Launching a startup before doing enough PR for the product or service could harm your success. PR helps you accelerate awareness before the launch date and ensures early users are ready to adopt your products.
PR gets your early users a few weeks before the launch. This way, when you launch you already have a support base that could provide revenue and continued feedback. Here are some PR strategies to follow before launch:
1. Build an early follower base
Before launching a startup, build a following to propel you through the company’s early days. The idea is to have a following you can count on for support before the product goes live.
Where to build a follower base
Product Hunt
Product Hunt is one such place where you can post details of the product you are building and the ideas behind it. If people love your idea, they will upvote it, positioning you higher on the Product Hunt home page. People who upvote you usually form a community eager to know when you are launching so they can test your product.
Social media
Social media networks are an integral part of launching a startup. Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok spread more news than any other newspaper or online magazine.
In the quest for visibility, you may consider increasing views on TikTok to quickly enhance your reach and engagement within this highly active community.
Before launching a startup, you want to be seen on these networks spreading the word about your idea and what problems it aims to solve. Generating publicity this way will help you build a following for testing your product. More than 700 million people are participating in Facebook groups, with millions and millions of groups already created. Use such groups to boost your startup at the launch.
We have seen many startups launching successfully after using their social media channels to generate a buzz beforehand. Investing in an active social media presence costs nothing other than time and effort. For this reason, we encourage all our clients to engage with their followers long before launching a startup.
Google advertising
Google advertising is another strategy that helps young startups build an early market base. Once you know your target niche and keywords, you only need to master the Google Ads platform to reap maximum benefits.
PR campaign
Launch your PR campaign early in the game to build an early follower base. Starting your PR campaign a week before you plan to launch your new product will only end in tears. Even the best PR campaign will take a few weeks to gain traction for your brand. For this reason, we recommend launching a startup PR campaign at least one month before your product launch, to get maximum benefits.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging has helped several companies to gain new users before launching. Publishing quality posts on high-authority sites with a lot of traffic leads to more people seeing your post. In addition, your guest posts can attract more traffic from people who follow your links back to your site. Ideally, guest blogging should be done on blogs with readers interested in your new startup. It’s better to focus on a few blogs within your industry rather than publish hundreds of posts on random blogs.
Ultimately, guest blogging is an effective strategy for increasing search engine rankings. Aside from helping you get referral leads, its effects on your SEO rankings are also evergreen. If this is something you are struggling with, we have compiled some actionable tips on guest blogging for your brand.
2. Build relationships with industry journalists
Getting media coverage from respected journalists within your niche is crucial. One way to connect with journalists is through cold emailing. It is a lot of work, but one of the gems we’ve created here at Pressfarm is the Cold Email Guide. This guide is a series of cold email pitch templates to illustrate how you should craft that first email to a journalist of your choosing. With six months before your product launch, you also have enough time to send that first email and start building a relationship with journalists.
The correct way to pitch a journalist
Don’t tell your story in the first email. You will benefit more from building a relationship first. One way to begin building a relationship with journalists is to suggest stories to them. If they are interested they will come back for more and ask for a source as well. At this point, you will have made your initial contact.
When you establish a no-strings-attached relationship, it’s easier to pitch your story to the same journalists as your friends later. Ideally, this should happen 3 to 4 weeks before your startup goes live. Again, ensure the journalists are in your niche and their readers are the right target market for your product. For more about this check out 13 Reasons why your startup doesn’t get press.
Many founders make the mistake of beginning to work on their PR campaigns after launching. Strategic and smart entrepreneurs understand that PR is not a one-day activity. They know that journalists are not machines and that these journalists rely on solid relationships to get quality stories. Start working on your PR campaigns now. This generates a buzz and ensures people trickle into your landing page before launch. With the right timing, you should receive a few replies from journalists by the time you launch. Once you’ve generated some interest, you can demo your product to these people.
3. Write & share press releases
Press releases may seem a little old-fashioned but they still work like a charm. Prepare a press release that goes deeper into your startup and your idea. If a press release sounds too much like a sales pitch, you can rest assured it won’t work out for the best. The best press releases for launching a startup tell the story behind the idea.
