Creating a new product or starting a new project is always overwhelming. Whatever it is you are starting, there are always lots of dots to connect, from competitor research to product development.
And while setting up a new site or creating a new (digital) product is quite challenging in itself, there’s at least an end to that process, which is almost encouraging.
Sadly, that’s not something you can say about marketing.
Marketing is never done: You always need to be on top of things, try new tactics, find new partners, etc., if you want your sales to keep growing.
While marketing a new project is always a tedious, never-ending project, you can at least make it easier and even scalable by developing an effective pre-launch marketing.
Pre-launch marketing has two main goals:
- Build interest and buzz for the upcoming project
- Pre-plan your future marketing by knowing who is helping you, who you are going to reach out to, which platforms are going to be more effective, and how exactly you will utilize each of your marketing channels.
Here’s your actionable checklist to creating an effective pre-launch strategy:
- Build a Lead Generation Pre-Launch Landing Page
- Start Building Interest within Your Subscriber List
- Identify (and Engage with) Your Influencers Who Will Help You Out
- Draft Your Editorial Calendar
- Start Segmenting Your Audience
- Takeaways
Let’s get started!
Pre-launch Marketing Strategy Checklist
1. Build a Lead Generation Pre-Launch Landing Page
Any marketing strategy should always start here: Which page (or which site) is going to be the center of everything you do. This page needs to be hosted on your site. Never invest in marketing something you don’t own (like a Facebook page or a mini-site on any free hosting domain).
You need to be sure your page is always going to be there, no matter what. Third-party (free) sites go down and accounts get blocked (for any number of ridiculous reasons). So whatever you are marketing, you’d better 100% own and control that asset.
Setting up a pre-launch landing page is easier than you may think. If your site is run by WordPress, there’s a variety of plugins and themes that will let you set up a coming soon landing page with one click of a mouse. Many of those also come with a nice countdown timer for you to add to your landing page.
Apart from a countdown timer, the only thing I’d add to my pre-launch landing page is a quick marketing video. A video is always a good idea, both for engagement and organic visibility purposes.
To save time, here’s a nice tool that gives you the full power of video and creation tools without forcing you to download anything or take a separate course. InVideo is a cool video creation platform giving you all the tools to put together a cool promo content asset without spending a fortune.
This is also a good time to start building your future brand recognizability. Whenever you can, use your logo as a watermark to brand your video and visual content. You can add a watermark to your videos when uploading them to Youtube. You can also use Placeit’s logo tool to generates logo variations in seconds to use as a watermark across your creatives;
Using a traffic engagement tool to drive more people to your pre-launch page is also a good idea. Using Alter can help you do the job. The platform uses artificial intelligence to show personalized content suggestions, including when your site user is ready to leave. You can customize the settings to only show the exit intent popup on certain pages to drive more relevant engagements:
If you are launching something completely new and you think there’s a solid branding potential there, do invest into a new domain. If at any point you find yourself unable to build another brand, you will always be able to merge your mini-site with your main site by redirecting one into another.
Besides, now that we are able to find more than .com domains, finding a catchy brand name is easier. Radix is a domain registry allowing you to find and register catchy domains that will make launching a new brand easier:
2. Start Building Interest within Your Subscriber List
Whether you already have an email list you are going to use to launch your project or you are still building it up (using the lead generation landing page above), this step is essential.
You need to gradually work on engaging your email subscribers on a regular basis for them to recognize your email address in their email inbox.
Here are a few ideas for you:
- Set a weekly task to send your newsletter on a specific day at a specific time. Being consistent always improves engagement.
- Provide real value: Curate industry news or share some really useful tips. You want your subscribers to know and trust you.
The two tactics above will help you to build some brand recognizability among your subscribers, so they are more willing to hear about your launch (and more likely to engage). It will also let you segment your list allowing you to personalize your future campaigns. So think about this step as investing in data.
When you know your launch date, create a sequence of emails that would announce it and send follow-ups. This creates a feeling of scarcity which is a powerful concept when it comes to launch marketing.
