A Marketing Toolkit to Announce Your Brand Expansion: Pt I

Growth is a remarkable achievement. So, we’re sharing a two part series guiding you to to launch any new service with confidence, using a few simple marketing and PR tactics.

The three fundamental characteristics of any great launch; it invites us in, it gets us excited, it has a story we can relate to.

The lead up: You’ll want to ‘tease’ your news for a set timeframe before the big reveal - depending on the complexity of the service or product or partners you’re working with, the lead up could be just a few weeks or last a few months. For simplicities sake, let’s say you’re announcing a new event space that’s an extension of your existing hotel or property. On social media, consider sharing behind the scenes or ‘in the making’ type posts (renderings, design progress, styling, etc…) and offering small hints in your captions about the development. Save these to an Instagram Highlight so that each post naturally adds to the series with a new layer of context. And, your followers can see the entire lifecycle even if they didn’t catch it in real time. Create a countdown plugin on your website or an exact launch date for the announcement, and a subscription list for an email to those who are eager to hear more: “Refer a friend in the comments for a chance to be added to our early access launch list.”

PHOTO: 42 NORTH + WHITE LOFT STUDIO

Just before you plan to announce (and in the days immediately following), it’s especially important to share how this project came to be - the triumphs, the challenges and the purpose behind each decision along the way. Sometimes we skip over this part because we’re so eager to arrive at the destination. But we all want to know the ‘why’ behind something new, as it provides an emotional connection that we all crave. We want to feel like this was created with our needs in mind, or the needs of someone we know. Real world application isn’t a ‘nice to have’ but rather a requirement for brand longevity. Storytelling takes center stage.

Social media previews are an excellent way to capture new audiences and eyeballs, using hashtags, cross promotion, tagging influential partners, etc… But there are so may impactful launch strategies to consider off the feed, too.

One of our favorites is a personalized email outreach effort to the colleagues and clients, friends and family who have contributed to your success and will undoubtedly continue to champion your brand in this next chapter. Reach out with a thoughtful message and an authentic ‘ask’ for spiritual support and partnership. Give them a friendly head’s up about the big date to come and include a handy toolkit with graphics, caption prompts and any other assets you think would make their job easier when promoting.

Finally, get in touch with any media (freelancers, editors) who you think may be interested in the news. Don’t forget podcasts, too. Even for those who won’t cover it, it’s a great touch point to simply stay top of mind - it may lead to a collaboration down the road or in the moment related to another area of your expertise.

Want to know what happens after you launch? Read Pt II!