How To Pre-Sell Your Product With Shopify | $20K In 30-days

Pre-order campaigns can be a game changer for businesses looking to validate, launch, and scale their products. These campaigns allow customers to pre-order a product in advance, meaning they buy it today and receive it in 2-4 months. 

It helps to generate revenue quickly and flips the cash flow cycle for businesses. In this blog post, we will cover the step-by-step process of how to run a pre-order campaign on your website.

What Is A Pre-Order Campaign? 

First, it is essential to understand what pre-sell or pre-order campaigns are. 

Kickstarter and Indiegogo are popular crowdfunding platforms that offer pre-order campaigns, but this video covers how to apply similar crowdfunding principles to your own website without the risk associated with Kickstarter. 

A pre-sell campaign is where you have a new product, and customers pre-order that product in advance. 

It helps to de-risk the process of bringing products to market, and it enables businesses to fund inventory investments.

Understanding Pre-Order Campaign

One of the biggest objections to pre-order campaigns is, “why would someone buy a product that they can’t get for a few weeks or a few months?”.

The pre-order concept has been proven to be successful over 15 years, with hundreds of millions of customers that have pre-ordered products that they don’t get for a few months. 

People are comfortable pre-ordering products because they want to be the first to get some new, awesome product, or they want to support new business owners.

The Pre-Launch Phase: How To Build Your Audience

We will take a closer look at how to build an audience during the pre-launch phase, how to nurture that audience, and how to convert them into customers.

To start a pre-order campaign, the first step is to create a landing page. Instead of getting people to order your product, when they come to your website, you’re going to put an email capture on that website. 

Pre-launch is all about starting to build your audience, build that waitlist, and connect with influencers.

It is important to incentivize customers to pre-order your product. You can do this by offering a discount, limited edition products, or exclusive access to new products. 

It is also crucial to have a clear and concise marketing strategy. You can use social media, email marketing, and influencer marketing to promote your pre-order campaign.

The Two Main Methods Of Building An Audience: Organic And Paid

Organic methods are typically free or low-cost and include social media marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, influencer marketing, press coverage, and brand collaborations. 

Paid methods include social media ads, Google ads, and influencer partnerships. 

Both methods can be effective, but the right strategy will depend on your budget, resources, and marketing goals.

How To Nurture Your Audience

Once you have built your audience, it’s time to nurture them. Nurturing your audience means staying top-of-mind with your potential customers, providing them with relevant content, and keeping them engaged. 

This can be achieved through consistent email updates, SMS marketing, remarketing, and social media updates.

The Pre-Order Phase: Converting Your Audience Into Customers

By now, you have built an email list, nurtured your audience, and generated interest in your product. 

The pre-order phase is where you turn that interest into sales. This can be achieved by offering exclusive pre-order discounts, limited-edition products, or other incentives that encourage customers to take action.

When it comes to taking pre-orders, it’s important to make sure that you are no more than eight to ten weeks away from when you’re going to fulfill. 

Shopify customers and people that buy with you directly are going to be more impatient. You want to make sure that you are definitely as close to being able to fulfill that as possible, and not launch more than 8-10 weeks away from fulfillment.

If you’re at the point where you are starting to shop for manufacturers, it’s too soon to launch your product.

The Fulfillment Phase

Fulfillment is when your product is available for immediate purchase and shipping. This is the time to celebrate and double down on your marketing efforts. You can also use this time to gather user-generated content (UGC) for social proof.

Double Down On What’s Working

Once you’ve launched your product and gathered some data, it’s important to double down on what’s working. This could mean investing more in a certain marketing strategy or targeting a specific customer demographic.

Marketing Strategies You Can Do

Influencers and bloggers can help you reach a wider audience and generate more sales. Consider sending your product to relevant influencers and asking for unboxing videos and reviews.

UGC content is a great way to showcase your product and build trust with potential customers. Consider hiring a brand spokesperson or using a Content Creator marketplace to create high-quality videos and photos of your product.

Conclusion

In conclusion, pre-order campaigns are an excellent way for businesses to validate, launch, and scale their products. It helps to de-risk the process of bringing products to market and generates revenue quickly.