Here’s a great case study on how Graham Cochrane used pre-launch email sequence to launch his new course. Using Kajabi, Graham set up a new course and then used the re-sale email sequence to boost his sales:
Kajabi comes with pre-built “pipeline blueprints” that allow you create and customize funnels from templates that involve tagged contacts, engagement triggers, content pages, videos, landing pages and email drips. This means that Kajabi makes this step especially easy. You can set up and test multiple pipelines to convert different segments of your audience with different messaging and designs. Here’s an example of a pipeline blueprint you can set up from inside your Kajabi dashboard:
3. Identify (and Engage with) Your Influencers Who Will Help You Out
This is one of those tasks that is actually never done, but if you start earlier, prior to even launching the project, you will have many engaged influencers by the time you launch.
Buzzsumo is the perfect influencer finder platform. You can find influencers on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, as well as identify influential authors.
For Twitter you can search for:
- Influencers who have tweeted an article on the topic of your interest
- Users who mention your keyword in their Twitter bio
I recommend using both of these options for best results.
[Buzzsumo also allows you to sort results by the engagement rate allowing to find influencers are likelier to respond to you]
Facebook search allows you to find most popular Facebook pages on any topic:
Finally, the third tab identifies influential authors on any topic and links to their Twitter profiles:
When searching for your influencers, make sure to:
- Create a Twitter list to keep in touch with them
- Retweet and comment their tweets on a regular basis
- Take notes of Twitter chats and communities they frequent (and consider joining as well)
Overall, at this point you just want to become known in the niche. But this process is another way to collect data too: By the time you launch you will know which of those influencers are likely to respond and what makes each of them tick.
Down the road, this will allow you to craft a more effective influencer marketing campaign.
4. Draft Your Editorial Calendar
You may not be ready to create all of your content just yet, but this is a good time to plan things out. Pre-launch content planning will allow you to capture all seasonal trends and create timely, and thus more effective content assets.
I always start my higher-level content planning process with trends and question research. This combination of focusing on popular niche questions while being able to meet seasonal trends.
I have already shared some tools and tactics for seasonal content planning and optimization, so use that resource for more guidelines.
Just to sum up, I use a tool called ContentCal that allows for collaborative content planning and marketing. You can quickly schedule seasonal content marketing campaigns there and use content briefs to store your specific ideas and details to act upon them when you are ready:
Your content briefs can be as detailed or as brief as you want them to be. I tend to keep them pretty detailed because I know that I should make the most of my quiet pre-launch time to focus on more burning issues when I launch.
For question research I use Text Optimizer’s “Content Ideas” section which extract popular questions on any target search query.
The tool allows you to clearly see question patterns allowing you to better understand and meet customers’ needs
5. Start Segmenting Your Audience
Finally, as you are building up some buzz and generating some traffic, you need to find ways to collect and utilize this data.
Data is your biggest brand asset: The earlier you start collecting it, the more informed decisions and better-targeted campaigns you will run when you launch.
At the pre-launch stage, make sure to start collecting and segmenting your traffic by using the following two methods:
- Facebook advertising campaigns: You can boost your content pages, promote your “Coming soon” page, or build up your page followers.
- On-site analytics: Finteza is the best solution here as it offers a wide variety of conversion optimization features.
Both of these methods have one thing in common: The ability to re-target your ads to your existing audience, based on their prior engagement with your ad and/or your site.
So when you launch, you will be able target your Facebook ads only to those people who previously engaged with your ads. Or, you can set up a custom sales funnel or a personalized deal to those site visitors who previously read your article.
In either case, you are no longer moving in the dark: You can use your accumulated data to serve better-targeted, more personalized ads and CTAs to your audience
Takeaways
- Pre-launch marketing strategy will make your launch easier on both the fronts: You will already know who should be the first to announce it to and how to promote your project further
- The first step in any pre-launch marketing campaigns is to create a page (or even a standalone site) you can use as the central point for all your promotional tactics
- The biggest part about your pre-launch marketing is that you invest in data, i.e. segmenting your optin list, your Facebook audience and your site audience.
