When you release new products on your ecommerce store, do you tell your customers? You definitely should! You may not realize it from the back-end, but customers who are invested in your brand will always be interested in the latest product updates. This is why campaigning is so important: you can promote your latest releases to get customers excited to check out your new products and bring them back to your store.
Not only does promoting your latest product releases show customers that you regularly update your stock with the most up-to-date styles and industry items, but it also keeps them engaged with your brand. Customers will get bored if they continue to see the same things over and over when they visit your store, so new products are a great way to keep them excited!
In order to start promoting your new product releases effectively, check out these best practices and see how brands like BluePeppermint Boutique are promoting their products well!
Add a “just released” or “new arrivals” section on your website
Before you think about any other type of promotion, you should ensure you have a section on your ecommerce website dedicated to new releases. This will help customers that are already loyal to you come across your latest item updates in an easy way. Plus, it shows customers that you update your stock frequently.
Create a “just released,” “recently released,” or “new arrivals” section under your products tab or as its own section along the main navigation bar. BluePeppermint Boutique does this well by showing a “New Arrivals” tab right on their homepage. With this, customers will definitely want to check out your most in-season items!
Don’t be afraid to get visual
When it comes to apparel, customers want to see every angle of the item they’re looking at. This is especially true with ecommerce apparel brands since customers can’t actually try anything on before they make a purchase. Offering a large variety of pictures helps with this: it gives customers a better idea of what they’re looking at, and it will make them more likely to make a purchase when they know exactly what the shirt, dress, or pants will look like when they get it in the mail. Too many pictures is better than not enough!
To help with visualization for your customers, you can also include a product reviews section where customers can upload photos with their reviews. This gives other customers a chance to see the apparel on more than one person, and it helps ensure trust in your brand when the review images match the pictures on your product pages.
Offer a product-release contest or giveaway
Product release giveaways and contests are a great way to campaign something new and exciting and it shows customers that you care about their interest by incentivizing their loyalty. Feature a banner on your website where people can submit their email to enter the contest, or host it on Instagram or Facebook where people enter by liking your page and giving an image a share.
It’s important to note that this is also a great way to acquire new customers since your current customers will be sharing your brand on their social channels! A fun fact is that “more than 40% of digital consumers use social networks to research new brands or products.” So, these giveaways and contests are a great way to leverage your social media channels to do something meaningful for your brand.
Email Campaigns
Creating segmented emails is perfect to showcase your latest releases to the right kind of audience. If you’re using an email platform to organize and send your brand emails, then you should have the ability to segment your audiences into specific buckets, such as engaged users, people who’ve abandoned their carts, people who may have visited your sight but not signed up with your loyalty program, and so many other segments.
Use this tool to create a list of potential-shoppers that you know would be interested in the product you’ve released. Maybe they’ve bought something similar in the past, so you know they may like this latest product too. Whatever the reason is, you can send a personal email to shoppers, which is a great way to get them excited and engaged with your latest releases.
Social media promotion
If you aren’t promoting your products on social media, then you’re already behind thousands of brands that do this daily. Your social media platforms are where you create exclusive brand communities, and where your customers truly feel like they’re building a special relationship with you. Your social followers are your loyal brand advocates, so it’s the perfect place to share the news of an exciting new product. In fact, 90% of Instagram users follow a business on the platform—maybe that business could be yours!
Like BluePeppermint Boutique, simply showcase your products in an aesthetically-pleasing way to attract the attention and eyes of people online. It’s also a good idea to repost pictures to your social stories, and share short video clips of people wearing your clothes. You can also repost any images customers share of your awesome products! Don’t forget--do your best to keep everything properly branded to match your messaging and brand colors.
Strategic ads
Using paid ads to promote your products is something most ecommerce businesses do, but keep in mind that there’s a way to use paid ads effectively and strategically. You don’t want to spend a lot of money on paid ads if you aren’t reaching your audience, right?
Make sure you’re being strategic about your advertising: place the ads where your desired demographics will see it, and make sure the messaging matches your target audience, too. Also, don’t be afraid to try new methods, such as influencer marketing with someone who already has a large following of people who would be interested in your products.
Sometimes, your most loyal customers will share your products on social media just because they enjoy them, and you can leverage those posts by resharing them to your pages. For example, when you go to BluePeppermint Boutique’s Instagram page, they have a lot of customers wearing their products and tagging the brand in these pictures.
This is a great way to get referrals from your most-loyal customers, especially when they show off your brand new releases!
Get your customers excited and remind them about loyalty
New products are exciting! It means your brand is growing successfully when you can introduce new items to share with your customers. It’s something you should definitely be happy about, so make sure you get your customers excited about it too.
Don’t forget, a loyalty program is great for customer retention, so remind your customers about your loyalty program when you showcase your latest product releases, too. BluePeppermint Boutique is powered by Smile. Their program is a launcher on the left-hand side of every page on their website, so it’s easy for any customer to access, sign up, or sign in to their loyalty account while shopping to see their number of points and available rewards.
Key Takeaways
- Add a “just released” section on your ecommerce website.
- Showcase more than one picture of the products you’re selling.
- Offer a contest or giveaway about your latest product releases.
- Get people excited with an email campaign.
- Promote your latest products on social media.
- Be strategic about your paid ads.
- Always remind customers about your loyalty program.