Developing and launching a new product is nothing short of exciting – your business has put resources and effort into offering customers the best quality, high functionality, and a unique experience.

Yet, product launches are rarely trouble-free. And one of the biggest challenges brands face is creating enough traction on the new product. In other words, your business may be struggling to generate public buzz around your fresh launch, making it harder to drive sales and attract new customers.

What can you do to boost your product awareness and make it appealing and desirable to potential customers? That’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this guide.

I’ll tell you about 5 actionable tactics to increase product awareness quickly and effectively.

Why is product awareness important?

In an ideal world, offering a top-quality product or service would be reason enough to attract customers' interest. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a world.

It’s not enough to develop an awesome product – you need to promote it the right way to attract consumers.

And that’s where product awareness comes into play.

  • Product awareness is the first stage of the marketing funnel. Without it, you won’t be able to build a solid customer base;
  • Product awareness is closely connected to general brand awareness. The more people hear about your product, the more interested they will get in your brand as a whole;
  • Product awareness boosts your business's competitiveness. If you achieve it, people are more likely to consistently choose your brand over others.

Bottom line: building a product awareness strategy benefits not only one particular launch you have in mind but your business as a whole.

How to boost product awareness

Developing a product awareness strategy is about promoting your product with your target customers in mind. You can go down different roads here – and we suggest you consider one or several of the following tactics:

Promote your product through multiple channels

To bring your new product to the attention of as many potential customers as possible, consider which marketing channels will work best to reach them throughout the buyer’s journey.

The main marketing channels include:

  • Websites: Advertise your product on your home page and/or create a unique landing page for it;
  • Social media: Use both paid social media ads and regular posts on your profile;
  • Emails: Launch an email marketing campaign to promote your product – include it in offers, email newsletters, etc.;
  • Blogs: Blogging is another great way to promote your product and tell consumers about its benefits;
  • PR: Involve media outlets in product promotion;
  • Podcasting: Whether you host your own podcast or want to work with other podcasters to promote your product, this is quickly becoming a great marketing channel.
  • Notifications and in-app/on-site messages.
Pro-tip: make sure your multi-channel promotion is consistent. No matter which channels you’re using to raise product awareness, your style, tone, and on-brand messaging should be identical and recognizable to customers.
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Organize a contest for customers

One of the most effective ways to boost product awareness is to engage potential customers through a contest.

Organize a contest and reward the winner(s) with your new product. Advertise the contest through the same marketing channels we mentioned in point 1. The more people are aware of the event, the more participants—and potential customers—you’ll attract, generating extra buzz around the product.

  • Make your new product the top prize for the contest winners. This way, you’ll foster word-of-mouth marketing – the winners will likely boast about their new prize on social media and to people around them, generating more interest in the product.
  • Involve elements of user-generated content in the contest. Encourage the contest participants to spread the news about your initiative online. Better yet, include UGC in the contest rules – ask participants to tag their friends in the comments, share the contest page, etc. It’s a great way to boost the visibility of your product without extra effort on your part.
  • Get creative. Think outside the box when it comes to product launch contests. Ask participants to think of a creative way to describe the product or test it in unusual conditions – whatever you can come up with! Product launch contests with unique concepts have a higher chance to go viral.

'Nutchos giveaway' is a great example of a contest that promotes product awareness. The brand advertises the contest on Instagram, encourages UGC, and involves participants in a creative endeavor.

Nature Eats Instagram post promoting a Nutchos giveaway
Pro-tip: you can use special online tools to create and promote your giveaway contests. Contest builders such as Poptin, OptinMonster, or Gleam allow you to create and embed events into your web pages quickly.

Collaborate with social media influencers

If you want to ace product awareness, go to the people who know the art of promotion and reach. And social media influencers are exactly this type of people.

They’ll help you expand your social media presence and bring your product to new user communities.

Influencers are people whose opinions and reviews matter – social media users trust influencers more than other sources of recommendations, including close friends. Partner with an influencer who produces content in your niche to leverage that.