Send your press release to as many press release distribution websites as you could possibly reach. While sending that press release out there, make sure you put it in the right categories for your niche otherwise it will miss the target market.
4. Share feedback
What are people saying about your new startup before the launch? Share any positive feedback that you get. This feedback can generate a lot of social proof for you, even before you launch.
Seeing positive feedback gets people curious about what you’re building. Sharing positive feedback about your product will attract more new users who are willing to test it.
5. Build a landing page with email opt-in
You want to drive all those curious souls to a nicely designed landing page where they will share their contact information. Nothing beats a clean email list. When creating your follower base, you will need to send them somewhere where they can leave their names and emails or phone numbers. This way, you can contact them when the startup goes live.
Create a well-designed landing page with an email opt-in bar. Imagine what you could achieve if you have 1,000 email addresses of people who are excited and ready to test your product upon launch.
6. Make sure the product works
Test and test again to ensure your product works before launching a startup. When you launch, there will be no going back. If your product crashes or fails during the first few days when people are still testing it, it will be hard to recover from this blow. You will have lost a huge chunk of interested users.
The product doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to execute its core function. This is what got you a large following before launch. Crashes from too many people downloading your app or visiting your website are understandable because you didn’t foresee large amounts of traffic. Failures that happen because your product’s most important feature doesn’t work are intolerable and might be hard to recover from.
When your basic function works, that first week could get you thousands or hundreds of users and more PR than you could ever imagine.
7. Use Kickstarter/Indiegogo
Many startups have used crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to raise funds for product development and distribution and gain some PR before the official launch date. Most of these startups have developed a basic product and are willing to get test users who also fund-raise for further development or mass manufacturing.
Projects like the PuzzleUp jigsaw puzzle which made a splash on Kickstarter last year exceed their crowdfunding goals and gain early users. They also get media coverage on news sites like TechCrunch, Engadget, Mashable, The Verge, etc. The result is a lot of press and people talking about it on social media.
We have worked on several crowdfunding campaigns, helping entrepreneurs get media attention and meet their crowdfunding goals.
8. Join Communities
There are hundreds of thousands of online communities for specific niches. These communities exist on various online platforms like Reddit and Quora. Joining these communities to discuss your soon-to-be-launched startup could get you interested people who will spread the word.
9. Build relationships with industry influencers
Industry influencers are a good bunch of people to keep close. Want to find out who the industry influencers for your niche are? A simple search on Google will prove helpful.
Find the industry voices that matter and pitch them about your new startup. Very few of them might care about your new product. It’s those few that your new startup needs. Industry influencers are a network. If you can get one or two of those in your corner, imagine what a simple tweet from them could do for your startup’s PR. Such a mention would trigger the influencers who didn’t take notice of you to go and check your product out.
10. Timing
Timing is key when launching a PR campaign. You shouldn’t start building a follower base and send out press releases months before you launch – that will be too early. People will get tired of waiting and eventually forget about you.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t build a follower base 2 days before launching your product. You will get very few email opt-ins for early users, and poor traction after launch. Therefore, it’s important to find out the correct timing for these strategies alongside your product launch date and see what works for you.
So, what is the best timing for my PR campaign?
Building a following is good when it’s done about 6 to 8 weeks before launch. Don’t forget that building a relationship with a journalist should start months before that.
Pressfarm has built a comprehensive media database to help founders in the early stages of building a startup connect with journalists from different industries. We give you custom media lists and access to our 1 million+ journalists, bloggers, and influencers database. With these media contacts, you can connect with the best people to help you tell your brand story to the world. We also have expertise in developing memorable PR campaigns that ensure companies can achieve their full potential, gain more leads, win customers, and earn higher revenues.
You can make an impression in your industry with a professional press release, engaging guest posts, and an eye-catching media kit. In addition to helping you create this content, we can help you distribute it widely. We can boost your online visibility by submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories. This distribution strategy is designed to help you rank in relevant search results across different search engines.
We advise that you begin working on your PR campaign as soon as possible. Check out our different packages tailored to get you the maximum results in the shortest time possible.
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