Don’t just “go live” and hope people will find that brilliant new website you’re building. Stir up some attention. Here’s some inspiration…
Light a fire internally
- Make a launch video with a sneak peek at certain pages and new features
- Set up a go-live countdown that everyone can see
- Once live, ask those seeing it for the first time to send you their initial reaction (to use later for external promotion)
- Celebrate with everyone in the company – throw a party, a happy hour, a catered lunch, set up an all-staff virtual call if people are remote – complete with swag
- Ask everyone to share the new site on their social pages
- Create a cheat sheet for each department with the new features that will help them do their jobs better and/or things they’ll want to share with their customers
- Promote it on the company intranet
- Set up a scavenger hunt with prizes to encourage people to scour the site and get to know it better
- Create backgrounds to be used for virtual meetings using graphics from the new site
- Make some humorous swag like t-shirts that say “My company launched a new website and all I got was this stupid t-shirt”
Open up the flood gates
- Send an email and ask readers to respond with their first reactions (making it less of a formal announcement and more of an interactive piece of content)
- Promote it in your newsletter – share initial reactions from employees that you collected in the internal launch phase
- Add it to your email signature (“Check out our new website”)
- Talk about it on social media – show your favorite parts
- Make an explainer video to show off new customer-centric features
- Tell the story in a blog about why and how you created it
- Ask your vendors and other non-customer connections to mention it on their social feeds
- Send a press release to your local media and industry news outlets
- Make a cheat sheet customized for each customer or customer type that outlines the features that will make doing business with you that much better
- Create a behind-the-scenes documentary of the people on the website team doing their work and post on social and other places
- Retarget people who’ve visited your old website with an ad promoting your new one
- While it’s still new, mention it every time you have a customer meeting or call