The Side Hustle 04: 5 Steps to Executing the Perfect Product Drop

Reading time: 1 mins and 30 seconds.

Welcome to edition 4 of The Side Hustle, your weekend ecommerce tip, tale or yarn.

I want to talk about executing a great product drop that gets the people going!

Ideally your online sales should double on the day you launch a new product range, or at least, significantly spike. A shout out to 3 of my clients who recently nailed it, Budgy Smuggler’s YTG caps that sold out in hours, Who is Elijah’s latest fragrance did over $70,000 on day 1, and Geedup Clothing had a $3m day in June with their new winter delivery.

 If you’re launching a new product or range, there are a couple of scenarios that can play out.

1. You launch and sales boom
2. You launch, and sales are good to steady for 30 days
3. You launch and sales fall flat for 30 days

Here are three corresponding reasons for the above.

1. You’ve executed what I called a great ‘hype phase’ and your product is good
2. Your product is good but your haven’t marketed enough pre-drop
3. Your product is not good

Lately, I've been watching some of the brands that I work with execute their product drops, and here’s a playbook I've developed. It centres on the idea that the selling starts 30 days before the product drops, not after.

Here are the 5 stages that I’d recommend leading into a new product drop.

1. 3 weeks out: All photography done - Campaign images and flatlays for the website and ads
2. 2 weeks out: Collections and products go live in Shopify with a countdown timer and "notify me" feature on the PDP (product page). Call to action is to “notify me” not "add to cart". Meta ads commence. Organic socials commence. Influencer seeding commences. All copy using the same consistent message highlighting the delivery day and time.
3. 1 week out: Behind the Product (BTP) shots and videos for socials. First EDM teaser sent. Announcement bar changes to arrival date/coming soon. Influencers chased for posting, office staff posting and talking about products on socials.
4. 24 hours out: 1st SMS teaser sent - "Be notified on release" is the CTA - link to collection page.  EDM and Pushowl (web push notifications) with the same CTA sent. Copy is around launch day and time, for example “tomorrow 6pm”.
5. Launch day: Go live EDM and SMS sent. Meta ads swap to focus on “buy now” rather than "coming soon". Website homepage changes. 

I send emails through Klaviyo, web push notifications through Push Owl, and the 'Notify Me' feature through the Back in Stock app. Klaviyo can also handle the countdown timer, or you can browse the Shopify App Store. 

That’s the playbook I'm currently pushing. It might be unusual to consider running Meta ads before the stock is available to purchase, but there are two reasons why I do that.

1. So that we have DPA ads kicking in when the product goes live (retargeting visitors with the products they actually clicked on).
2. We can’t always be trying to sell, sell, sell, we need to get into the conversation before we get into the wallet. Meta should help bring very warm prospects into the bottom of the funnel by the time day 1 hits, making for early sales.

Remember, it takes 30 days or more for the average consumer to go from discovery to purchase, so it makes sense to start convincing potential customers 30 days before we want the sale.

Remember this though, you might have the best hype phase in the game, but if your product isn’t convincing, all the hype, meta ads, emails and SMS in the world won’t help you. It starts with the product. 

A final thought on the product; People will open your competitors websites and view their products while they’re evaluating yours. If you can’t give them a good reason as to why they should choose yours, then more often than not, they won't.

Have a profitable week ahead,

Paul

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