Are you planning to launch a new business or product online? Are you nervous you might not find enough buyers for your new launch?
If you answered yes to both of these questions, you’ll benefit from learning how to do pre-launch marketing.
Drawing up a pre-launch marketing plan can help you attract customers to your brand-new business even before the actual launch day. It can generate a buzz around your product and get people to notice it.
You first need a pre-launch marketing strategy to introduce a new product successfully. Because what you do in the months leading up to the launch will determine whether it’s a big bang or a dud.
In this article, we’ll look at 5 proven pre-launch ideas to include in your marketing strategy. We’ll also share some real-life pre-launch marketing examples for you to take inspiration from.
What Is a Pre-Launch Marketing Strategy?
Pre-launch marketing strategy is a way for businesses to create engaging build-up around the launch of a new product. A pre-launch marketing strategy can be a coming soon landing page, a countdown campaign, or a guerrilla marketing event. Its goal is to get the potential customers excited about buying your product.
Pre-launch marketing activities are like movie teasers. They give potential customers a glimpse of what’s about to come and keep them waiting excitedly till the launch date.
Remember Elon Musk’s pre-launch hype about Tesla Cybertruck?
Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2022
Musk posted a series of tweets much before Cybertruck’s official launch. The hype he created has led 1.5 million to pre-order the vehicle. And the truck is not even launched yet!
Apple’s product launches are another example of a brilliant pre-launch strategy. Yes, Apple positions its launch events as product releases. But the company actually uses them to create hype about the product they are about to launch.
In the days following the event, people queue outside Apple stores for hours to buy iPhones or MacBooks at a premium price.
TNT, a cable TV channel, launched this guerrilla marketing campaign in Belgium to promote its TV shows. The pre-launch campaign quickly went viral all over the world because of the high-octane drama built into it.
These are great examples of tried and tested pre-launch marketing secrets.
Next, let’s look at 5 actionable pre-launch marketing ideas that you can apply to your business.
1. Create a Coming Soon Page
Coming soon pages are one of the best ways to collect your customers’ email before the product launch. Collecting emails is a form of lead generation. And generating leads helps you build an email list of the most engaged customers.
With lead generation, you can run an email marketing campaign to market your product. When you create a coming soon page, you start capturing leads before people can even buy your products.
If you are launching a brand new business, your homepage at this point should simply be a landing page. It should announce what your product is about and when it’s launching.
You can also create a registration form for people to join the waitlist. These are people who want to get updates about the product when you go live.
The easiest way to make a coming soon page is using a tool like SeedProd. SeedProd is the best landing page builder for WordPress. It allows you to easily create beautiful landing pages in minutes using a visual drag-and-drop editor.
SeedProd offers a wide variety of designs that you can customize to create any kind of landing page to suit your needs. The best part? With SeedProd, creating great-looking landing pages just takes a few minutes.
Here’s an example of a coming soon page designed on SeedProd:
Remember to keep your coming soon page simple. It should be optimized to do just one thing: collect emails.
After people convert as your email subscribers, send regular updates about your products or services to keep them engaged. To spice things up, you can create a countdown timer on the coming soon page a month or week before the launch.
On launch day, send an email campaign about the product being live with a link for people to check out. This is what drives that immediate flood of traffic to a new product launch.
2. Publish Relevant Content to Generate Buzz
If the product or feature that you are launching is the hero of your business, publishing supporting content is the hype man it needs.
This requires you to develop a content marketing strategy for your new business. Publishing high-quality, relevant content helps you get leads and grow your audience.
Zapier recently did something similar in its blog when they were ready to launch new product functionalities.
Notice how Zapier links to a sign-up page in the blog. It invites interested users to join the waitlist to test the new functionalities when they go live.
You don’t have to make your content all about the launch. Make sure you share useful tips, thought leadership posts, and other forms of content to capture your audience’s attention.
