How to Launch a Product on Instagram Step-by-Step in 2024

First of all, congratulations on your new product. 🥳

We know there’s a lot that goes into creating a new product and you’ve done all you can to make that happen. 

What’s next?

Now, it’s time to let your audience know what you’ve got in store for them. 

How do you do that?

Simple, via a product launch!

Don’t worry, we'll show you how to do that in this guide.

More specifically, we’ll talk about:

• Why Instagram is an ideal platform for the product launch
• Examples of product launches on Instagram to inspire you

That said, let’s kick things off!

Why is Instagram Ideal for Launching a Product?

The short answer is that Instagram has features that allow businesses to announce the launch of a new product with ease. 

Aside from that, Instagram happens to be one of the top social media platforms in the world with an easy-to-use interface. 

To be more specific, it’s the fourth most popular social platform in the world with about 1.28 billion users. 

That’s roughly 30% of internet users globally. 

In another report, it was estimated that by 2023, there would be over 1.3 billion Instagram users.

Here’s what we’re driving at: Instagram is popular and has an audience wide enough for your product launch campaign. 

Let’s take a look at some other reasons why Instagram is ideal for a product launch:

1. It’s a hub for product discovery

If you’re bothered about whether or not you’d be able to reach people when you make the announcement on IG, you don’t have to. 

Why?

Because Instagram is known to be a platform where people discover new brands and products. 

According to Facebook, people use Instagram to know what’s trending and even to research products before purchasing them. 

In the survey they carried out, 83% of the people said Instagram helps them discover new products and services. 

So you can be certain that people will see your new product when it’s launched on Instagram. 

And if you include product information, 87% of people in the survey say it’ll drive them to take action. 

Here are some of the actions people said they took:

2. It can help you boost conversions

Would you like people to take action when they see your product? 

Then, you should announce it on Instagram. The platform makes it easy to build awareness that leads to conversions. 

63% of people say Instagram enables them to create connections with brands.

Also, an Instagram for Business survey showed that 44% of people use the social app to shop weekly. 

Not only are people active on Instagram, but they’re also more than willing to go the extra mile which could include visiting your store, buying your product, sharing it, and more.

All of this is just to say you can expect conversions when you launch a product on Instagram.

3. It has great eCommerce features

Most brands on social media have one thing in common: they have a link(s) in their bio. 

The link usually leads to their website or store outside the platform. 

What if we told you that in many cases users don’t click through using the link even if they interact with your content?

A study by computer scientists at Columbia University showed that 59% of the links shared on social media have never been clicked. 

That could mean the link in your bio might not have been clicked on before.

Well, thanks to certain features such as the product tag and Instagram shopping feature, people don’t have to go off IG to learn more about your products or buy them.

So when you launch your product on Instagram, people can discover them and make purchases right there and then. 

4. There are affordable advertising opportunities

Running ads on Instagram is also cost-effective. 

The average cost-per-click (CPC) of an Instagram ad is between $0.50 and $1.50.

That means you may not have to spend so much on paid digital marketing campaigns. 

You can also decide to promote your product organically if you don’t have a huge marketing budget and still achieve your objective. 

How?

By leveraging influencer marketing.

You’ll get to partner with influencers and creators during the product launch to produce user generated content that can attract potential customers without spending as much as you would for paid marketing. 

5. It allows for easy engagement

Another reason why Instagram is ideal for your product launch is that it has a user-friendly interface. 

As such, brands and regular users can easily engage with each other.

According to statistics, the average business profile on Instagram has an engagement rate of 1.94% from followers. 

The visual content you put out draws them in and the interface allows them to like, comment, share, or bookmark the post. 

Being able to engage with people when you launch a product is important because it’ll help you gather feedback so you know what your audience is expecting. 

This, in turn, allows you to perhaps improve on the ad creative you’ve used, target new audiences if you’re running an ad, or improve the product to suit your audience's needs.

Alright, it’s time…let’s get down to business! 

How to Launch a Product on Instagram (Step-by-Step Guide)

In this section, we’re going to show in detail how you can launch a product on Instagram. 

We know this is the part you’ve been waiting for so let’s jump right in!

Step #1: Define your audience

When you launch your product, you’d like people to interact with it and buy it, right?

Well for that to happen, it needs to be seen by people who are interested in the product or have been searching for it. 

Like the popular digital marketing phrase “selling or advertising to everyone is almost the same as advertising to no one,” and you want to avoid that.

That’s one of the reasons why you need to define your audience. It will help you reach the actual end users of your product. 

