked for Facebook and short and sweet for Pinterest)

are to be written, promotional email drafts have to be created, SEO work is to be done, special social media promotional content for boosts are to be made… Phew!

Yeah, that’s right… All that, apart from the regular, in-store or outdoor marketing campaigns. Here’s a look at how Ray Ethnic, an Ahmedabad-based ethnic fashion brand recently planned their product launch. Simple, minimalistic & to the point.

Plan out every piece of content that will go online, from the teaser to the launch to the product showcase. Yes, it takes time, but then actual work becomes a piece of cake.

3. Start creating a buzz

Social media is such a powerful tool, it is scalable, cost effective, provides great creative freedom to experiment, and the best part: The people are there, online!

And one of the best ways to get started with the promotions is by generating curiosity among the people online, on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even LinkedIn (if the brand has an audience there).

Start with Coming Soon posts like these:

Give the viewers a sneak peek on how the product is going to look like, what it is for, why it is unique, etc. This is kind of teasing the customer, by showing parts or some element of the product as a preview and why they should look forward to it.

Coming Soon Posts

Next, you can create countdown posts that usually say, ‘2 Days to Go’, ‘1 Day to Go’, etc. These kinds of promotional content create a sense of anticipation among the followers and the customers and they stay tuned with the brand page on social media.

And finally, post the launch, a giveaway or a contest can be run through specially created posts to boost up the engagement on the page. Wondering why? Because when the page gets maximum engagement, the posts are visible on the Explore and Suggestion sections of non-following people online who may have similar tastes in the product.

4. Get creative with hashtags

Another great way to make waves around the social media about an impending launch is by creating a unique hashtag which gives a hint of the product and the brand, while leaving the users and followers guessing on what it could be.

While creating a launch hashtag, these three points should be kept in mind:

  • It should be precise
  • Don’t combine more than 3-4 words together
  • Try to write it in Title case, to make it easy to understand

By creating a hashtag, they instantly highlight the content that’s related to the launch and reinforces the brand identity. Further, it helps followers to tag, share and participate in the launch activities and post pictures of their own which are connected with the brand.

5. Make the splash: The launch

The launch has to be timed in such a manner that the product/s must get revealed on all social media platforms at the same time. This is where the advance content planning as mentioned in the first point, comes of great help.

Since Instagram and Facebook both fall under the same entity, it is easier to plan and schedule posts around a specific time, using custom content, hashtags, CTAs, etc. While Facebook has its own Creator Studio platform to manage Instagram and Facebook pages, there are other third party platforms like Later and Hootsuite for LinkedIn, Google Business and Tweetdeck for Twitter.

Creator Studio platform

Flora Fountain, one of the best social media agencies in Ahmedabad suggests that brands should ideally boost these launch posts for maximum visibility and opportunity to showcase their products to newer audiences. While it is simple to create an Ad Account using Facebook Business or AdSense for Google platforms, it is advised to get the top digital marketing agency on board to share the burden of tracking, analysing and strategising these paid promotions online.

OR

Plan a staggered launch
Unlike the one time big splash launch, a staggered launch is done by revealing the products one after the other or as batches, in stages. The rollout of the products can go on for weeks together instead of putting everything out for sale on the launch day.

Remember how smartphone giant Apple launched the iPhone 12 in two stages? While the original reason behind this exercise was the supply chain disruption due to the global smart-chip shortage, the marketing teams of the brand decided to launch the smaller versions of phone in the first stage, and the bigger and pricier versions along with its upgraded version of accessories just in time for pre-christmas sales.

This way, brands can not only keep the conversation going, but also tap into multiple points of high sales, like the festival and holiday seasons.

6. Have your analytics in place

Instagram Reach

The true success of a launch or really any digital activity lies in the data. A brand should have the tools to identify the right metrics, evaluate the various milestones during the launch at regular intervals and then do a comparative study with its goals.

Before the launch, set up a cross-channel social media analytics dashboard using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot or Sprout Social and connect the various platforms where the launch will take place,

i.e. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Of course, each tool also has the inbuilt insights or metrics for views, clicks, conversions for brands to identify which piece of content and strategy and worked and what didn’t.

It allows tracking of various metrics like hashtag performance, region-wise visitor activity, post reach and engagement, etc. This way, brands can make informed decisions in terms of allocating budgets to campaigns, tweaking the target audience to ensure a successful launch.

Google Analytics Report

7. Keep the conversation going

Post launch, the brand must keep the momentum going through various forms of audience engagement. Because all that buzz generated post the legwork done to get the product launched, must not fizzle out in a week’s time.

Continue publishing content related to the product, the salient features about it, it’s availability online or offline, and how the response is (only if it is positive). Encourage followers and customers to tag the brand with their product and reshare them on the pages, giving the users some free publicity too.
Ray Ethnic Hits

Something again Ray Ethnic hits the nail right on the head with its popular post launch campaign #RayOnYou. Thanks to some smartly planned celebrity endorsement, now even regular customers post regularly with outfits purchased from Ray.

Always keep a close eye on your mentions and customer questions on the comments, respond to them within 24 hours, negative or positive. This will not only give the brand image a boost, but organically push the posts on the explore feeds of social media timelines too.

Now that you have the ultimate guide to the perfect social media launch, get started right away. Or, how about you let the experts do the job for you. Drop us a line on hello@flora.ffteam.in or click here.