Planning a Product Launch with Ambassadors

Planning out your brand’s product launches can be a time-consuming process. From creating the message of your campaign to establishing KPIs and goals, product launches require much time and effort.

In order to save time, you should think about the marketing activities you want participants to help out with during your campaign and the rewards that will incentivize their participation.

With a tool like BrandChamp, you can set up your marketing activities and rewards in advance and update your community about the new products that you plan to launch.

In this video, you’ll go through the following steps for launching a product on BrandChamp’s ambassador platform.

1. Creating promotional activities for specific times
2. Updating your Community
3. Tracking activity and ambassador performance

Planning a Product Launch

Before you launch your new collection, keep reading to get an idea of the promotional activities that your ambassador program can help you with when releasing a new product.

Don’t have a brand ambassador program? Learn how to start a program here.

Activity – Product Launch Awareness

When launching a new product it’s always important to create awareness for your brand so that consumers can actually recognize your brand first.

To increase awareness about your new product launch, we’ll set up an activity that allows your community to complete 4 different promotional tasks in exchange for a discount code that applies to your new product.

In this example, the new product that will be released is a surf shorts collection and here is a breakdown of how the 4 promotional tasks will be laid out over the course of one month

Task 1

Time Period: Week 1

Instructions: Post a photo of yourself outside being active. Whether it’s at the beach, hiking or exercising, we want to see how you do summer!

In the caption include the #freerangespirit and @freerangespirit.

Task 2

Time Period: Week 2

Instructions: Download the photo attached above and share it on your timeline. In the caption share how stoked you are for the new Free Range Surf shorts to drop.

Include your referral link and the #freerangespirit.

Task 3

Time Period: Week 3

Instructions: Create an Instagram story at the beach or in an outdoor setting and include the tag @freerangespirit.

Task 4

Time Period: Week 4

Instructions: Post a photo of yourself in your beachwear. In the caption ask your audience members about their favorite outfit for the beach.

Mention the new summer sale that happens in July and how stoked you are to try out the new quick dry surf shorts.

Limit: Any 1 Time

Reward: Discount code for 50% off a pair of surf shorts

With these 4 tasks, you can leverage your current community to increase recognition for your brand while increasing their brand loyalty via a free product.

After this activity expires at the end of the 4 weeks, you should then create an activity that allows your ambassador to promote the free product that they just earned.

Activity – Promote the Product

After your community increases awareness for your brand and your product launch, the next step will be to create an activity that allows them to drive engagement for the free product that was earned previously.

This activity should empower your ambassadors to be creative and promote the product in a way that aligns with the content that they currently create for their audience.

With organic and authentic content resonating better with audience members, it’s always a good rule of thumb to give your community some freedom when creating content for your brand.

In this example, we’ll allow ambassadors to promote the new surf shorts and include their discount code in the caption so that their followers can save on the product as well.

Time Period: Week 9 through Week 11

Instructions: We want to see you rocking your new Surf Shorts!

Create a post showing off your new surf shorts and in the caption include why you love your new surf shorts and add the #freerangesurf #freerangespirit.

Don’t forget to share your discount code so your friends can save $$.

Limit: Weekly 1 time

Reward: 100 points

With this product promotion activity, ambassadors can then be rewarded for simply showing off their free product and any referral sales that they make through their discount code.

Once your ambassadors are given the opportunity to show off their new reward, we’ll set up one final activity that allows them to promote the brand’s summer sale.

Activity – Promote the Sale

The last activity that will be created allows your ambassadors to earn points for promoting a sale at your brand.

For this example, I’ve created a task that asks my community to promote the summer sale, their surf shorts and the details for the sale.

Time Period: Week 11 through Week 13

Instructions: Share the Free Range Spirit Summer Sale with your friends and family! Going on from July 15th-August 15th.

Please Include a Free Range Spirit product and yourself in the photo and include the #freerangespirit and your discount code in the caption so that your friends can get an extra 15% off!

Limit: Any 2 times

Reward: 200 points

By ending the product launch with a sale you can then further incentivize new customers to purchase your new product through the recommendations of your ambassadors.

After these activities are scheduled to go out, you can then send an email in BrandChamp to update your community about your new product launch, the activities they can participate in and the details for the campaign.

Updating Community on Product Launch

When updating your community, be sure that your ambassadors are not overloaded with information and are given some value or a call to action.

In this example, we’ve created an email update that includes information about the product launch, activities that can be completed, and rewards that can be earned if ambassadors participate.

Email

Hi {{FIRST-NAME}},

Be on the lookout for Free Range Spirits new surf short collection coming out soon! We created an activity that you can complete before the release to earn your free pair ($40 value).

The Activity comes out on July 1st and can be found in your activity list here:
{{CHALLENGES-URL}}

With summer right around the corner, we are also updating our rewards catalog with new summer items. Check out the rewards here:
{{REWARDS-URL}}

Thanks, {{FIRST-NAME}}, and we’re excited to see how you spend your summer!

In BrandChamp’s email composer, you can use the following tokens to personalize the email and provide URL links to specific pages in the ambassador portal.

• {{FIRST-NAME}} – Ambassador’s first name
• {{CHALLENGES-URL}} – Activity catalog in ambassador portal
• {{REWARDS-URL}} – Rewards Catalog in ambassador portal

After sending an email update to your community, we’ll now review the performance of your individual ambassadors and the activities that they’ve completed in BrandChamp.

Tracking Activity and Ambassador Performance

After your product launch is complete, you can then go into BrandChamp’s software and track the performance of the campaign and the contributions of individual ambassadors.

To track contributions and performance, navigate to the “Reports” page in BrandChamp admin portal and specify the date range that you’d like to track.

In the Reports page, we can then collect data on the referral sales made during our campaign and the number of campaign activities that were completed during that time.

After tracking the performance of your campaign, some important KPI’s and data to note include:

1. Number of Activities Completed
2. Number of Referral Sales made
3. Top Contributors
4. Inactive Members
5. Content with most/least engagement

With this data in hand, you can then take the necessary steps to improve product launches and marketing campaigns in the future.

Closing

Does your brand understand the impact of an ambassador program and how it can help with your product launches? If so, be sure to incorporate some of the activities above during your next product launch.

By using at least one of the activities above you can incentivize your ambassador to help in exchange for rewards that increase a participant’s:

1. Lifetime Value
2. Average Order Value
3. Purchase Frequency

To learn more about how BrandChamp’s software can help you grow a community, feel free to connect with us to chat about your needs.