That way, you won’t have to spend more than you should on customer acquisitions

Essentially, defining your audience ensures that your product makes it to the market successfully. 

How do you define your audience?

• Know who your current audience is: Take a look at your customer base. Who are the people who buy from you? Why do they buy from you?

Go through your social media posts and monitor who interacts with your posts, likes them, comments, or shares them. 

Then, find similar characteristics and interests. There’s a good chance people like them could be your customers too.

• Take a look at your competition: Keep track of who your competitors are targeting. Who are their current customers? If they’re in the same niche, you might be able to pick up some cues that’ll help you. 
• Select a demographic to target: Based on the benefits of your product, figure out who needs your product and is more likely to buy it. 

Here are some factors that can help you: age, location, gender, income level, family status, ethnicity, and more. 

• Consider their psychographics: This refers to the characteristics of your typical customers. What are their interests, lifestyles, and behaviors? What are their personalities like?

Once you’ve been able to define your audience, the other steps become much easier to follow. 

Step #2: Develop your content strategy

Content strategy refers to the planning, production, and delivery of content to be used on the launch day. 

It’s an important part of your marketing strategy when you’ll get to decide what type of content will be used for the campaign among other things. 

Those ‘other things’ can include:

• What format they’ll be in; e.g., videos, images, Instagram stories, carousels, etc.
• What the objective of the content is

Why do you need to develop a content strategy?

So you can have a successful product launch. 

More specifically, it can help you reach your audience, raise awareness for your product, and increase your sales. 

“How can I create one?”

Audit your Instagram account: This involves optimizing your bio by adding your contact information and making sure it will attract your target audience. You also need to think about what your goals are when auditing your account.

Create a theme for your content: Considering Instagram is a visual platform, you need to think of fonts, colors, or filters you can use in your content that reflect your brand. In addition, what format should the content be in?

Produce content: Since this is a product launch, you want the content you produce to be high-quality, create awareness about the product, and get your audience to take action.

Create a content calendar: A calendar will guide you on when to post before and after the launch. As such you want to consider how often you want to post and what times your audience will be online when creating it. 

Widen your content reach: Here you’re concerned about how to get more people aware of your product. 

This involves partnering with influencers, cross-promoting on other platforms such as TikTok, or running giveaways. 

Step #3: Partner with the right content creators and influencers

The next step you want to take when launching your product on Instagram is to collaborate with creators and influencers.

We’ve mentioned them a couple of times in this piece and that’s because they can be considered as Instagram users who’ve ‘hacked the system’.

They know what works on the platform so you can use their expertise to your advantage. 

A report by Smart Insights showed that 51% of marketers say partnering with influencers has helped them acquire new customers.

Consumers have also had good reports about influencers. 

84% of them have said they’ve made the decision to buy a product based on an influencer’s recommendation.

In another study, consumers said they’ll take the word of an influencer or people they know over messages from actual brands. 

What we’re trying to say is that partnering with Instagram influencers and creators can have a significant impact on your product launch.

What’s more, you’ll be able to leverage their audience to raise brand awareness as they’ve been able to build a large community of IG users. 

Even working with influencers with a small following, such as micro-influencers, who have a follower count of 10k–100k, and collaborating with them can grant you access to their community.

This step is actually recommended by Instagram. 

See what they said about it: “product launches promoted by creators perform better than the ones done without involving creators.”

“So, how do I collaborate with creators?”

First, you need to find them and that can be done by visiting a creator marketplace like Insense or Instagram’s creator marketplace.

If you want to use Insense, here’s how it works:

• Visit Insense and sign up or log in to get access to our dashboard

• Generate a brief by clicking +New Campaign
• Fill out the brief and get matched with creators

• Pick the creator(s) you’d like to work with and begin your collaboration
• Get content when they’re done via our chat feature

…and just like that, your partnership has begun!

Now, creators can tag the new product in the post they produce after they’ve received approval from you. 

Step #4: Take advantage of Instagram’s features

As stated earlier on, Instagram has several features that can help you build hype and notify people of your new products. 

Guess what?

They’re there for you to use!

Let’s take a look at them:

Product launch tags: This feature tags your new product across different formats including Instagram Reels, Stories, Live, and Feed as seen in the screenshot below.

Product launch stickers: Includes countdown and reminder stickers that you can use in IG Stories so people are notified when your product is ready.

Notifications: Would you like shoppers to get a reminder before the launch date? You can do that by tapping push notifications in the Activity Tab. 

Product detail pages: With this feature, customers can see more images of your product, learn more about it, and set reminders too. 

