Every new business has the same fantasy: Launch day arrives, the store goes live, and orders flood in. But the reality is more complicated. Without a pre-launch marketing strategy, even the best brands can launch to silence.
In a recent Shopify merchant survey, marketing (37%) and finding customers (36%) were the most commonly cited year-one challenges.* The takeaway? Building an audience before you start your new business or release a new product gives you a critical advantage.
By investing in pre-launch marketing campaigns before your store opens, you generate interest, build an email list, earn social proof, and create the kind of anticipation that turns a launch day into an event.
Read on to learn more about the pre-launch marketing phase and get 10 strategies to build momentum before you start taking orders.
What is pre-launch marketing?
Pre-launch marketing is the set of marketing strategies you use to generate buzz, build anticipation, and capture demand for a new product or service before it’s available to buy. Think of it as the warm-up before the main event.
An ecommerce launch campaign can take many forms depending on your budget, timeline, and audience. For some brands, it’s as straightforward as building an email list and drip-feeding teasers. For others, it’s a multichannel strategy spanning paid ads, influencer partnerships, press outreach, and community building. The best approach depends on your resources, the complexity of your product, and how long you have before launch day.
At its core, every pre-launch marketing plan shares the same goal: Make sure people are ready and eager to buy when your store or new product goes live. Whether you’re in the earliest pre-launch phase or weeks away from a successful launch, the strategies below can help you build up momentum for a strong pre-launch marketing campaign.
Why is pre-launch marketing important?
Skipping a pre-launch strategy is like opening a shop on a street where nobody walks. Here’s how investing in pre-launch marketing can benefit your business.
Builds an audience before you need one
The hardest part of a new business isn’t the product—it’s customer acquisition. Attracting customers gets significantly harder when you’re competing for attention on launch day without existing relationships. Pre-launch marketing lets you start collecting social followers, email subscribers, and community members before you have anything to sell.
Validates demand early
Pre-launch marketing efforts double as market validation. If people are signing up, sharing your teasers, and asking when they can buy, that’s a real signal you’ve found product-market fit.
Generates buzz and creates anticipation
Hype isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s how you fill your sales funnel. Every person who follows your pre-launch journey is a potential customer emotionally invested in your success before you’ve made a single sale.
Strengthens your launch-day results
A well-built marketing funnel means you’re not starting from zero on launch day—you already have warm leads who know your brand and are ready to buy.
Creates a feedback loop
By engaging your target audience before launch, you can collect feedback on brand messaging, pricing, and product features—then refine before anything goes live.
Sets the foundation for long-term growth
The relationships you build during the pre-launch stage don’t expire. Your early adopters become your first customer base, your loudest advocates, and the foundation for sustainable growth.
Strong social media management and an engaged email list built pre-launch continue to raise awareness for everything you do after launch day.
10 pre-launch marketing strategies
- Secure your audience before launch
- Start marketing early
- Release teasers
- Run a contest
- Build hype through influencers
- Create a press kit
- Throw a pre-launch party
- Use Amazon Live
- Run pre-launch ads
- Connect with niche communities
1. Secure your audience before launch
Before a new product launch, ensure you have a solid group of people interested in what you’re offering.
One way to do this is to create a lead generation landing page for people to pre-register or sign up for your email list. Generate traffic to your landing page through:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Paid ads
- Organic social media
- Traditional advertising
- Content marketing
The important part is the conversion: turning visitors into potential customers by persuading them to hand over their details, consenting to further communication from you. Encourage these conversions with an enticing offer, like early access or a discount for email subscribers.
💡 Tip: While you’re building your store on Shopify, you can use a password page as a built-in pre-launch asset. Before your store officially goes live, every visitor lands on this page—so customize it with your brand messaging and an email capture form. It’s a simple way to start turning early visitors into subscribers without any extra tools or landing page builders.
Example: Sexual wellness brand Dame collects emails at the end of a quiz for visitors to find the perfect product for their needs. They receive their results in an email, which means they’ll also be on the mailing list and first to find out about new products.
