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Creating Hype Before a Launch

By Snap Agency March 29, 2018

Generating hype before a launch is critical to its success. This is especially important for limited quantity products and services where the business must sell a certain number of products within a short period.

Creating hype for your brand will help to boost sales in the early days of a launch, starting the snowball to roll. You’ll find that a certain portion of all customers will share the news with their friends and colleagues, causing even more sales.

This word of mouth marketing is hard to quantify but can be responsible for a significant amount of revenue. However, it’s difficult if not impossible to have word of mouth sales if you struggle to get an initial crowd onboard.

That’s why most companies will rely on creating a hype before the launch so that they can generate the initial sales that they need to set themselves up for success in the future.

The Landing Page Itself

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when they are trying to create hype is to fail on the landing page. Your landing page should get people excited about the product or service, it should let them countdown to the launch, and it should allow them to share it on their social media accounts.

If your company fails in any one of these missions, then you’re handicapping yourself.

Not only should you give the user the opportunity to share your business on social media easily, but you should also be actively encouraging them to do so. This doesn’t mean that you should tell them to share it, you need to give them an incentive.

Perhaps they’ll be eligible for a small discount upon launch, or they could get the product or service a day early. Giving people an incentive to take a relatively large action will drastically increase your rate of sharing.

We’ve seen countless websites that before launch either don’t work, are just a black screen or only have a countdown on them. What happens if someone shares the website with their friends and they have no idea what it is? You’re wasting an opportunity.

If you want a clean looking design, then you can keep above-the-fold as an aesthetic countdown clock and then on the scroll below have information about the product or service.

Good copywriting and information should be able to generate extra hype and encourage consumers to pull out their credit card on the day.

You don’t necessarily need to give away critical details like the price or minute details, but a general overview of the product or service can be beneficial.

Social Media

On your social media, you need to be going 100-mph to interact with every person. This will make your future customers feel like you care, making it more likely that they will purchase.

Although some brands can benefit from mystique and a lack of communication, this isn’t the case for 99% of companies. In the large majority of cases, it’s best to have an open and interactive dialogue with your audience.

Guest Posting

The chances are that as a new company you probably have little to no audience. You might be able to convince your friends and family to promote the launch on their social media, but that might be it.

In this case, it’s crucial that you leech of other peoples audiences, to put it nicely. Guest posting is one of the best ways to do this because there is an exchange of value and you’re able to put yourself in front of their audience.

To find guest posting opportunities, you should reach out to some of the top bloggers, publications and news outlets in your industry and ask to write for them. Be open and let them know that you’re launching a service and why you’re an expert in the field.

If you truly are an expert, then most publications will be jumping over themselves to speak to you. Even if you’re not, some smaller websites will let you guest post because they don’t want to write long and detailed posts themselves.

Marketing to Relevant Communities

As well as guest posting and interacting with customers on social media, take full advantage of the pre-existing communities in your industry.

It’s likely that there are already forums, Reddit communities and Facebook groups which are dedicated to your niche. Interact within these communities and share your expertise. After a few weeks or providing value you should be able to share your business with them and therefore generate brand awareness as well as sales.

Conclusion

Overall, the hype is primarily about marketing heavily before you launch. Many small businesses make the mistake of thinking that only the biggest brand can generate hype and that’s why they struggle to make sales in their first few months of business. You must be proactively marketing from the day that you decide to launch the business.