- This is also a good time that you start engaging with your niche influencers. All of that data will help you make more informed and productive decisions when you launch.
- Pre-launch phase is also a perfect time for planning. You will be utterly overwhelmed when your project goes live, so use your quiet time now to brainstorm and form your future content strategy in detail.
Launching is always hard but the steps above will help you keep your sanity and keep moving to success!
FAQs
What are the pre-launch steps? ›
- Creating a landing page. ...
- Coming up with a content strategy. ...
- Practicing link building. ...
- Recruit influencers. ...
- Create a promo video. ...
- Host a launch event. ...
- Establish a social media presence. ...
- Generate buzz with social media.
What is a product launch checklist? A product launch checklist is a list of action items that need to be completed in order to successfully release a new product to consumers. It helps you think through the steps, processes and assets that you and a team need to complete prior to any product launch.
What is pre-launch marketing? ›Pre-launch marketing is the marketing you do before your new product (or service) is officially available. It helps you create awareness of your product, build some anticipation and buzz around the upcoming launch and generate valuable leads.
What are the 7 marketing tips in launching new products? ›- Study your competition. ...
- Target the ideal customer. ...
- Create a unique value proposition. ...
- Define your marketing strategy and tactics. ...
- Test your concept and marketing approach. ...
- Roll out your campaign. ...
- Know your product's lifecycle.
- Step 1: Start building your audience. ...
- Step 2: Create and grow your email list. ...
- Step 3: Come up with a pre-launch course landing page. ...
- Step 4: Pre-sell your online course. ...
- Step 5: Work on your course content. ...
- Step 6: Feature your online course content.
- Build a Lead Generation Pre-Launch Landing Page.
- Start Building Interest within Your Subscriber List.
- Identify (and Engage with) Your Influencers Who Will Help You Out.
- Draft Your Editorial Calendar.
- Start Segmenting Your Audience.
- Takeaways.
- Establish A Product Launch Plan. ...
- Perform Market Research. ...
- Identify Your Target Market. ...
- Identify Your Competitors. ...
- Develop A Marketing Strategy. ...
- Plan Your Budget. ...
- Set Measurable Goals And Benchmarks. ...
- Perform Extensive Product Testing.
- Pre-Launch. Before you launch, take the time to get really close to the product. ...
- Launch. ...
- Post-Launch. ...
- Research the space in-depth. ...
- Focus on a single buyer persona. ...
- Write a mock press release. ...
- Build your messaging -- but don't marry it. ...
- Share your messaging with everyone.
- Step 1: Do a “brain dump” ...
- Step 2: Organize and prioritize tasks. ...
- Step 3: Put them on your to-do list. ...
- Step 4: Check off each item as you complete it. ...
- Step 5: Continue adding items as they come up.
What is pre-launch content? First – let's go over what pre-launch content is by breaking it down. Your pre-launch simply means a specific period of time before you open your sales cart where you focus in and start sharing a higher volume of messages about your coming soon offer!
What is pre-launch mean? ›
Definition of prelaunch
1 : in preparation for or preliminary to the launch of a spacecraft, missile, satellite, etc. a prelaunch inspection. 2 : in preparation for or preliminary to the launch of a new product, campaign, etc.
- It's never too early for content.
- Create a “coming soon” page.
- Create an incentive.
- Guest posts are just as effective.
- A quick way to get an extra hundred subscribers…
- Offer beta access.
- Conclusion.
The 5 areas you need to make decisions about are: PRODUCT, PRICE, PROMOTION, PLACE AND PEOPLE. Although the 5 Ps are somewhat controllable, they are always subject to your internal and external marketing environments. Read on to find out more about each of the Ps.
What are the 5 methods of promotion? ›- Direct selling.
- Advertising.
- Public relations.
- Personal selling.
- Sales promotion.
3-4 Months is an Average Pre-Launch
For a pre-launch campaign you can expect it to take at least 3-4 months to generate the ideal impact. Longer isn't worse.
