It all began with a single Tweet.
A tweet that captured the attention of potential investors for Yac, a voice messaging tool for remote teams.
Twitter helped the folks at Yac start a conversation, while Facebook let them run ads for their “winning” Twitter content. The company funneled all these visitors to their landing page and held their attention with the header “Take your time back from Zoom & Slack,” Remember this was in an era when the two tools were the rage.
The results were far better than the company imagined – they attracted the right eyeballs with a 35% conversion rate and 3546 participants.
All in all, Yac’s pre-launch campaign for their SaaS product was a huge success, thanks to the clever use of social media and brilliant messaging.
If you’re about to launch a new SaaS product in the market and really want to tap into that pre-launch buzz, social media is the place to be. That said, here are the top pre-launch post ideas for you to get started.
10 Pre-Launch Content Ideas for Social Media
1. Posts that Build Hype
Ready to let your audience know about your exceptional upcoming SaaS product? Capture their attention first with fun coming-soon posts. One simple way is to create visuals that stand out with bright colors and fun designs.
Another way? Highlight their pain points and show how your new product solves them. Eye-catching visual posts and short videos are good examples of “coming soon” posts. They help keep the mystery alive for the audience. Case in point, the iBase Solution product launch teaser.
2. Give a Sneak Peek
Have a product that’s ready to ship? Then start your marketing by posting a teaser of your SaaS product.
This is an effective way to offer a sneak peek of the new product and share information as clues to build anticipation before the launch. Share Meta or Instagram stories or create short videos, giving glimpses of the product.
So, when the launch day finally arrives, your audience is pumped to know more about it. Kind of like this teaser video by affable.ai, an end-to-end influencer marketing platform.
Or this tweet by vidBoard.ai, preparing for its new product launch.
3. Start a Weekly Series
Now, hype posts and sneak peeks are excellent ways to grab eyeballs when done right. But with so much competition for attention, really standing out can be difficult. Why not take an alternate approach?
Start your own daily or weekly series. This could be an educational series on YouTube where the topics revolve around your upcoming product or simply talk about the pain points your product can solve without giving it away.
With content series, you can quickly build on the hype among interested consumers until your product launch. Bonus? You don’t have to develop new pre-launch post ideas for social media every day until your product launch.
4. Behind the Scenes
People love to know what goes on behind the scenes of creating a product. Sharing this is fun; it’s humane, and, most of all, it’s a good way to get the audience all involved and curious.
Tell your prospects how your team has worked on the product for months. Give hints about the processes. Better yet? Share the compelling backstory of how the SaaS product came to be. It’s a brilliant pre-launch post idea through and through.
5. Keep the Audience Guessing
When you want to build hype for your pre-launch SaaS product, teaser content is just one part of the game. The next is to involve your audience and keep them engaged.
And you can do this by making them guess your upcoming product. That said, remember that keeping your audience guessing for far too long may cause them to lose interest. So, make your posts fun. Plan games, post quiz contests, share polls, or host Q&A on Instagram stories to get the conversation going.
6. Partner with Influencers on Social Media
Let’s accept it; we’ve all been influenced to try that product endorsed by a social media influencer. Well, so is your audience. So, why not partner with one for your next pre-launch campaign?
It will help you expand your reach and even attract a new audience for your SaaS product.
This works so well because your audience will have more faith in your upcoming product if they see someone they admire. If you’re unsure how it’ll work, maybe Canva’s success with influencer marketing will change your mind.
When Canva, a popular graphic design tool website, wanted to get noticed beyond its freemium model and limited customer base, it explored the unchartered territory of influencer marketing as a SaaS brand. The company partnered with Guy Kawasaki, the original Apple employee, who was already using Canva’s freemium tool to create his graphics.
And the next thing you know, Kawasaki is Canva’s brand evangelist, helping the new brand stand out in a competitive market.
7. Create a Hashtag
A fun hashtag can spice up your pre-launch campaign by giving your audience something to discuss. Besides, it can help you categorise your product-related content, run engaging contests, or ask the audience to share their opinion or feedback using the hashtag. So, how do you use it? Take a cue from HubSpot.
A great example is HubSpot’s campaign exploring workplace culture with a unique hashtag- #goodbossenergy, on Twitter and Tik Tok, encouraging people to share their thoughts and experiences on what a good leader is like.
The campaign aimed to boost participation from a professional audience, and the results were excellent – with over 29 million views and counting.
And if your hashtag goes viral, your chances of getting discovered increase significantly. Which is why it is a good idea to use a hashtag analytical tool like RiteTag to analyze and create your hashtags.
Pro tip: Make sure your hashtag is unique but easy to remember and simple to read. Avoid long strings of words to avoid confusion.
8. Organize a Countdown
Nothing, and I mean nothing, can get your audience’s curiosity up and blood pumping, like counting down the days to an exciting product launch. Countdown posts allow you to stay on top of your audience’s mind and tap into their curiosity.
And they are easy to create and organize too. All you need to do is start a series of visual posts, counting the days remaining for your product launch. Or post Instagram stories with countdown stickers and let your audience set a reminder for when the product finally launches.
See how vidboard.ai, a technology company in India, is getting ready for its new product launch with a fun video countdown prompting the audience to join the waitlist for a once-in-a-lifetime deal before the big launch.
9. Engage Your Audience with Contests
While your audience eagerly waits for the big reveal, why not keep them engaged with fun contests or giveaways? And yes, while hosting contests for SaaS product audiences might not be as straightforward, they don’t have to be too complicated, either.
With this pre-launch post idea, you can define a theme and ask your B2B audience to share their challenging stories using a hashtag, send their experience with your previous products, or jazz things up a bit by asking them to name your product.
Take cues from Zoom’s successful pre-launch campaign for their product feature launch. Despite a massive customer base, Zoom turned to social media to run contests and host giveaways to create hype.
The company launched a virtual background competition, prompting the users to share their pictures and videos using Zoom’s latest feature. The top three participants stood a chance to win prizes every month. And as you can guess, the strategy was a massive hit – encouraging more than 50,000 people to sign up on the platform just to try out the latest feature.
10. Live Stream with the Product Team
Piggybacking on the “Show the behind the scenes” tip, give credit to the brains behind your new product. In the days leading up to the product launch, it is a great idea to conduct a live stream on your social media platforms to establish a connection with the audience instantly.
Set up a live session with your product team and promote it via your social channels and email. You can use this live session to discuss the upcoming product, take audience queries, share what motivated your company to develop the product, and more.
This is a good way to build a rapport with the B2B audience, who will now associate the product with the humans behind it.
Get, Set, Launch!
There you have it. With these 10 pre-launch post ideas for social media, you can unleash the true potential of your overall content marketing strategy.
Back your social media efforts with an equally engaging landing page, pre-launch emails, and blogs to attract attention, and you’re on the way to a product launch that’s a huge success.