Christa Tuttle — October 22, 2019 
Preparing your business up to the point of launching it requires plenty of long hours, careful planning and hard work to make your big day seem effortless and polished. A really successful launch can make it all worth it, and can help put your company on the right foot to start generating leads, building brand awareness and make an impact in your industry. However, a successful company launch doesn’t happen without serious marketing strategy and execution, and plenty of time and expertise to support it.
Marketing the launch of your B2B company should start months in advance, and should utilize multiple channels and approaches to maximize reach while minimizing the chance of your big event resulting in a whimper instead of a bang.
Consider these four methods to promote your tech company launch and incorporate them into your strategy:
Use Social Media to Build Anticipation
Social media has become an essential component of any marketing strategy these days, even for B2B companies. While you might not create a post that goes viral, a steady and established social media presence builds credibility, generates interest and communicates information to your audience using a medium that is part of their daily lives.
When launching a B2B company, it is important to have a social media strategy and plan established before sending your first tweet. Gone are the days of joining every social media platform possible and posting the same content across all of them—now, companies should select the top 2-4 platforms that work for their mission, products, services and messaging and create relevant and appealing content for their target audience. Most B2B companies are leaning on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to get started.
You’ll also need to establish goals for your social media activity—are you looking to build brand awareness? Generate leads? Extend customer service? Your goals will guide the platforms, content and schedule you choose.
Social media is all about hype and “what’s next,” which makes it a great channel for promoting launches and building excitement around the new, fresh and valuable products or services your company is going to offer the industry. Consider posting “countdown” content and doling out little snippets of information at regular intervals leading up to the launch. If you determine that building your social media presence ahead of time aligns with your goals, messaging and marketing plan, social media activity can help boost your efforts and generate even more attention.
Distribute a Press Release to Relevant Publications and Influencers
Press releases are still a commonly used and effective way to disseminate information about B2B company launches. However, the content and distribution of a great press release has changed. Instead of mass-emailing a generic, stuffy press release to hundreds of journalists, press releases should be updated and thoughtfully crafted to reflect best practices for content to leverage for digital marketing, social media and syndication.
Press releases that are data driven and tell an interesting story about the company are more successful than ones that are superficial or overly formal. Think of your press release as a way to refine your company’s messaging and treat the journalists, industry influencers and partners who will receive it as a test audience. What would they want to read? What will compel them to share the information with other people?
Finally, press releases aren’t just for journalists anymore. Consider sending them to well-known industry influencers, bloggers and other media folks who share content from your competitors. If an influencer with 20,000 followers tweets your release, that’s potentially 20,000 more like-minded people you’ve reached!
Create a Temporary Landing Page to Collect Contact Information
As you are generating interest and reach on social media and through press releases, you’ll want to collect contact information from people who are clicking through to read your articles, blog posts and social posts. However, if you don’t have a website up and running before your launch, it can be easy to let those potential leads slip through your fingers.
Consider offering prospects the opportunity to join a priority email list by using a temporary landing page that serves as your website’s homepage until launch. Use elements that will be repurposed on other parts of your static site to capture information so that you aren’t duplicating work for yourself.
Let people know what kind of communication they can expect from you as well as the frequency of communication. Will you be sending out a regular newsletter? Emailing them about new blog posts? Sharing exclusive promotional offers? Collecting audience information via the landing page will give you a foundational email list to use out of the gate and provides a chance to touch base with early visitors when you officially unveil your permanent website.
Go Live With a Launch Event
You’ve picked a day to launch your tech company…but what will you actually do on that day? Go live with your website? Send out an email? Those things are important but might seem underwhelming after months (maybe years) of hard work.
Go the extra mile and host a launch event to bring your company into the industry landscape with strength and confidence. Launch events can be live or digital and can be as extravagant or simple as you want, depending on what aligns best with your company strategy.
Facebook and Instagram Live are becoming increasingly popular in the B2B realm and offer several benefits:
- Viewers will get valuable information about a topic and/or what your company can do for them without investing too much time and energy
- Your team will get a chance to leverage messaging, content marketing, social media strategy and email marketing (and more) in an organic way that reflects the daily demands of post-launch marketing efforts
- Your company will get vital exposure and build brand awareness by offering a polished, branded experience right away
It can be daunting to plan an event before you’ve had a chance to test the waters, but, if executed and marketed properly, it can set your company apart as a thought leader and professional resource.
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