Live shopping: This is ideal for launch day and allows you to celebrate with your audience in real time. 

You can also pin the product on the live event with a countdown timer so everyone knows when it drops. It will look like this:

Then when your product goes live, it will be in your Instagram shop and also tagged in posts. 

Another thing to note during the new product launch is that only shoppers in countries where checkout on Instagram is available can purchase it.  

So, you might want to inform your audience about that. 

Step #5: Leverage Instagram ads

For our final step, you can amplify your social media marketing efforts by running paid ads. 

If you want, you can kick things off during the pre-launch stages to build hype and get your DMs buzzing before it’s officially launched. 

Why is this important? 

Well according to Instagram, 50% of users will be more interested in a brand when they see ads from them. 

Instagram ads help you reach more people by allowing you to decide who can see your content through targeting.

And if you happen to promote content produced by a creator as an Instagram ad (creator licensing), you’ll get to extend your reach even further. 

How can you create IG ads?

1. Select the creative

The ad creative refers to the image or video you want to use. Decide on which one you want to use and ensure it’s captivating and engaging. 

2. Choose an objective

Do you want to drive awareness for your product? Drive traffic to the site? You’ll need to choose a goal as it helps you set the direction of the campaign. 

How do you choose your objective?

Go to Ads Manager and tap the +Create green button at the left side of the page. 

Click the green button and a dialog box will pop up. There, select the objective of your campaign and tap Continue to proceed.

3. Set your budget

Decide how much you want to spend on your campaign. It can be a daily budget or a lifetime budget. 

The daily budget refers to how much you’ll spend every day, while the lifetime is the amount to be spent during the lifetime of your campaign. 

For the lifetime budget, you might want to set an end date but it’s optional for the daily budget.

4. Target your audience

Remember our first step in this guide? Well, you need to select your audience so your ad is shown only to them.  

To do that, tap Ad Set and navigate to the Audience section. There you can define your audience based on their: 

• Language
• Demographics, interests, or behaviors
• Location
• Age group
• Gender

5. Place your ad

Here, you’ll get to decide where you want to place your ads—Reels, IG Feed posts, Stories, Explore, or anywhere you choose. 

Click the Ad Sets again, and navigate to Placements.

You’ll have two options to choose from—Advantage+placements and Manual placements.

Select Manual placements. Then, proceed to select Instagram as the platform and further down to Placements to decide where the ads will appear. 

In the screenshot below, only Reels was selected but you can choose multiple placements if you want. 

Thereafter, select a call-to-action (CTA), complete the ad by following the on-screen instructions, and submit it for review. 

Once it’s approved, your product launch ads will go live! 

Next, let’s show you a few examples of product launches on IG to inspire you. 

3 Examples of Products Killing it On Instagram 

We’ve got some great examples of brands that have launched and promoted their products on Instagram. 

So we thought, “why not share them with you?”

You know, to sort of provide you with a workable template that can guide you when it’s time to launch.

Let’s dive right in! 

Product #1: Teva

Our first example is from Teva, a French shoe brand.

One of their posts got almost 3k likes including comments.

What did they do?

So far, they’ve leveraged organic ads where they featured one of their managers in the post showing what the product looked like. 

It didn’t give off that brand-ish vibe, so we can say it’s user-generated content. 

After the launch, their Instagram feed still had multiple posts featuring their new product. 

Product #2: Teddy Blake

Teddy Blake, a New-York-based handbag brand launched a new product—‘The Kim’ that got their audience talking on Instagram. 

They used organic posts as their Instagram marketing strategy and it was nothing too complex, just an image of their product in use. 

Teddy Blake also made use of hashtags to make the post more visible.

Product #3: Beardbrand

Our final example is from Beardbrand. They changed the packaging and name of their product so technically we can say it’s a new product. 

They created a pre-launch post with an interesting caption explaining the new look. 

The short version of it is that they wanted to provide more value for their customers and this made them engage with the post. 

Beardbrand also used hashtags as part of its social media strategy to increase its reach before the launch date. 

Alright, let’s bring this piece to a close!

Now Over to You

If you’ve been worried about how you’ll announce the new product to your audience, we want to believe that worry is now out the door. 

And it’s all thanks to our step-by-step guide! 😊

At the same time, we understand that getting started can be overwhelming and, as such, we want to remove that burden for you.

So feel free to book a demo with Insense so we can help you get started on the social media campaign for your product launch. 

Sounds good, right?

Well, we’re glad you stopped by and we hope to see you soon!