📚 Read: How to Create a Coming Soon Landing Page
2. Start marketing early
One key to a successful launch is building relationships with potential customers well before opening an online store.
Susie Harrison, cofounder of Hearth Display, took plenty of time to launch. “In order to make that successful, we had to actually really build trust with our customer before we’re launching the crowdfunding campaign,” she says in an episode of Shopify Masters.
“Educate them as to why we chose crowdfunding, why we chose the specific platform that we chose, and why it was best for our business stage and best for them as a customer," she says.
Email marketing is one of the most effective tools here. With a mailing list, you’ve got plenty of opportunities to create content and drip-feed it in the months leading up to your launch. Your pre-launch marketing topics could include the stories behind your ideas, how you’ve refined your products into their final versions, your materials and how you’ve sourced them, which problems your products solve, and much more.
Here’s a simple pre-launch email timeline:
- Eight to 12 weeks out. Start collecting email subscribers. Share your brand story and the problem you’re solving.
- Four to eight weeks out. Tease the product with behind-the-scenes content, sneak peeks, and process updates.
- Two to four weeks out. Build anticipation with product details, exclusive previews, and early access offers.
- One week out. Send countdown emails. Create urgency with launch date reminders.
- Launch day. Announce availability with a clear call to action (CTA).
Set up email automations in advance so new subscribers immediately receive a welcome sequence that keeps your brand top of mind. Tools like Shopify Messaging make it straightforward to build these flows—even if you’re still in the pre-launch stage.
Example: The Xion CyberX eBike launched on crowdfunding site Indiegogo after collecting more than 23,000 emails for its list. This generated over $800,000 in sales when the campaign launched.
3. Release teasers
Supercharge the desire people have for what you’re selling by teasing your upcoming product or new features. Your earliest fans will love this, as they’ll feel part of an exclusive group that’s “in the know.”
Lindsey Carter, founder of Set Active, has seen firsthand how powerful this content can be. “The consumer lives and breathes for teasers,” she says on the Shopify Masters podcast.
“They want to get excited about something, and so one of our content buckets is BTS—it’s showing the behind the scenes,” she says, including your day-to-day activities like working in the office. “And they get to see snippets of how the product that they’re wearing is being made, and I think that builds hype as well,” Lindsey says.
Pre-launch teaser ideas include highlighting:
- Close-up product shots leading up to the big reveal
- Different components or behind-the-scenes footage, like parts of the packaging or snippets of your planning documents
- Product silhouettes alongside “Coming Soon” messaging
- Reaction shots of customers in a pop-up shop, product testing, or other preview setting
These teaser tactics can create buzz amongst your fans, as they try to guess what’s coming.
Example: Interior design brand Havenly teased a new service with a pre-launch email campaign: “Next week, we’re launching something new, that we know you’ll love.” It’s simple yet leaves customers curious about the brand’s upcoming launch.
4. Run a contest
People love free stuff, so running a contest is a great pre-launch marketing strategy for building hype and generating interest. Running anInstagram contest, for example, could boost your social media engagement and attract more followers.
When running a giveaway, sweepstakes, or contest, ensure the entry requirements are easy and fun to participate in, and that the prize is relevant. That way, even people who don’t win will still come away with a positive brand recognition for your business.
You can also layer in gamification to increase engagement. Think spin-to-win wheels on your landing page, referral-based entry tiers (where sharing with friends earns extra entries), or point-based challenges that unlock exclusive previews or early access.
These mechanics tap into the same psychology that makes contests work—the thrill of winning—while encouraging viral sharing that grows your audience organically. Just keep the mechanics simple: If people need a tutorial to enter, you’ve overcomplicated it.
5. Build hype through influencers
Influencer marketing has become one of the most important channel strategies in ecommerce. The global influencer marketing industry reached an estimated $32.55 billion in 2025 and it continues to grow as more brands prioritize creator partnerships over traditional advertising.