This means investing in search engine optimization (SEO) so relevant people can find your website online. But why stop there? You can also create viral articles or epic guides. These are things people will want to share.
Here’s an example of epic content from I Will Teach You To Be Rich:
Wondering what makes it epic?
It’s super in-depth, covers all aspects of making money, and it’s optimized for conversion. There are sign-up forms and call-to-action (CTA) buttons throughout the article, multiple times on a page.
Pro-tip: You can use 2-step opt-ins in your forms to improve the conversion rate. Well-crafted opt-in forms can increase conversion rates by up to 785%. Here’s an example of a 2-step opt-in form by Creativindie:
Wondering how to create forms or popups like these?
You can use OptinMonster, which makes it super easy to create all kinds of optin forms and popups.
Our templates are designed for a wide range of use cases and are fully customizable. You can build an eye-catching popup by choosing the right template that suits your needs.
Here’s a preview of OptinMonster’s ready-to-use Launching Soon popup template with a built-in countdown timer:
When you publish content during the pre-launch stage, embed popups on your content pages to capture leads. It will come in handy when you need to start marketing your new product to an interested audience.
3. Leverage Guest Posting
Guest posting is another digital marketing strategy that will help you get in front of your target market. It’s a consistent and repeatable strategy that works across all niches.
A guest post on a high-traffic blog can send you hundreds of subscribers overnight and continue sending traffic your way long-term.
Not every guest post will take off. The more you write, the higher your chances of getting opportunities that will generate the right kind of traffic. As a rule of thumb, all traffic from the guest post should lead people to your coming soon page.
Getting started with guest posting isn’t hard, but there are a few steps you’ll need to follow to do it properly. Let’s go over some.
- Prospecting: You’ll want to find blogs that target the same demographics as yours. Ideally, they should be high-traffic sites and have good domain authority. If this is new to you, use websites like Moz or Ahrefs to improve your outreach. Just enter the URL pages of blogs that interest you and pitch to the ones that cater to the same audience as yours.
- Putting the article together: The type of article you’ll write depends on the type of website you’re writing it for. The topic you’re writing about must be relevant to their target audience, as well as your own.
- Promoting the post: This step isn’t mandatory, but it sure helps a lot. Once the article is published, be the first one to share it on your social media network. Thank the website owners for allowing you to publish on their blog and share your tips with their audience. This will help you get the word out about your launch and attract other guest posting opportunities.
Pro-tip: If finding relevant guest posting and repeated follow-ups proves difficult, there’s an alternative. Find relevant podcasts in your niche and pitch yourself (or your founders) as a guest. In most cases, podcast hosts are always looking for new guests to invite to their show.
If you match their audience preferences, they should accept your request in a heartbeat. Alternatively, you can also sponsor ads on relevant podcasts in your niche.
4. Go Heavy on Social
In today’s day and age, you are missing a great deal if you aren’t leveraging social media marketing.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have millions of daily users. When you make social media part of your pre-launch content strategy, you can access a huge customer base ready to buy from you.
That’s because studies suggest 68% of buyers follow brands on social media to stay informed about new products or services.
And if you are launching a new product in the business-to-business (B2B) domain, nothing comes close to LinkedIn. HubSpot recently ran a study among 5000 businesses and found that LinkedIn converted 2.74% of leads, more than Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).
Chris Paul, the renowned basketball player, used social media to launch his new plant-based snacks brand, Gopuff. The brand’s social media presence got a lot of public attention, including media stories in FastCompany and Adweek.
Showcasing your product on social media is a smart marketing effort that can attract the right audience to your brand. It can help raise awareness about your new product and improve your word-of-mouth marketing.
Pro-tip: If you want to make your launch searchable in social media feeds, come up with unique hashtags. This will also help you analyze how your social media campaign performed in the post-launch phase.
5. Prepare a Press Kit
If you want media to cover your product launch, you should prepare a press kit. A press kit is a set of media assets like company information, founders’ bios, images, quotes, or even news articles.
