In a world which is perfect, all of us would like to launch beautiful and bug-free products within the prescribed time frame to a loyal audience and attract potential customers. However, the ugly truth is that our world is far from ideal and more likely than not, most of us will launch a product full of bugs to an audience consisting largely of our friends and families. One of the most effective and simplest ways is launching a pre-launch website landing page.
A landing page – in the purest sense of the term – is any page on the world wide web on which the visitor can land. In the realm of marketing, this means a standalone web page that is distinct from the main website and has been designed with a specific and focused objective in mind.
A Pre-Launch website, on the other hand, is a landing page which is launched before the product or service has been launched in the market. The objective of such a page is to announce the launch date of the product or service, build some buzz around the brand and at the same time to collect information of prospective customers.
Types of Pre-Launch Website
Generally speaking, there are two types of pre-launch websites or landing pages. These are:
- Lead Generation: These pages aim to capture data about the customer – usually the name of the customer and his or her email address.
- Click Through: These pages aim at persuading the user then click on another page.
Advantages of Pre-Launch Website
Pre-launch websites provide the following benefits which are enumerated below:
1) Increase Brand Awareness
A pre-launch website is usually the first initiative by a brand to make its presence known to the people at large on the digital platform. These type of pages contain very primary information about the brand and are usually accompanied by catchy headlines and pictures and some multimedia content. However, these pre-launch websites take care not to reveal too much about the product and often serve to create an aura of mystery surrounding the product or service whose promotion is being done.
2) Test Concept Interest
Since the pre-launch website does not show much information about the brand or the product, it also serves to test the interest of the public with regard to the product or service and with regard to the brand in general. Often times, the pre-launch websites track the number of visits and views on the page to gauge an accurate measure of the interest that the people show in the product and the brand that offers it. These serve as important pointers for further product development.
3) Examination of people’s reaction to the language used by you in describing your concept
Often, the pre-launch website would include a comment section which serves as a window as to what the people are thinking about the product and the brand. It allows for the examination of people’s perception of the brand, the level of penetration the brand has achieved and the number of people that are actually able to understand the language that is used to describe the product or service is launched. This is important as it can have a bearing on the language used in the final promotion of the product or service and can also serve to develop a common and widely used rhetoric for the brand as a whole.
4) Preparing People for the Imminent Launch of the Actual Product or Service
A pre-launch website is the first announcement of a product or service and it is the first introduction of the said product or service to the public. This is important as it prepares people for the actual product that is to come out in the near future. This serves the purpose of reducing the shock effect that a new and revolutionary product accompanies and that is important from a marketing point of view as the brand or company would want the product or service to be in widespread use – something that would be impossible if the people are not even sure of what the product is and are in too much of a shock to use it.
5) It enables you to build your database of email contacts
Email is still the most accepted method of official communication. In addition to this, due to its private nature and reliability of storage, it is largely considered to be more permanent than the other modern promotion avenues such as chats and comments. Thus, the importance of an email database can neither be ignored nor be downplayed.
People who are interested in the product sign up with their email IDs on the pre-launch website itself in order to get notified on the launch of the product and expect either to be the first adopter of the product or service or to avail special offers that the company launching the product or service might be offering on the day of the launch.
This results in a strong and robust database of email contacts which is a huge capital for the company as this information can be beneficial from an analytical viewpoint for running simulations and from a marketing standpoint that it can use this data to get future potential customers with whom they can provide long-term relations and enhance their existing customer base using their references even further.
Examples of Pre Launch Websites
There are many examples of Pre-Launch Websites. These are usually found for products rather than services as it is easy to draw the attention of users towards products. However, several recent services have used the pre-launch website technique to boost their popularity before officially launching. Some of the products and services that have employed the pre-launch website technique are:
- Samsung in the launch of its phones and tablets – especially in the case of its more anticipated devices such as the Galaxy S9 phone which took pre-orders from its landing page itself.
- Reliance Jio for its Jio telecom service. Jio used this technique to boost interest in its cheap telecom service for months before it launched and kept increasing people’s interest by making frequent updates to the page, but managing to keep an aura of mystery about it.
- Zomato when it was gearing up for the launch of its Zomato Gold service that provides users with one free dish or free drinks per meal at Zomato Gold Partner restaurants.
So if you have a product or service which you are going to launch on a set date, then make sure you have a pre-launch website up and running and collecting prospective customers data.
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