Content Marketing Before SaaS Product Launch: How to Use Content to Drive Demand

Did you know Buffer, the $20 million social media management behemoth, started with a simple landing page to validate their product idea and a waitlist? 

Hundreds of SaaS founders dream of launching a successful product, yet only a handful create enough buzz to drive the first sales. Do you know why? Because nine out of ten times, pre-launch campaigns fail to generate demand and capture attention. 

This is because creating buzz around your upcoming product launch isn’t as straightforward. SaaS products are technical products that demand education. Today, and as always, what separates a successful product launch from failures is how well you can leverage content marketing. 

Here’s how you can lay the groundwork for capturing audience attention, building anticipation, and boosting sign-ups with content for your new product launch.

SaaS Product Launch Content Strategy: How to Generate Demand  

How to create product demand using content 

First things first. Start with a pre-launch landing page with a consistent brand identity, copy, and a CTA, so you can direct potential users to a dedicated page and nudge them forward. 

You can also:

• Build an audience for product testing or pre-selling
• Test your marketing message with the audience
• Initiate communication with potential customers

SpringSled, a project management tool, for instance, built a “Coming Soon” page before its product launch. The idea was simple. They wanted to create a clean landing page for a referral program and get at least 1,000 sign-ups.

But as the marketing gods wished it, SpringSled managed to bag 150,000 sign-ups in just four weeks! All that with a compelling landing page and concise copy that looked like this. 

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At 41 words, the landing page barely has a copy. And uses single-word headings that highlight the key benefits on offer and a clear CTA with just a pop of colour. 

Sprinsled’s clean landing page is a testament that brands can drive sign-ups without overspending on a pre-launch landing page. 

But when that’s done and dusted, here are the best ways to create and promote content for new product launches and generate demand. 

1. Tell Your Product Story 

What better place to start creating content for your product launch than telling your product story?

Take it to your SaaS website to share the eureka moment, the idea that started it all, and the people behind it. 

You need to

• Be honest
• Keep it short and shareable
• Help your audience visualize with insider videos and screenshots
• Tap into their emotional triggers to stick in their minds 

Or, as Jay Baer, content marketing strategist and keynote speaker, puts it, 

“If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger”. 

With several innovations trying to grab the customer’s attention, your story is the key to standing out. As potential customers find something to connect with, your product will already be on their minds even before its launch.

Your pre-launch content strategy should focus on being as engaging as possible. And unless you’re a SaaS celebrity, you want to tell people something about what they are signing up for. 

2. Explain Your Product

Want kickass content for your new product launch? Then, let your product be the hero of your content. 

The focus here is to highlight product features, communicate their value, and bring product experience to the centre stage. And for this, your website will play a valuable role. 

To design a welcoming home on the web, you just need two things to start. 

1. Engaging textual and visual content to highlight what pain points your product addresses
2. Explainer videos to simplify complex product features. 

And when you see people getting interested, introduce one-on-one demo offers with the sales team to boost conversions. 

3. Create Hype with Teaser Content

Press releases and promotional events are important, but “teasing” the audiences with product previews can work wonders in building your waitlist. 

In the weeks leading up to the launch date, create blogs with a sneak peek of the product to prepare your audience for the big release, just as HubSpot does.

Their teaser blogs are meant to get the audience thinking about the pain points that HubSpot plans to address without giving away too much about the product. Before the launch of its predictive lead scoring tool and Ads add-on tool, HubSpot created a series of blogs to do just that.

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Putting out video teasers with hints about the product is another clever idea. It keeps the audience guessing and draws curious eyeballs to try. This is a content format the folks at Robinhood published before its launch.

When Robinhood was introduced as a commission-free stock trading platform, it drove massive 1 million user sign-ups before the app launch. And how they managed to achieve such a feat is the real MVP. 

They incorporated content marketing with their referral strategy. Yes! Through video teasers explaining the app’s features and a simple yet catchy landing page with a single tagline, Robinhood expanded its pre-launch reach beyond belief.

4. Practice Link-Building with Guest Posting

To successfully attract sign-ups, you can connect with top industry publications or high-authority websites in your niche for guest posting. It is an effective strategy to drive traffic to your product launch page and get traction. 

These guest blogs could revolve around the top challenges your product solves. Or you could share stories of how your product journeyed from idea to completion. This way, you can attract attention by giving your audience something to look forward to. And at the same time, get quality backlinks for your pre-launch product page.

Pro Tip: You can create a profile on Medium and republish your published guest blogs to drive the traffic further. 

This is exactly what Joe Robinson, founder of a leading digital PR agency Green Flag Digital, did. He published a guest post on Moz about technical SEO issues and how to solve them. 

At the end of the blog, Moz published the author’s bio with links to his latest eBook, The SEO Emergency Checklist. While the content didn’t directly mention the product, it still did an excellent job of gathering audience attention and encouraging eBook sign-ups with appropriate backlinks. 

5. Keep Those Emails Coming

The success of your product launch directly depends on how people perceive the brand and how much they trust it. And emails are a great way to welcome the audience and initiate a conversation. 

To get the ball rolling for your pre-launch content, start by adding an email list sign-up form to your website. Also, add it to your email campaigns, pre-launch landing page, and social media to capture emails across multiple touch points. 

And as people get excited about the upcoming product and sign up for your email list, time your welcome emails to introduce the audience to the product, share the progress, and provide regular updates to build the hype. 

Or, keep your prospects guessing.

Here’s what Havenly – a platform for discovering interior designing and decoration services – did with their pre-launch emails

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The copy works well at building anticipation and giving the audience something to look forward to.

6. Generate Buzz with Social Media

When it comes to pre-launch content marketing, social media is the best space to create urgency and build anticipation for your upcoming product.

For instance, as you get closer to the launch date, you can build suspense and drive engagement with creative, fun content. Here’s one example from Kula, a recruitment automation platform. 

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Want to create more curiosity? Add a unique but memorable hashtag to tap into the hype.

Here are a few other ways to use social media to generate demand. 

• Share screenshots or short videos to offer glimpses of the product
• Introduce the core team behind the product
• Share regular product updates with the audience
• Conduct live AMAs with the product team or the CEO
• Host contests and competitions with early access or free trials as a prize

Content Marketing Before Product Launch – Make it Count!

The pre-launch phase of your new product can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. But you can make this time count by targeting the right content at the right time. From a stellar pre-launch landing page to social media, content should be at the forefront of your marketing efforts.

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