Well-established brands and eCommerce stores, take advantage of prelaunch campaigns for creating buzz about new and upcoming products. We recommend to run your prelaunch campaigns for at least 2 months—ideally more than that.
How long does pre launch take? ›Prelaunches are also usually run for a set period of time – 30, 60 or perhaps even 90 days. That means you've got to stick to a schedule. But that can be hard. It's during this time that you also instrument your business beyond gathering leads and initial interest.
What is a launch plan? ›A product launch plan is a document that details the tasks and timelines behind getting users to interact with your new product or a new feature. Creating a product launch plan will make it easier to identify your goals, set out your strategy, and designate tasks for different teams and members.
What are premarket activities? ›Pre-Marketing means all Commercialization activities undertaken prior to and in preparation for the launch of a Product in the Territory, including, without limitation, advertising, education, sales force training and Phase IIIB Clinical Trials.
What are the goals of your launch? ›Capture new customers. Increase in revenue. Build product awareness. Build the company's reputation in the industry.
How do you answer product launch questions? ›
...
B) Devise a Framework
- Pre Product Launch.
- During Product Launch.
- Post Product Launch.
- #1: Stop calling them your launch goals.
- #2 Acknowledge REALITY.
- #3 Set your Good Better Best Goals.
- #4 Define Actions To Reach Each Level.
- #5 Write out how you want to feel.
- Step 1: Develop your buyer persona.
- Step 2: Develop a competitive price point.
- Step 3: Select a launch type.
- Step 4: Create a marketing plan.
- Step 5: Craft persuasive messaging.
- Step 6: Involve the customer as the influencer.
...
Include the following elements:
- Tagline.
- Solution.
- Your product's main features.
- Value proposition.
- Users testimonials/quotes.
- Call to action.
A product launch is the process a company undertakes to bring its new or updated products to market. Tips for building a successful product launch include: Focusing on the customer experience. Using your product data to inform strategy. Creating a product launch checklist.
What makes a good checklist? ›Gawande says a good checklist is precise, efficient, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. It should provide reminders of only the most important steps, rather than trying to spell out everything—after all, a checklist can't do your job for you. And above all, a checklist should be practical.
What is checklist example? ›The definition of a checklist is a list of things that can be checked off as completed or noted. An example of a checklist is when you have ten things to do for work and you make a list of all of them and you check them off as you accomplish each of them.
What should a checklist contain? ›- Give a name to your checklist. The name of the checklist represents the purpose and use of creating it.
- Date / Date range. ...
- Add tasks in your checklist. ...
- Continue repeating for every task.
pre·launch
adj. Preparatory or preliminary to launch, especially of a spacecraft or missile.
- What is a Marketing Campaign? ...
- Step 1: Choose Your End Goal. ...
- Step 2: Set Your Campaign Budget. ...
- Step 3: Identify Your Target Audience. ...
- Step 4: Design Your Content. ...
- Step 5: Choose Your Channels. ...
- Step 6: Launch and Monitor. ...
- Step 7: Analyze the Results.
How do you get the first 100 users? ›
...
Time for a little recap:
- Use your existing network.
- Start blogging.
- Dive into online communities.
- Cold email.
- Give stuff for free.
- Affiliate marketing.
The 5Ps, Product, Price, Promotion, Place, and People, are a business strategy to help marketing efforts become more efficient by correctly determining target customers and creating a solid base to convert them into loyal customers. Share this article: Twitter. Facebook.
Who invented the 5 Ps of marketing? ›Philip Kotler who coined the gospel of marketing, the four Ps (product, price, place and promotion), has added a fifth – Purpose. Philip Kotler who coined the gospel of marketing, the four Ps (product, price, place and promotion), has added a fifth – Purpose.
What are the 5 C's of marketing mix? ›The "5 C's" stand for Company, Customers, Competitors, Collaborators, and Climate.
What are the 7 marketing strategies? ›These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today's marketplace.
