How To Do Influencer Marketing For New Product Launches
October 10, 2024
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15 min
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Influencers help you reach a wider audience and add credibility to your brand and product. Which makes them a perfect fit for product launch campaigns.
Planning to collaborate with influencers on your next product launch? To help you out, we spoke to two leading influencer marketers — influencer marketing consultant Andreea Moise (AKA the Hype Maven) and Valeriia Chemerys, Head of Media Partnerships at Deeper Sonars — and used their insights to create this guide.
Phase 1: Product design and development ✏️
If your product doesn’t actually exist yet and you’re involved in the design process, your launch cycle starts here. Alternatively, if you’ve already got a finished product and you want advice on promoting the launch, you can skip ahead to phase two.
1. Consider influencers during the design stage
Often, marketing teams aren’t involved in the launch process until the product has already been designed and manufactured. If it’s hard to promote, tough luck — they just need to get on with it.
For a more holistic approach, influencer marketing strategist Andreea recommends thinking about your influencer marketing plan during the design phase. Is this product shareable? Will it look good on Instagram?
If we want influencers to be a big part of spreading awareness and increasing brand recall around a launch, we'll look at what drives people to take action and what would incentivize influencers to post about the product.
2. Create influencer-friendly product packaging
Top influencers receive a ton of free products through gifting campaigns.
They might be pleased to receive the new hand cream you just sent them. Maybe they use it every day. But that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll post about it.
One way to persuade them is to create influencer-friendly packaging. Andreea recalls an example where a perfume brand she worked with designed a minimalistic box printed with the message: “Words can never tell the stories fragrance can.”
Deep, huh?
This simple, low-cost tactic delivered fantastic results. “The influencers really loved it. When they received it, they were like, ‘Oh my God, let me take a snap.’”
Add calls to action
Creativity isn’t always the answer.
Sometimes, it pays to be direct: simply ask influencers to share your product and tag your brand by including a clear call-to-action on the packaging.
Andreea says the main goal is to make your product shareable by itself (i.e. without paying influencers a fee to post about it).
If I don't have a budget and I'm starting off with gifting, I have to maximize my chances for people to post about it. If I just send it in a bag, influencers are going to ignore it.
🤓 Pro tip: Make your packaging even more actionable by adding a QR code that links to your Instagram profile or offers a shareable snippet for influencers to post.
Craft realistic experiences
On one hand, you want influencers to be wowed by all the fancy trinkets you send them.
But if it’s a million miles removed from what real customers experience, you risk annoying the very people you’re trying to engage and convert. Or, as Andreea puts it:
Oftentimes, influencers get these really cute PR packages, and the customer gets an Amazon bag. That's not a good look.
She recommends finding the middle ground between exciting influencers and showcasing a realistic user journey.
For example, if you’re going to add a handwritten note to every influencer package you send, do the same for your paying customers.
3. Use your P&L in demand planning
Every brand using influencer marketing for product launches dreams of going viral. But if you don’t pay close attention to the numbers when forecasting demand, that dream can quickly turn into a nightmare.
For instance, let’s say you’re launching a $10 hand cream. You can produce 5,000 units a month and need to sell 3,000 more each month to hit your incremental growth target. And, because you’re being aggressive, you plan to send 500 a month to influencers.
You’re seeing an average order value of $28, meaning customers are buying two or three at a time. So your 5,000 units turns into 1,800 orders — and with gifting factored in, it won’t take long before you’re running out of products mid-month.
That’s a big issue, with research warning that:
❌ 73% of consumers feel less loyal to retailers after encountering product unavailability
❌ 59% feel less confident to keep shopping with a store that experiences regular stockouts
Not only that, but if you’ve signed a contract with an influencer and promised to send them your product by a certain date, it can damage your relationship if you fail to deliver.
“The problem is, when you hit that incrementality, you think ‘We're gonna make so much money,’” says Andreea.
But then all that money goes to buying extra stock, and you buy it at a premium because you didn't plan for it.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple hack to overcome this problem. You’ve just got to do the math by looking at your profit and loss statement and running the types of numbers we shared in the above scenario.
Phase 2: Product promotion and launch 🚀
4. Gather product feedback from a small group of influencers
You’ve got the finished product in your hands and you’re ready to run influencer activity at scale.
But before you start, it pays to share your product with a select group of trusted influencers and gather their feedback. Andreea says:
Most brands don’t do this. But they probably should, because influencers have a unique view of their niche. They likely use your competitors’ products too, so they’re ideally placed to tell you what would make them promote your product and brand. “Half of their brain is consumer and half is creator.
Ask them questions like:
📱 Is it Instagrammable enough?
👭 Would you share it with your friends?
💫 Does it appeal to you on a creative and aesthetic level?
🛠️ Does the functionality meet your standards?
🤳🏼 Do you think other influencers would like it?
If they love your product, great — you’re good to go. But if their feedback is less glowing, you can address the issues early on. You could even send a second version to the same influencers and see what they think of the improvements.
Influencers are taking a risk by recommending something that no one has ever tried before. Get as much feedback as possible from that small sample, then as you start to scale and more people post about you, it will get easier.
5. Reach out to existing influencers
If you’ve worked with influencers before (and seen decent results), it makes sense to include those same influencers in your product launch campaign.
For example, say you’re expanding your product range by introducing a new hand cream. You can simply reach out to influencers who already love your products and have shown good performance — there’s no need to include any other influencers in your launch.
Alternatively, if you’re tapping into a new vertical, it might be worth adding some new faces alongside your existing influencer partners.
