Promoting Products

A key reason businesses use social media is to bring attention to a new or existing product. Using social media for this purpose can be less expensive than traditional advertising methods companies can usually reach a large audience immediately. Using social media before a product’s launch can help generate excitement for the upcoming product and get the attention of potential new customers.

Canva, a social media marketing blog, describes various tactics when announcing a product launch:^[1]

• Design a hashtag. By using a hashtag, you can create a central “hub” for all posts about your new product. People posting about the product can also use this hashtag, which increases the reach of the product.
• Organize a countdown. Countdowns can increase interest over a period of time. As you release messages on a schedule, it gives more people the opportunity to get excited and ready for the product by the time it is released.
• Develop consistency across platforms. The look and feel of a Facebook post should be roughly similar to something on Pinterest or Snapchat. While this is important across all social media messaging, it’s particularly important when launching something new. If your messaging is inconsistent, people might get confused about what exactly is being released.
• Have a clear call to action. As with good web design, a social media message should be easy to interpret. You want your audience to have all the information they need to either further interact with your social media campaign or have the information they need to get your product.

Even existing products can benefit from promotion on social media. But for any product promotion two key questions are:

1. Is the message or post authentic?
2. How easy have they made it to interact?

Chipotle x Corn Kid^[2]

When 7-year-old Tariq (Corn Kid) went viral on TikTok for his love of corn, Chipotle saw an opportunity to promote its roasted chili-corn salsa. Chipotle arranged a collaboration with Corn Kid ordering his favorite food at Chipotle. The resulting TikTok video was viewed more than 59.6 million times, shared over 266,500 times, and liked over 9 million times.

You can view the Chipotle x Corn Kid video on TikTok and the transcript for “Wait for it #corn” here (opens in new window).

Advertising a Sale

Considerations for announcing a sale or event are similar to announcing new products. You want to create interest and excitement around the sale. You can do this by either spotlighting the size of the sale or savings or highlighting the reason for the sale: for example, you can highlight a big fifty percent off blow-out sale or you can highlight back-to-school savings.

Of course, these aren’t the only types of sales, but these are the typical ways you would frame a sale.

Small Business Saturday^[3]

Perhaps one of the biggest sales of the year is any company’s Black Friday sale. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., marked by significant discounts and promotional sales in retail stores and online. It traditionally signals the start of the holiday shopping season. American Express created Small Business Saturday in 2010 to encourage shoppers to support local and small businesses during the holiday season, particularly the day after Black Friday.

The Small Business Administration cosponsors Small Business Saturday and promotes the hashtag #ShopSmall to support small businesses.

You can view the Hope Latinas post on Instagram and the transcript for “Join @HOPElatinas in celebrating #ShopSmallSaturday by supporting small Latina businesses!” here (opens in new window).

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