How Influencers Can Help Boost Product Launch Strategies

One of the most elusive aspects of influencer marketing is value creation — for everyone involved. Even though the practice has become a standardized tactic, many brands still forget a key ingredient, crucial to launching successful influencer campaigns:

I spent the better part of the late 90s and early 2000s studying the rise of digital influence. In the last few years, and over the next several, the rapid pace of evolution of digital influence necessitates further study. Social networks continue to produce new generations of mainstream and niche (micro) influencers. Content and messaging platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat and Slack are also creating new breeds of influencers. And, there will be many more to come from existing and emerging fronts.

Online consumers continue to demonstrate their willingness and enthusiasm to follow their peers and idols while their trust in traditional brands further erodes. At the same time, everyone with an online presence, is becoming an influencer in their own right. This only democratizes markets, making it increasingly difficult for brands to reach audiences en masse.

In just the last few years alone, I've published several reports exploring multiple facets of digital influence to help brands learn how to connect with influencers, creators, subject matter experts, weblebrities and the internet famous. But it's not just brands that can gain from digital influence, startups and small-to-medium-sized businesses stand to equally benefit as well.

6 Step Action Plan

Over the last few years, my friends at LaunchMetrics and I developed an ebook, Transform Your Launch Strategy with Influencers: Cultivating Lasting Relationships with People Who Matter. It identifies the main challenges brands and influencers experience during the product launch lifecycle and provide practical solutions on how to overcome them.

The ebook is organized as a 6 step action plan on how to strategize an entire product launch campaign with the help of influencers — from concept creation all the way to customer loyalty.

1. How to benchmark and why it is essential
2. Audience identification tactics
3. Set your final outcome
4. Find relevant influencers
5. Develop your product launch strategy
6. Measure your success

By learning more about the connected people who matter to your business, and the influential people who matter to your customers, your business strategies will benefit from a new level of visibility and discoverability that literally speaks volumes in new media.

By connecting with connected people in ways that are entertaining, helpful, value-added, memorable, shareable and especially experiential, you by default make your brand more relevant in the process.

Brian Solis is principal analyst and futurist at Altimeter, the digital analyst group at Prophet. He's also a world renowned keynote speaker and 7x best-selling author. His latest book, X: Where Business Meets Design, explores the future of brand and customer engagement through experience design. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Invite him to speak at your next event.