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Ask HN: How to market a product before launch?

2 points by aumakua ↗ HN
As someone new to entrepreneurship, I would say 90+% of the advice I've been receiving so far is 'make sure people want your product before you build it', or various platitudes along those lines.

We're well on our way towards a polished 'beta' launch of our product, but I took this advice somewhat seriously and went ahead and developed some pre-launch marketing materials for our product that essentially give a preview of the UI and describe our various features.

However, I've realized that I have no clue what to do with these. How am I supposed to get people to care about some images and text that describe a product that they can't use? Where would I even post such materials?

More generally, I suppose, how is one supposed to test product-market fit without a product? I'm really not sure how I should be interpreting and acting upon this advice.

2 comments

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jschveibinz
Hi there! It’s great to hear you are working hard on your project. You may have missed the essence of the advice you were given, though. You can’t be at “beta” if you haven’t yet engaged with customers. You may be at “alpha”, but you probably have some revisions and decisions to make before you are truly are ready to formally test and verify. To answer your question about pre-marketing, you might consider a landing page with a small demo and place for interested parties to leave an email address. But first, work with 10-20 people on your current prototype and listen to what they say. Then go back, revise, and then get ready for broader testing. I hope you find this helpful, and good luck with the project!
aumakua
Hey, thanks for the response. Let's say I've done this first part – where would I then go to broadcast my landing page to the world?