Five-Point Pre Launch Marketing Checklist: Your Starter Pack To Success
Aren’t new product and feature launches a chaotic time for marketers?
It’s a rhetorical question, so don’t bother answering.
The pre-launch phase is very crucial because it determines the success of your product or feature launch.
Right from getting the marketing collaterals ready to identifying distribution channels, and partnering strategies, there’s so much going on.
This quick five-point checklist will prevent the grapple with yourself and the team and will help you make the process less crazy.
Here’s your pre-launch checklist:
- Come up with a name, domain, and a logo
- Create a kickass landing page with all good elements
- Get your editorial calendar up and running
- Create a buzz by leveraging different channels
- Track all your to-do’s and gear up for post-launch
Now, let’s dive right in!
1. Come up with a name, domain, and a logo
This tip is particularly useful if you are a brand new venture. If you have already tested the waters and doing a feature launch, you can skip to the next section.
The launch of a new product in the market needs a name. This is an important step as there is a lot of branding exercises that happens around it.
Choosing a name includes:
- Choosing a brand name
- Registering domain if you do not have a website yet
- Coming up with a creative brand logo
Choosing a brand name and creating a log can complement each other to make your brand seem well-rounded. But, there are no hard and fast rules on this. You can keep it simple and creative and make sure it is memorable.
Your logo is very important as it creates an identity and will be used in all your marketing materials. Once you come up with your logo, your colors, themes, and the vibe of the brand everything will fall into place.
While selecting a domain name you may want to consider whether you would be choosing a keyword-based name or a creative one or a mix of both. Depending on the availability and the suitability if your industry you can choose an ideal sub-domain.
Bluehost, Godaddy, or Radix are some good services that can help you find and register.
2. Create a kickass landing page with all good elements
Creating a pre-launch landing page is very important as this is the medium through which you will be contacting your prospects, collecting their email ids, and gaining some organic visibility. You can use Unbounce to choose attractive landing pages.
Some important elements on your Landing page include:
- Compelling CTA
- Form embed
What can really amp up the interest of your visitors is an attractive video embedded on your landing page. You can explain the offering in a clear manner with videos and they are conversion magnets!
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There are many tools that can help you quickly create videos with ready-to-use templates. But, make sure you compare and choose the best one.
3. Get your editorial calendar up and running
Though you may not be able to create a lot of content around a variety of topics, it would be ideal to look for SEO-driven content at this stage. Focus on the searches related to your industry or target keywords and create high-quality content around it.
Create both textual and visual content to be able to rule the search results.
Your content can include helpful how-to articles, tips and hacks, launch articles, and a good mix of such things.
To keep up the discipline and achieve your goals create an editorial calendar that comprises all content types including seasonal ones.
4. Create a buzz by leveraging different channels
It is important to create buzz and get noticed by the right people. To do this, you can leverage multiple channels and begin to spread the word about your launch, your offerings, what problems your product is solving, how and when to access your product, and more.
Channels to leverage:
- Email marketing
- Social media
- Content curation sites
Now that you have a lead generating landing page, a good explainer, and promo video, and content you must now focus on the distribution efforts.
You can run email campaigns to the people who have shown interest in your product (shared email id to be notified upon launch) by sharing useful content you create, what to expect in your product, important announcements, and more.
Next, you have to set up your social media accounts and start posting content. The focus must be on building followers as your accounts would be fresh. Make sure that you complete your profile, optimize it, and keep it active.
In order to get the buzz around your content and strengthen your link building start posting content on websites like Medium, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and community forums like Quora and Reddit to improve your organic reach and brand visibility.
5. Track all your to-do’s and gear up for post-launch
With so many tasks piling up, it would become difficult to manage them and keep a track of them. Hence use project management tools like Asana or Trello to track your work.
Also, during the beta launch, you would have a lot of data about the visitors’ interactions with your website, any particular feature requests, and the metrics from other channels like email and social.
Gather insights from these campaigns and create a master list of all the plans you intend to implement after the launch.
Wrapping Up
Pre-launch sure is the time of hustle and bustle.
But, planning your activities and scoring off the to-do’s from your checklist will help you ease out the pain.
But, you must not oversee an important step of:
- Understand the market
- Know your competition
- Craft a pricing structure
- Segment your audience
Having the right answers to this will help you follow the tips discussed more effectively. Hope this article was helpful!
