Our Pre-Launch Story

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Our pre-launch campaign plays a significant role in our launch process - the better the pre-launch hype, the better the launch. Pre-launches are however tricky areas, if the product is still under development/testing when the campaign begins.

We know that we have to play with some extremely important mental triggers to get the kind of attention that we want. Our greatest challenge was to build a feeling of scarcity - because our product is free and available for the mass market. Our business model was to give access to the product for free so that adoption could spread via word of mouth. We get prospects visiting and using our site that we can later market specific services to; whereas they get a great website for their events. Its a win-win.

Our marketing strategy was to attract early adopters through delivery of good quality content through blogs - these early adopters will later lead the masses into using our products and are thus very important for our business. Our revenue model is to attract commercial event promoters and planners who would take up our ticketing & merchandising modules earning us a small percentage of all tickets & merchandising sold off their pages.

Building a launch story around this model that can instill a sense of value for the application is our next step. In our prelaunch phase, we also want to create a sense of scarcity and exclusivity at the same time that will prompt them to visit and join as soon as we launch.

In our case, it wasn’t that easy to create a story, considering the fact that we didn’t have a product to show and no social proof to help ease prospects. Yet, we had to get strangers to give up their names and email addresses to get on a queue to use it. Perhaps the toughest part of the prelaunch process. We’ve thought of adding dramatic videos in the hype phase to build a sense of anticipation, all the while touching upon some basic functionality details. Since the idea is to attract early adopters, we started to engage them in conversation and brought them into our launch process. The more engaged they are, the better it is for us - after all, these 100 or so people are going to be our beta level product users.

If we gave our early adopters a couple of months on the application and close the doors to the general public we would get away with a scarce community in the early few months. Lets face it, nobody likes to join ghost towns. It is human psychology to relate buzz and traction to the value of the products offered and likewise have inhibitions if there isn’t enough traction. We understand that it takes time to get the activities rolling, and so we don’t want to lose people who can eventually become a valuable part of our community.

So, in essence, what we lack in terms of volume would be made up in the form of exceptional personalized support for the early trial adopters - they will share in the launch, feedback and development process; until we know we ready to launch with a bang. To formulate this constant feedback mechanism we will have a consistent flow of communication to and fro, involving them in the thick of the process.

After the initial testing we can move onto a series of small launches for referred people only - perhaps friends of the early adopters. So, the private beta will still be going on, but with a slightly larger set of people. When these additional people are exclusively picked up (not because there names were next in line), they’d feel a sense of reward and will hopefully be able to provide valuable feedback. We’ll also get audio and video testimonies from these initial users to use in our marketing campaigns.

Some four months after our early adopters have been using the system and are completely hooked on to it, we’ll open for public. We would want to time our official public launch just a couple of months before the most festive season of the year - thats right, before Christmas - when everyone will be celebrating events and would benefit from using our platform.

Our entire launch sequence will undergo a three week cycle of extreme excitement and buzz. Hopefully, we’ll get the word around and everything will turn out good. Anyone who is launching a business or product or event, can effectively apply these pre-launch tactics for maximum effect. Remember, its all about pulling the right strings at the right time.


| Case Studies, Follow Our Launch, Launch Strategies

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