Pre-Launch Tips for Your New Venture

It goes without saying that no one cares more or is in a position to be as pro-active about your brand than you, and your brands’ relationship with its target market AND wider audience is truly there for the nurturing and servicing from day one.

So, let’s define “day one.”

We see many businesses launch and announce themselves from the day they are ready to trade, who seemingly appear out of nowhere. It may be a long and winding road with many ups and downs to finally reaching launch day, but new brands may be missing out on unique opportunities to create that early buzz around their new venture by not sharing those crucial building blocks of their business journey.

We share four of our top tips for creating anticipation and excitement around your brand and how you can generate leads off the back of the buzz before your official opening. As for when you should start - six weeks to two months in advance is our guideline. Longer than this, and you can saturate your audience before you have even started.

Get Social

Assuming your branding has been finalised - logos, fonts, colours - it’s time to set up your social channels.

Not all social platforms will be relevant for your business and you may choose to focus on one or two to start with. Ask yourself and research what platform your audience prefers - this is also a good rule of thumb for avoiding an overwhelming and unnecessary content creation workload.

Once you have decided the channels you will converge on, set about designing your grid or page with branded posts - Canva is a great tool for this as it helps to create a consistent and uniform style, which will help establish a strong brand.

Then, start building a following by posting snippets of what’s to come, behind the scenes content, and sneak previews of who you are and what you will be offering. This also shows the human side to your brand, which people will want to see and connect with. You can also schedule your posts to create updates and a countdown to your launch day. This level of activity will create intrigue, a buzz, and importantly, will sow the seeds of your online community. You can also use it to grow your email subscribers, and create a a pre-launch competition such as a give-away.

Creating a strong, regular, and interactive online presence that will promote a strong brand image will keep you on the front-foot long before you are ready to officially open your doors.

Gather Leads

If your website is the last piece of the puzzle that you plan to go live with on launch day, there is still an opportunity to start pipelines and gather leads by creating a lead generation landing page to receive prospective consumers and compel them to sign up.

What can you offer to hook in those early adopters of your brand? Enter a strong call to action here, which could be offering first and exclusive access if they sign up.

On a technical note, the landing page itself should contain your high-ranking keywords, compelling meta descriptions, and should be aesthetically pleasing. Instead of a text-heavy page, opt for infographics and strong imagery. In addition, consider incorporating a countdown ticker on the page for ultimate buzz creation.

Remember to also research and maximise the lead generation tools offered by your social media platforms.

Once you have these leads, prepare automated emails such as follow-ups, updates, and special offers that you have mentioned on the landing page.

Design a Content Strategy

The goal of any content strategy is to build brand awareness, develop credibility and trust, and establish an affinity with your target audience.

Depending on the profile of your target audience, your content strategy could incorporate all manner of mediums; blog posts, videos, webinars, and podcasts, to name a few.

Content marketing efforts aren’t sales-focused in the way that advertisements that directly pitch a product are; rather, they serve as constant, ambient pumping out of your message to inspire and educate your audience. A consistent content strategy can help generate three times as many leads while costing less than 50% than outbound marketing.

Although the results might be far-fetched, putting valuable content over the internet helps you drive organic traffic to your website - this translates to users that are invested in your brand over the long-term. They will ultimately be the people that will also source and convert new customers via word of mouth marketing.

Assemble a Press Kit

Lastly, and arguable the most important action.

We’ve considered how you can be pro-active in creating brand awareness within the realms of your own tools. By creating excitement and anticipation on your platforms, you will hopefully attract the attention of journalists and bloggers.

Publications and websites that pick up your brand story and new launch will disperse it to a wider audience, especially so if they have the information ready at their finger-tips.

So! It is imperative that you have a press or PR kit ready for distribution in preparation for when you are approached. If you are working with a PR service, they will advise you further, and will compile a press release that introduces your brand to kick things off.

Your press kit should be a compilation of your brand’s background story, with direct quotes from the founder, and with a spotlight capturing the essence of your products and services.

Top tip: remember to refresh your press kit with each new product launch or brand news that you intend to disseminate to a broader audience via your press contacts.