Your new website launch should be a big deal.
Super charging your new website launch is an opportunity to make a splash and start building momentum for your business. Here’s what you need to do to achieve maximum impact when your site goes live.
Before you launch your new website
You need to think of the launch of your new website as an event – something important that happens on a specific day and time, where your brand and everything it has to offer becomes available to the public.
Doing this puts your launch team in the correct frame of mind – not just your internal team, but also those who you will be contacting before launch day to help you promote it, and those who visit your site on day one, too.
A specific date helps you schedule what happens when in the build-up to the launch, and adds a sense of urgency. With a target date to shoot for, everyone knows there’s a goal to be reached and what they need to do to get there.
To get the ball rolling and ensure your launch is a success, here are six things to focus on as you approach the big day:
1. Your Pitch
The first and most important thing to do is find the right way to quickly let people know what your brand is about and why it’s worth paying attention to. This exercise will become the foundation for everything else that happens in and around your launch. If you can’t pitch your website and it doesn’t sound like a no-brainer for those you are going to pitch to, then you’re not ready to launch.
A significant amount of time should be spent on your pitch and determining the right language to use. This will help you find inspirational copy for our copywriters, which will benefit your tagline and the final copy they provide for your website. It will also ensure visitors subscribe to your site, which is great for your email marketing.
2. Content That Will Be Live On Day One
On launch day, aim to have a series of highly valuable pieces of content available – not just a single post. You will set yourself back if all you have is one piece of content for website visitors to read. A good target number is to have three or four posts waiting in the sidelines to be added.
Don’t forget that the content you will publish will encourage and inspire a call to action, which will be focused on building subscribers.
3. Create A Pre-Launch ‘Coming Soon’ Social Media Ad
Before you officially launch your website, you can already begin the marketing process for your site by creating and promoting a pre-launch ‘coming soon’ social media ad. You can share it organically yourself, or we can help you set it up as a Sponsored Story. People love to know about the next big thing before anyone else, so if you can convince people that what you’re creating is worth paying attention to and you create an environment of anticipation, creating this ad will be well worth the effort. If Facebook is a platform that makes sense for your business, we can also set up an email capture form right on the Facebook platform encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter and maybe an ‘early bird discount’ or other promotion.
Once you launch, you can send an email to subscribers and immediately have traffic coming to your website, not to mention a list that’s already greater than zero.
Furthermore, if you begin to notice a number of people getting interested in your website before you launch, that’s a huge motivator for you to keep going and get things done.
On this teaser ad, you’ll want to make sure you:
- Let your visitors know what you’re doing.
- Spark some interest.
- Capitalize on that interest by capturing email addresses.
Think of these early subscribers as ambassadors – they will be the first to know when your new site is up and can be there to help you spread the word right from the start.
4. Create A Launch Email
Prepare a launch email. That way when launch day comes, you’ll be ready to go with all rockets firing. Have a well written email campaign ready to deliver to inboxes with news of your launch. Include enticing calls to action that link to your website. Use savvy subject lines and write quality content for readers and search engines. Re-purpose intro paragraphs of existing blog posts to your email campaign with links back to the full article. Doing this will hook readers into wanting to know more. If you don’t have the time to create a launch email yourself, an agency like ours can be a great addition to your team.
5. Build An Off-Site Audience
Just because your site isn’t live yet doesn’t mean you can’t start building a community of fans and followers. You can create a Facebook page and start to build a community there (and paid traffic is definitely a great option if you have the money to spend), but you could also go to where hordes of your target audience already exist.
Beyond other people’s websites, which you can leverage via guest posts, you can actually have a lot of influence on forums too. Provide value, answer people’s questions and don’t pitch, and if you include a link to your teaser/homepage in your by-line, chances are you’ll start to build a little bit of authority there which can easily transfer to your new website on launch day.
6. Build Relationships and Buzz for Launch Day
Unfortunately we don’t live in a world where ‘if you build it they will come’. Although it can happen sometimes, it’s never guaranteed and it never happens without the work and influence of other people.
You must get other people involved to help you maximize the effectiveness of your launch. If you want to launch your new website with success, it’s important to start building relationships before you launch your website. Nothing will help get your site off the ground more than other people talking about it, and if you have a relationship with others influencers and people with a similar target audience, you will have people on launch day who will genuinely want to help you, which is awesome.
7. Ask Your Existing Network
Don’t be afraid to ask your existing network for help. Friends, family – if it’s something you truly believe in, even if it doesn’t 100% apply to those people, it’s something they will be proud to share for you.
And remember…
The launch of your new website should be treated like an event, so build anticipation for it and keep people who have given you words of support up to date on your plans. Then, when the date comes around and you turn off that social media ad, celebrate what you’ve just accomplished – but realize that you still have a lot of work to do.
If you’re ready to build a foundation for growth and future success, we’re ready to work with you. Give us a call at 778.298.1966 or Toll Free at 1.855.298.8650 or complete our online form.
