📣 How to Strategize Marketing While Building an MVP...

Elvorne Palmer

4 Unconventional Pre-launch Marketing Strategies for Your Startup

OK, you’re in the building phase, how can you create some excitement for launch? Well, conventional knowledge (i.e. ChatGPT and Google) generally tells you to create content, share stuff on socials, start a blog, build a community and database etc. Which is all good and well but what exactly are you supposed to say, to whom and how… to make it really effective?

‘Cos remember everyone is sharing stuff to steal your eyes and attention. Not just businesses, but your grandma on Facebook, too. The web is the biggest, busiest bazaar in history…

She won’t hold out much longer, Captain!

Pre-launch marketing that actually makes sense

  1. Build in public – Controversial as it is, it actually creates natural talking points and loads of content for you to share. And it’s all relevant. As mentioned before blockchain marketplace Momint has a revenue-generating building-in-public segment on their YouTube channel.
  2. Craft an HVCO – A High-Value Content Offer is a document, report, tool – any piece of content with valuable information you can’t get anywhere else. For example, a founder making his playbook available, that’s an HVCO. Then use it as a lead magnet: Create an HVCO your eventual market will be interested in, offer it for download (you can even run ads) and build a database you’ll be able to market to when your MVPs’s ready.
  3. Build a waitlist – This one’s tricky; pre-launch waitlists are hard to wangle. But we’re putting it here because a lot of international startups are raving over WaitlistAPI. Reviews say it’s managed to get people thousands of customers pre-launch (3.5 million for 7’500 startups), so worth checking out.
  4. Find your market’s emotional buying triggers – Next-level but not impossible to do yourself. Use social listening (i.e. snooping on forums and socials, copy-pasting people’s comments) to find your market’s biggest Fears, Pains, Hopes and Uncertainties to refine your Value Proposition, Offer and Guarantee based on people’s emotive needs – a powerful selling tool.

Need help? Ask Renier and Elvorne about this one.

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