Influencers range from celebrity-level fame to a few thousand followers in a specific niche. Either way, these creators can be a valuable connection between you and potential customers. Before launch, you could partner with an influencer to share exciting content about your upcoming product on their social media platforms.
Rather than relying solely on upfront influencer fees, many brands are now structuring influencer partnerships around affiliate and performance-based compensation models. This shift means you can build hype through influencers while keeping costs tied to affiliate marketing metrics, like clicks, sign-ups, or sales—making it more accessible for pre-launch brands with limited budgets.
Lindsey built Set Active largely through influencer outreach, starting with pure hustle. “I always told myself, what’s the worst that could happen, that you’re going to get a no, right?” she says. “And I would spend all day DMing influencers left and right. But for every no, I got like 20 yeses from influencers and celebrities who were just happy to try the product. And it really started to take off."
Example: Direct-to-consumer underwear brand Thinx launched a new product line by partnering with influencers across fashion, health, and wellness categories.
6. Create a press kit
Part of a successful product launch is getting bloggers and publications to write about you, so make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
Create a press kit to have ready to go. This is a collection of information about your brand, leadership, and products for journalists to easily access when they’re writing a story.
Ryan Close, founder of single-serve cocktail system brand Bartesian, stressed the importance of this channel for pre-launch brands. “I would highly recommend, if you’re a pre-launch product, working the PR angles as hard as you can,” he says on the Shopify Masters podcast.
“Make that a big chunk of what you do throughout the day—reaching out to all the big publications and agencies, sending them information, visuals, assets, and just saying, ‘Hey, here’s something we’re working on if you want to write a story.’”
You’ll need an angle to be interesting enough for press coverage, so be sure to highlight what makes your brand or product unique. Journalists are more receptive to creative story angles relevant to their readership, and a press kit with quality visuals and assets makes it easier for them to produce valuable coverage (and free advertising for you).
Example: Solar lighting brand LuminAid makes it easy for journalists with a dedicated press page that includes a downloadable press kit with high-resolution product photos, founder bios, and the company’s origin story. A compelling narrative, paired with ready-to-use assets, has helped it land coverage in major outlets and a deal on Shark Tank.
7. Throw a pre-launch party
Getting a large group of people together, all excited about your project, creates a united energy you can’t fabricate through emails, phone calls, or one-on-one meetings. You can throw your pre-launch party in person or virtually over video.
Virtual events are a smart solution when your audience is geographically spread out, when your product is digital or direct to consumer (DTC), or when you want to keep costs low while still building hype. Platforms like Zoom, YouTube Live, and Instagram Live make it easy to host a product launch event with built-in chat and audience interaction.
For a more polished experience, tools like RingCentral Events or Riverside let you combine presentations with breakout rooms and networking.
Invite a few dozen of the most motivated and influential people in your network, and make sure they come away from the event knowing more about your brand, your upcoming launch, and—most importantly—how they can help spread the word.
💡 Tip: Try branded hashtags or Shopify’s free QR code generator tool to use QR codes in retail.
8. Use Amazon Live
Amazon Live offers another way for customers to learn about products and interact with their creators. You can use Amazon Live to show off your product, demo how it works, and give people a sneak peek of what’s to come. You can also answer any questions potential customers might have in the chat box.
This streaming shopping experience hosts large brands paying five-figure fees for Amazon to produce their shows. But there’s also a range of industry influencers who run more intimate shows for their dedicated fanbases, broadcasting custom product demos on a platform where customers are ready to buy.
Keep in mind that Amazon Live is primarily designed to drive sales within Amazon’s ecosystem. If your pre-launch strategy is focused on driving search traffic and customers to your own Shopify store, consider whether this channel aligns with your broader goals before committing time and resources.
For many Shopify-first brands, investing that energy into building your own audience—through email, social media, or your own live events—will deliver better long-term results.
Example: Makho Ndlovu, a media personality and a lifestyle expert, regularly hosts livestreams where she demos products and interacts with her audience in real time. She blends product recommendations with the feel of a casual conversation between friends, helping brands connect with their audiences.
