Launching into the void: a step-by-step survival guide for new product chaos

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Listen, I’m not a business owner. I’ve never played around in the retail space, or executed a product launch end-to-end.

But I’d put my money on idea that, in todays fragmented media landscape – it’s f*cking hard. I’d liken it to handing out party invites at a train station during rush hour. Except the train is speeding away, while half your audience is already on a different platform. Yeowch.

Working for months and years on a brand, only to finally hit publish and receive a symphony of crickets and a couple pity likes before the timeline goes back to slop, brain rot memes and the 40,000 other things stealing my audience’s attention would send me on a generational crash-out.

But here’s the thing - it’s not your fault. Hell, it’s not even your product’s fault.

It’s the brutal reality of something called The Cold Start Problem. It's basically when you have no customers, no reviews or brand gravity, and you're screaming into a fragmented media hellscape that rewards familiarity - not newness. So no, you’re not doing it wrong. It really is this hard, but it’s not impossible. So long as you stop thinking of your launch as merely a moment and start thinking of it as the start of a momentum machine. From what I’ve gathered from the current state of the internet, allow me to guide you through this survival map.

Step 1: it’s not an announcement, it’s an invitation.

We must retire the fact that launch day is going to be a mic drop moment. It is (unfortunately) not Beyoncé at the Superbowl. It’s you on a Tuesday, asking strangers to care. And well, have you looked around recently? By and large, strangers do not care. A successful launch is less about posting your Big Reveal™ and more about starting a conversation. That means:

• Answering real questions your audience is already asking

• Positioning your product in the middle of a problem that already exists

• Speaking in a way that doesn’t sound like it came from the internal comms Slack channel

You’re not delivering a sermon. You’re sliding into the group chat and coyly saying, “hey. i made a thing. can I show you?”

Step 2: warm up your audience before you drop the news.

Dropping a product with zero pre-launch build-up is like throwing a party without telling anyone the date, then wondering why no one shows up. You need to create context before you ask for attention. Start building buzz before you have anything to sell:

• Share your “why” and the pain points that sparked this

• Tease what’s coming through behind-the-scenes or “early leak” style content

• Use polls, questions, and insider invites to make people feel part of it

This is the pre-party. The champagne isn’t flowing yet, but the playlist’s on and people are texting “what’s the dress code?” That’s what you want.

Step 3: treat launch day like act one, not the climax.

Obviously, your launch moment matters. I’m not a buzzkill. But it doesn’t matter because it’s the main event, it matters because it’s the start of the show, baby! And you have to make it count by crafting a tight, emotionally resonant story:

• Give your audience one clear action to take: sign up, join early, watch this, share it

• Use urgency without being cringe: “we’re live” is boring; “this solves the thing that’s been ruining your week” is quite the opposite.

Also - repetition ≠ desperation. Most people don’t see your first or second post. Say it again in different ways across different platforms. It's not oversharing, it's distribution.

Step 4 (and likely the hardest step): earn trust, fast.

Unfortunately, you can’t avoid the part where people ask: “who tf are you?” So, meet them there:

• Show them the faces behind the product. People resonate with people, not faceless brands.

• Share your test users’ experiences, even if it’s just your aunt and your best friend.

• Uce UGC, beta feedback and the “messy middle” content to show this thing is actually real.

If you don’t have proof just yet, make vulnerability your proof. Being transparent is about what you're building, but also what you’re learning and fixing. People trust that kind of authenticity.

Step 5: build your amplification loop.

One post or email won’t save you. To launch properly in the cold start era, you need systems that multiply your reach:

• Repurpose the hell out of every asset. No, I mean every freaking one. (turn your launch post into a video, a story, a thread, an FAQ) the world is your content oyster.

• Activate creators and community. no one shares brand content like someone who feels part of it

• Treat newsletters, podcasts, and niche forums like your PR team. Feed them material to help tell your story for you

You don’t need to go viral. You need to be unignorable in the right pockets of the internet.

Finally, Step 6: don’t ghost after the first dopamine hit.

This is about momentum. You can’t have it die in the first week. Keep the attention while you've got it:

• Share early wins and customer love

• Release content that deepens the story (origin story, process, learnings)

• Build mini-moments: features, updates, limited drops

• Keep talking like a person, not a PR rep

Think of your launch like a pilot episode. You’ve got their attention, but you still have to earn the next episode.

The bad news is no one’s waiting for you. The good news? They might if you make it worth their time!

The internet rewards connection more than effort. That’s the painful part about launching: you can do everything “right” and still get crickets. But don’t let that shake you. Your job isn’t to go viral, it's to be noticed by the right people. To show up in the chaos with something real and talk about it in a way that makes people feel something.

You’ve got this x

-Sophie Randell, Writer