What are the 4 types of marketing strategies? ›What are the 4Ps of marketing? (Marketing mix explained) The four Ps are product, price, place, and promotion. They are an example of a “marketing mix,” or the combined tools and methodologies used by marketers to achieve their marketing objectives. The 4 Ps were first formally conceptualized in 1960 by E.
What are the 7 types of promotion? ›There are seven promotional categories, namely, direct marketing, sales promotion, digital marketing, personal selling, general advertising, public relations, and sponsorships. Promotional marketing can be incredibly beneficial for long-term business success.
What are the 5 promotional elements? ›- Advertising.
- Public relations or publicity.
- Sales promotion.
- Direct marketing.
- Personal selling.
Types of Sales Promotion – 4 Important Types: Consumer Sales Promotion, Dealer Promotion, Business Promotion and Public Relations.
What is a promotion strategy? ›the element of a firm's decision-making concerned with choosing the most appropriate mix of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and publicity for communication with its target market.
What is a launch roadmap? ›
A product launch roadmap is a visual communication tool that illustrates how a new product will hit the market. It crosses all teams involved – from product, development, marketing, and sales. It outlines all tasks required to ensure that pre-launch, launch and post-launch tactics are successfully executed.
What is a launch readiness plan? ›The Launch Readiness Assessment is a tool used by the launch manager as a guide to determine how ready a functional area is to support the sale and service of a product.
What is included in a product launch plan? ›A product launch plan is a document that details the tasks and timelines behind getting users to interact with your new product or a new feature. Creating a product launch plan will make it easier to identify your goals, set out your strategy, and designate tasks for different teams and members.
What do you do on launch day? ›- Step 1: Build Your Email List. Well before your official launch, you need to begin getting people signed up to your email list. ...
- Step 2: Use Social Media. ...
- Step 3: Don't Forget About Traditional Media. ...
- Step 4: Plan the Launch Event. ...
- Step 5: Launch!
- Step 1: Develop your buyer persona.
- Step 2: Develop a competitive price point.
- Step 3: Select a launch type.
- Step 4: Create a marketing plan.
- Step 5: Craft persuasive messaging.
- Step 6: Involve the customer as the influencer.
What is Product Launch Process? Product launch process is a step-wise process followed by companies when they want to launch their product in the market. Product launch process requires careful planning and has to be carried out systematically to ensure that customers receive the product positively.
What to do after launching a new product? ›- Publish more content.
- Analyze your launch activities and double-down.
- Review and respond to feedback.
- Validate your pricing.
- Take a breath, conduct a retro, and celebrate.
A feature launch refers to the coordinated steps in a company's plan to make a new feature available in its product.
How do you support new product launch? ›- Organize a Pre-Launch Giveaway. ...
- Increase Your Organic Visibility. ...
- Create Shareable Content. ...
- Take a Chance With Remarketing. ...
- Create a Referral Program. ...
- Optimize Your Website Speed. ...
- Establish Relationships With Influencers. ...
- Take Care of Your Customer Service.
Definition of prelaunch
1 : in preparation for or preliminary to the launch of a spacecraft, missile, satellite, etc. a prelaunch inspection. 2 : in preparation for or preliminary to the launch of a new product, campaign, etc.
What makes a product launch successful? ›
It usually requires several elements coming together to create a successful product launch. You need the right product, the right market, the right positioning and the right timing for success.
What is product Launch Formula? ›PLF, or Product Launch Formula, is the brainchild of multimillionaire Jeff Walker. His approach hinges on sending high-value videos to your audience in the lead up to the actual launch, and it's spread like wildfire. PLF consists of four phases: Pre-Pre Launch, Pre-Launch, Launch, and Post-Launch.
How do you introduce a product on the market? ›- Define a selling point. A selling point is a reason your customer may buy your product. ...
- Gather support. ...
- Show enthusiasm. ...
- Train your team. ...
- Let your team demo the product. ...
- Schedule a launch date. ...
- Control your product's life cycle. ...
- Prepare a mission statement.