You can collaborate with influencers in various ways to foster product awareness. The most popular types of product-centered influencer marketing campaigns are:

  • Product reviews. This is the most straightforward and effective type of influencer marketing campaign to boost your product recognition among consumers. Send your product and propose to an influencer to review it in a way that would appeal to their followers;
  • Unboxing videos. This content genre is very popular with social media users – and it’s an excellent way to show your product to potential customers. Send a sample to an influencer specializing in unboxing videos and they will present it to their viewers;
  • Affiliate/partner influencer programs. An influencer can advertise your product directly on their social media page and earn a commission on the clicks, conversions, and/or sales you score with their help.
Influencer Rickey Thompson's Instagram post promoting a Ferver product as a #Ferverpartner

Of course, you can combine several types of campaigns under one influencer collaboration.

Pro-tip: you don’t need to score a major influencer with millions of followers to effectively boost product awareness.

In fact, nano- and micro-influencers have higher engagement rates, effectively encouraging their followers to look into your brand and product. They’re more interested in scoring brand partnerships to expand their reach – so it'll be a mutually beneficial collaboration.

Besides, working with smaller-scale influencers is more cost-effective. Modern influencer marketing tools allow you to accurately calculate the budget for an influencer campaign before you launch it. For example, you can calculate the Instagram collaboration cost for sponsored posts or other types of influencer-generated content.

Offer pre-order incentives to customers

When you launch a new product, you can make sure consumers crave it and look forward to buying it even before the item hits the store shelves.

Incentivize your potential customers by offering unique perks when pre-ordering the new product.

Here are some ideas you can implement:

  • Offer a pre-order discount or coupon;
  • Share a limited promo code along with ordering the new product;
  • Offer the new product as part of a product bundle. This is an especially effective tactic if your brand has a time-tested bestseller. Pair it up with the new item to incentivize more customers to try it out.

    The ideal option is to collect a mix-and-match bundle – this way, customers will see the immediate need for the new item to complement more familiar products. Added bonus: product bundling will help you reduce inventory waste!
Image from Hawthorne's site promoting a bundle promotion
Pro-tip: calls to action are crucial to the success of your incentivizing offers for the new product.

Make sure your CTA game is strong:

  • Highlight CTA buttons with a different font, color, or text size;
  • Rely on newsletter templates to keep your emails consistent;
  • Make your CTAs concise and catchy – 2-4 words is just enough;
  • Create a sense of urgency. Fill your CTAs with signaling words that encourage customers to leverage your offer immediately: buy NOW, redeem the offer TODAY, etc.

The better your CTAs, the more potential customers you’ll convert, as they’ll actually click on your product offer buttons.

Leverage user-generated content

We’ve already briefly mentioned UGC when we talked about product launch contests. But that’s not the only way to take advantage of this type of content to increase product awareness.

You can use UGC to boost product trust and motivate consumers to try it out.

Reach out to the customers who have already purchased your product and ask them to share their feedback with you.

Target your most loyal customers first – they’re more likely to leave positive feedback and praise your product.

The best types of UGC to request from your customers are:

  • Product reviews;
  • Testimonials;
  • Product photos and videos.

When you’ve accumulated enough material, share this user-generated content on your social media and product web page. UGC inspires brand trust – it shows your products in a realistic, relatable way to potential customers.

To generate additional buzz around the product and boost its visibility, ask your social media followers to post product-related UGC on their personal social media profiles. You can then repost and circulate UGC on your media pages for more exposure.

Pro-tip: if you want to kickstart a solid UGC movement behind your new product, leverage social media hashtags.

Start a hashtag campaign and encourage your customers to post photos and videos of the product along with the unique branded hashtag. It’ll increase the visibility of both the product and your brand in general. Besides, hashtags will make it easier for consumers to look for your content across different platforms.

To wrap it up…

When you launch a new product, you need a sound product awareness strategy to make it visible and attractive to potential customers. It’s especially crucial in the early stages of the product launch.

Try different product awareness tactics or combine them for better results. And always keep your target audience in mind! Choose the most appropriate channels, content types, and marketing campaigns to cater to your core customer demographic.