9. Run pre-launch ads
Pre-launch advertising isn’t about driving immediate sales—it’s about building awareness, capturing demand, and creating a pool of warm leads who are ready to buy when your product becomes available. Paired with the right landing page and email capture, pre-launch ads can turn cold audiences into engaged subscribers before launch day.
Paid social is one of the most powerful channels for pre-launch campaigns. Platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and Pinterest let you target users based on interests, behaviors, and demographics that match your target market. This makes them ideal for building awareness around a new product.
You can run teaser videos, behind-the-scenes content, or “Coming Soon” ads that drive people to your email signup or pre-registration page.
The pre-launch phase is also the ideal time for marketing budget experimentation. Test small amounts across different channels—paid social, audio ads, paid search traffic—to learn what resonates before you commit larger budgets post-launch.
💡 Read more: How to Create a Small Business Marketing Budget
Shopify’s own merchant data reflects the importance of this experimentation. In a survey of established merchants, those earning $1 million or more in annual revenue were far more likely to point to paid advertising as their most effective growth strategy—31% named it their top channel.*
Example: Mattress brand Eight Sleep found a better return-on-advertising spend than expected when it used audio to promote a new premium mattress product. It found that radio and podcast ads offered the time and attention needed to explain its features in-depth—necessary for a high-price item.
10. Connect with niche communities
Niche communities have long been drivers of product development. Today, it’s easier than ever to connect with these communities and empower them to become key drivers in the hype for new launches. This is especially important when your product needs a personal touch to persuade potential customers to purchase.
Niche enthusiasts love sampling the latest products and telling others about them. By introducing your new product to a specific-interest community, you’ll get valuable feedback from committed experts and potentially a host of new converts to your cause. It’s all about trust, so make sure you play by their rules and respect the group’s etiquette.
Susie made niche communities a central part of Hearth Display’s pre-launch strategy. “We did that from the very early stages by creating Facebook groups,” she says.
“We have two private Facebook groups currently with thousands of families in there every day that we’re in constant dialogue with, learning about the problems that they experience every day, what solutions would serve them best, their feedback on features as we continue to build them. We’re constantly talking to them in real time on a platform that feels native and comfortable to them,” she says.
Example: Image Skincare targeted 1,000 members of PopSugar’s Dabble beauty community to promote its new Vital C Anti-Aging Serum. While only 13% of target users were familiar with the spa-exclusive brand, 96% said they’d recommend the product to a friend.
📚 Read more: How to Create a Marketing Plan [+ Free Template]
Pre-launch strategy case study: Healthish
Healthish operates in one of the most competitive market spaces: health and wellness. The global consumer wellness market is now valued at around $2 trillion—there’s no shortage of competition when launching a new product. When it began, Healthish was a newer brand entering a crowded market and needed a smart pre-launch marketing strategy to raise awareness and stand out.
To launch its signature product, a water bottle that tracks hydration, cofounders Emily Chong and Nathan Chan worked with niche influencers to build anticipation and create buzz.
Healthish sends free water bottles to fitness influencers, fashion bloggers, vloggers, and other groups related to their niche. Influencers then share images and videos of their products online—but only if they are happy with them and can talk about the bottle with authentic enthusiasm.
Tips for a successful pre-launch
Here are some tips for nailing your next product launch.
Offer samples
Trying before you buy, or reducing indecision, is a major contributor to purchase decisions. If possible, get your product into the hands of prospective customers so they can try it out and start building word of mouth.
Incentivize early adopters
Early adopters can be crucial in the first days after launch. Happy customers help create buzz, so consider providing a memorable experience with exclusive previews, limited-edition bundles, or special pricing.
Collect useful feedback
Draw insights from early product feedback to inform future versions—new variations, premium editions, or localized iterations. Note what your target users are saying and prioritize the most common issues.