Preparing a press kit during the product launch timeline ensures that you have everything ready to go public on the scheduled date.
You can use these materials yourself in your pre-launch campaigns or hand them out to media outlets. The goal is to make it easy for the media people to create a report about the launch rather than start from scratch.
You can use online wire services like Business Wire or EIN Presswire. These public relations (PR) firms let you publish press releases online.
These agencies have partnerships with thousands of media outlets across the world. They use their huge network to distribute your launch news to a wide audience. You can also schedule press releases on a specific date and time with these platforms.
Suppose you are launching a digital product like a new app or a cool new WordPress plugin. In that case, you can use platforms like Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, or Indiegogo. These are communities with thousands of startup entrepreneurs with interests similar to yours.
Don’t make it overly promotional when preparing media assets for a press kit. Instead, tell a useful story for the target audience. For instance, if you’re launching a Shopify plugin, talk about how you are solving an existing problem for Shopify users.
Some time back, Careerflow did a soft launch of their AI assistant bot on Product Hunt to drive traffic to their Chrome plugin page.
We’re so excited to announce that in just seven days (wow, just in a week 🎉), we’ll launch our AI assistant for optimizing LinkedIn profiles on Product Hunt. 🥳
Set a reminder ⏰for our upcoming launch on @ProductHunt💯https://t.co/bULTVNxk77 #producthunt #productlaunch pic.twitter.com/YevAdR9Fgz
— Careerflow (@careerflow_ai) December 13, 2022
Notice the use of a static countdown timer in their Twitter post. It’s yet another reminder that countdown timers work great for conversions. That’s because they use scarcity tactics to pique people’s interest for an upcoming launch.
Other Useful Pre-Launch Marketing Tips to Consider
Build Suspense Around the Launch
If you’d like some free publicity, dropping small hints a few weeks before your launch can send your audience into a frenzy. To do this, release vague details about your product, whether it’s through your email newsletter or social media.
Remember, never share complete spoilers. Just give them enough to want more.
Once again, here’s an example from Elon Musk. He used X (formerly Twitter) to share tidbits about an upcoming vehicle release without revealing its name.
Ability to stream YouTube & Netflix when car is stopped coming to your Tesla soon! Has an amazingly immersive, cinematic feel due to the comfy seats & surround sound audio.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 27, 2019
Collaborate with Influencers and Bloggers
Roping in influencers and bloggers in your niche can have a huge impact on your product launch. Influencer marketing can improve brand awareness (89%), brand reputation (87%), and customer loyalty (87%).
You can get influencers to promote your product launch for an affiliate commission. Or, you can build partnerships where they help you out and show off your product to their audience.
Either way, if they have a large following base and put in a good review, the buzz for your product can spread far and wide.
Run Giveaway Contests
Running giveaway contests gives your customers something to be excited about before the launch. Announcing a giveaway contest on your coming soon page or social media pages helps drive traffic to your website.
RafflePress is the best WordPress plugin that lets you run successful giveaways for your product pre-launch. With RafflePress, you can pick from multiple templates and easily launch a giveaway contest on your website.
This includes running giveaways on a coming soon page when the product development is still underway. With a pre-launch giveaway contest, you don’t have to wait until the launch to start marketing your product.
Here’s an example of a giveaway page example designed on RafflePress for a coming soon page:
And there you have it! Now you have everything you need to create a successful pre-launch marketing campaign.
The Best Day to Start a Pre-Launch Campaign Is Today
The days leading up to the launch days are exciting. If you leverage the right marketing channels, customers will flood your site and join your email list.
But for you to have a really successful product launch, you need a thoughtful pre-launch marketing plan. The key to achieving this success is starting early.
Begin by putting together the pre-launch marketing tips discussed in this post. And if you already have a landing page design, create a 2-step optin form for visitors to join your email list.
Want to see how easy it is to create a new launching soon sign-up form? Get started with OptinMonster today!
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