STEP ONE

You’ll begin by creating a launch page for your upcoming product. This is a page that has your logo, a big emotional image as the background, and a headline and a sub-headline that highlights your unique value proposition. It doesn’t need to say or do much at this point, as long as it piques people’s interest.

STEP TWO

Next, you need to add an email capture form on your landing page, but here is where we are going to put a twist on it. Instead of just asking for an email, have a “tweet to join” button that opens a pre-populated tweet (make the tweet about your product and be sure to add your company’s Twitter handle inside the tweet so that you can get followers also).

Once they send the tweet then the “tweet to join” button becomes an email capture form and you ask them where to send their invite once you’re ready to launch. You can hook up this form to your MailChimp account (or any other service you use). Now you have both a tweet and an email from the same person, and the tweet drives in even more people.

VARIATION

A variation to this is to ask them to refer their friends by entering their friend’s email address (instead of asking for a tweet) and inform them that those who refer the most people will be let into your product first.

STEP THREE

Next, you’re going to publish your launch page on http://www.betali.st, which is a directory of new startups that have yet to launch. They have a substantial email list and Twitter following, so once your startup is published on their site and put in their daily newsletter then you’ll have enough traffic to jump-start your tweet/email capture process.

PRO TIP

You can create a launch loop launch page, just like what we’ve outlined, when it is really just for new features within your existing product. The fundamentals of this strategy still work even if it is not technically a new product that we are talking about, but rather a feature within a product. (Photo by David Fulmer)