Track sales performance
You can’t measure pre-launch success by gut feel, even if it’s a small-scale launch. Use all the tools and platforms available to track relevant metrics. For example, note which product variations are selling best and which marketing activities are driving the most organic traffic.
Test everything
Treat your launch as an experiment. Some things will work, and some won’t—the only way to find out is by trying. Collect as much data as possible and then double down on the strategies that have the biggest impact to keep building momentum.
Plan your countdown timeline
A structured pre-launch marketing plan keeps you focused and prevents last-minute stress. Here’s a flexible framework to adapt based on your product complexity and audience size:
- Three to six months before launch. Finalize branding and messaging. Start building your email list and social media presence. Begin content marketing with educational content related to the customers’ pain points and problems you solve.
- Six to eight weeks before launch. Launch your marketing campaign in earnest. Start teaser content, influencer outreach, and community engagement. Build your press kit.
- Two to four weeks before launch. Ramp up email campaigns, run contests, and officially announce your launch date. Start pre-launch ads if budget allows. Generate interest with exclusive previews for your most engaged subscribers.
- Launch week. Kickoff daily emails, social countdowns, live events, or virtual launches. Make it impossible for your audience to miss the big reveal.
- Post-launch. Follow up with customers, gather reviews, and use early momentum to fuel your next marketing push.
Compress this timeline for a simpler product or expand for something more complex. The key is to define realistic goals and milestones to avoid scrambling to execute in the final days before launch.
Run a smart pre-launch marketing strategy
The idea of pre-launch marketing is to make your earliest adopters feel special. When they have some sense of ownership in what you’re doing, it helps to motivate them to share your brand organically.
By building up hype pre-launch, you increase the chances your product does well when it finally hits the market. While these customer acquisition strategies affect the product in question—they also help build your business and inspire customer loyalty.
Whatever stage of product development you’re in, it’s never too early to create a new product launch marketing plan and start interacting with your target market. A strong pre-launch marketing strategy gives you the best possible shot at turning a launch into lasting, sustainable growth.
Read more
- How Articles of Organization Work for an LLC
- How to Start a Business in Ohio in 8 Easy Steps
- Georgia LLC- How To Start a Georgia LLC in 12 Steps
- LLC vs. S Corp- Learn the Key Differences
- 6 Types of Ecommerce Businesses and Their Pros & Cons
- Ten Mistakes I Made Running Two Online Stores (And How You Can Avoid Them)
- What Is The Difference Between Mission And Values?
Pre-launch marketing FAQ
What is pre-launch market research?
Pre-launch market research provides feedback on advertising concepts, potential marketing channels, packaging options, and other marketing campaign elements. There are many market research tools to help refine your messaging and create a launch strategy that generates brand awareness, validates your unique selling proposition, and drives preorders.
How do you promote before launch?
A pre-launch marketing campaign is all about building anticipation and creating buzz. You want to pique customers’ interest in your product, generate excitement, encourage social sharing, and get word-of-mouth referrals. Working with influencers, building email campaigns, running contests, creating valuable content, and running social media ads are all great ways to promote a product before launch.
What are the different types of pre-launch marketing?
Pre-launch marketing activities include:
- PR outreach
- Pre-launch ads
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Contests and giveaways
- Email marketing
- Community building
- Product seeding
The right mix depends on your budget, timeline, and target audience.
How long should pre-launch marketing be?
Most pre-launch campaigns run between six weeks and six months, though the ideal timeline depends on the nature of your product, audience size, and budget. A simpler product with an existing audience might only need a few weeks of teasers and email campaigns. A new brand launching a high consideration, complex product may benefit from several months of community building, influencer outreach, and content marketing before the launch date.
How is the success of a pre-launch campaign measured?
Key marketing metrics include email list growth, social media follower growth and engagement, landing page conversion rates, press mentions and media coverage, pre-orders or waitlist sign-ups, and website traffic. The most important metric is ultimately how well your pre-launch efforts translate into sales and customer acquisition on launch day and in the weeks that follow.
*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.