Imagine, for instance, that this is your first vegan hand cream product. In that case, you can expand your reach by teaming up vegan beauty influencers.
I would take the segment of pre-existing influencers and put the most amplification budget behind that, then choose influencers who have high reach and high engagement in the new niche.
Still, even if you know and trust your existing influencers, you might need to agree new terms and set strict criteria around who you work with.
That’s what Deeper Sonar had to do for the launch of its Quest bait boat. With a four-figure price tag and limited availability, they couldn’t afford to simply send Quest to dozens of influencers. Instead, they teamed up with one influencer in each of their five top markets. Those five influencers had to fulfill the following criteria:
✅ Big followings in the angling community
✅ Already used (or had potential to use) a bait boat
✅ Strong, trusted reputation in their local market
After analyzing the influencer landscape, Valeriia, Deeper’s head of media partnerships, quickly realized that the best people for the job came from the brand’s pool of existing ambassadors.
We chose from our long-term partnerships because we already knew what to expect from them. We knew which types of content they’re best at and their reputation, so we could trust them with such expensive products.
6. Leverage your existing audience (if you have one)
Unless you’re a totally new brand with zero subscribers or followers, it’s well worth leveraging your existing audience to help promote your product launch.
Just go into your email list, ask if any of your subscribers have an audience, and offer them a small incentive — like gifting them the product or giving them $20 in store credit — to shout about it online.
When you have 5k – 100k+ names on your list, you can dig into it and find people who will share your new product. Maybe they were already planning to order it, so you also get to delight them with a gift. It's the perfect overlap between customer and influencer.
Modash speeds up this process. Rather than reaching out to everyone on your list, you can find influencers who follow your brand by raiding our database of every influencer on Earth with 1k+ followers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
Here’s how to do it in three short steps:
👉 Go to Modash's Discovery tool
👉 Click "Find your fans" and enter your account username
👉 Click "Show profiles"
And that’s it 🙂. You’ll get a list of people who follow your brand and have 1k+ followers of their own. Click on each to open their profile and check their audience demographics, fake followers, engagement rate, content, and more. Give it a try by signing up for a free Modash trial.
💡 Learn more: For a more detailed walk-through, read How To Check If Influencers Are Following Your Brand.
7. Be realistic around launch day
From here, the process is pretty much the same as any influencer activation. You just figure out how to promote the product and amplify it with budget.
However, Andreea urges brands not to rush to launch day — especially if this is your first product.
For new brands, it makes sense to get your website live first so you can make sure everything works and start running ads.
The same goes for existing brands: take the time to build buzz through social media and email newsletters rather than speed to launch day.
Case study: Deeper Sonars’ 3-month product launch roadmap
Looking for inspiration for your launch campaign? Valeriia shared Deeper’s three-month roadmap for the Quest bait boat.
(Every product launch will look different, but it's nice to have a real-world example.)
Creative examples from Deeper’s product launch
Launch announcement teaser (including invitation to nearest trade show)
Influencers working at Deeper trade show stand
Quest unboxing content
Short hands-on content
In-depth hands-on review content
Collaboration between Quest ambassador and local publication (arranged by Deeper)
Challenges with influencer marketing for product launches
Trying to do too much
Sure, you’re excited about your new product hitting the market. You want to make a big splash about it. So, naturally, you’re desperate to plan and execute the most innovative product launch anyone’s ever seen.
Trouble is, a lot can go wrong with launches. And if it all goes wrong, your product might crash and burn before it ever has chance to succeed.
Solution ✅
Remember: you have two main goals for your product launch:
👍 Get your product to market without any major headaches
💰 Sell as many units as possible
If this is your first launch, you should focus on those goals and keep it simple rather than trying to get hyper-creative — save that for future campaigns when you have more experience.
Dealing with logistics
Speaking of headaches, the process of sending your product to influencers is a lot more complex than it sounds.
For example, influencers might write their address with acronyms and shortcuts, which are often incompatible with logistics software. Or they might give you a PO box rather than their actual address — and lots of shipping systems don’t do PO boxes.
What happens if a package is lost or stolen? Or if the product is defective or needs to be replaced for some other reason? It could be the wrong size, or the influencer might not like it IRL.
And what about technical stuff like coupons, UTM codes, and shipping labels?
Solution ✅
Andreea recommends figuring out all these questions way before launch and adding all the information to a central resource that everyone on your team can access.
I create a cheat sheet covering all the things we need to figure out for sending products. Who sends the products, where do we put the orders, how do we discount in Shopify? Because you need to explain this to your influencer marketers, who could be coming from a non-technical background.
Picking the right influencers
Finding the right influencers to promote your product launch can be tough. Especially if you’re in a comparatively small niche (like Deeper Sonar) and/or you don’t have a little black book full of trusted influencers or a bulging email list.
Solution ✅
Another way to find influencers is to wait for your first 50 – 100 orders to come in. Then reach out to those customers and ask them which influencers they follow. Simple!
Managing influencer expectations
Launches rarely go totally smoothly — even for massive, established brands with huge product and marketing teams.
Timelines can be pretty fluid, meaning your influencers might receive the product later than anticipated. If you can’t afford to delay launch day, this puts them under pressure to turn the content around fast, which can affect quality.
Solution ✅
This is why it pays to work with existing influencers — people you have a strong relationship with, and who know that you’re doing everything you can to make their life easy.
It also highlights the importance of managing expectations through regular communications. If you’re experiencing production delays, let them know, and be prepared to tweak your content plan on the fly. If the product arrives late, maybe you can push back your deadline for in-depth review content, and instead ask your influencer partners to create a quick video for Reels.
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