13 Ways to Bootstrap Your Product Launch

By Brett Farmiloe

What's one great strategy that can help your startup bootstrap a new product launch? We posed this question to small business owners and entrepreneurs to find out their best advice. From finding affiliates who will promote a new product to simply asking for help, these tips may help you successfully launch a new product.

How to bootstrap a product launch

1. Find affiliates to promote your product

"One fantastic way for startups to bootstrap product launches is by finding affiliates and influencers to promote the product. With affiliate marketing, you can pay the influencers when and if they make a sale. Doing this eliminates the risk of spending a fortune on advertising before you've made a sale. Once you have some initial sales, you'll be able to reinvest the proceeds into PPC, display ads, or other paid marketing channels."

—Axel DeAngelis, NameBounce

2. Finance product launch through presales

"A great strategy to lower the price of launching a product is to offer presales. This will allow you to generate a revenue stream before your product is out to your customers, and if you're able to do this successfully you could leverage the presales to finance the entire launch.

"Combining this with a solid marketing strategy will allow you to extend your brand outreach to bring in revenue based on anticipation of the product getting to your customers. This buzz around your company and product gives you the ability to shift the financial burden to your customer base to fund the launch as they want your product."

—Mark Smith, University of Advancing Technology

3. Start with a small target audience

"There are any number of strategies a startup can use to bootstrap their launch, but from a marketing perspective, the one I recommend most is to start by focusing on a 'local' customer base—the one you know best—first, and then slowly casting a wider net as you prepare to grow and scale. This approach will allow you to fine-tune your messaging (i.e., confirm your core value proposition) on a much smaller and more cost-efficient scale and ultimately ensure you get to know your customers really well.

"The one thing to keep in mind about this strategy is that 'local' doesn't mean the same thing for all brands. The key is to drill down to the smallest base of customers you can serve through the relationships and channels you are already tapped into and then focus on expanding your audience slowly versus trying to launch nationally (or even globally) to the masses on day one!"

—Amy Zwagerman, The Launch Box

4. Learn the basics

"Product launches in sophisticated corporate settings often require skills that are highly specialized and take a great deal of time to hone. However, for smaller ventures, many basic skills can be obtained with less effort, which is why learning those skills can be an effective way to cut costs and bootstrap your startup's product launch. In the early stages of a launch, a business does not necessarily need a huge promotional campaign or massive media blitzes to achieve objectives, and instead can use more modest means.

"Learning the basics of putting together an informative newsletter, posting engaging videos on social media, participating in online community discussions, and partnering with blogs and other accessible information outlets, can be learned relatively quickly and for little money. Learning these basic skills prior to release, can provide you with the foundation to build from, and allow you to successfully bootstrap your product launch."

—Omid Semino, Diamond Mansion

5. Build excitement around your launch

"We all can admit that the big product reveal is fun, yet being more upfront about an upcoming offering, if done strategically, can generate just as much excitement, and can be a great tactic for a product launch. Companies like Apple, Jaguar, and even McDonalds, have generated excitement for a new product by releasing bits and pieces of information to whet the public’s appetite for what’s coming next.

"Sending press releases with highlighted but controlled information, making references and announcements to online communities, and building a website with tantalizing clues of the product’s qualities are all cost-effective ways to build anticipation for your product launch. By utilizing inexpensive information outlets and strategically controlling the information released to the public, you can create the excitement you desire and effectively bootstrap your product launch."

—Cody Candee, Bounce

6. Optimize social media sharing

"The best way to increase exposure at no additional financial cost is through social media promotions.

"Use a designated hashtag for posts on Instagram and Twitter to increase engagement with your followers. Appeal to peoples' innate narcissism by encouraging them to post themselves using your products under said hashtag to receive a discount or be entered in a drawing. Make it easy for people to share your product launch by adding social media share buttons to all pages on your website. Increase their likelihood of sharing your product launch by offering a special promo code to those who do.

"Social media is key to a successful product launch, and if you strategize correctly, you'll have a large audience awaiting your product drop."

—Roy Morejon, Enventys Partners

7. Conduct regular market research

"It's essential to keep an eye on what your competition is up to as you launch your product. Bootstrapping means doing your own market research, so you have to be prepared to be resourceful in finding news about other brands. There are tools to help you monitor your competition, from SEO analytics to lead mining plug-ins. Using them will give you an advantage as you prepare to launch, putting yourself in the best position to succeed.

"When you launch, there's no turning back, so it's good practice to continue your research, keep your enemies close, and learn as much about them as possible. This advantage will help keep you ahead of trends and stay competitive from the moment you launch."

—Paul Moody, ProMoverReviews

8. Utilize crowdfunding

"One way for a startup to launch a product is through crowdfunding. This method of funding allows startups the opportunity to raise money from people who want the products they are launching, and can help the product to get off of the ground on day one."

—Jar Kuznecov, Water Softeners Hub

9. Ask for help

"You might be surprised how many people are in your corner, and are not only willing to help, but hoping you’ll reach out and ask them for it!

"When you know someone has enjoyed your product, even if they’re family, ask them to post a review. Word-of-mouth propagates business. Remind friends to talk about your launch at social events. Even if your request is completely unexpected, most people will be happy to comply when they get to be a part of something on the ground floor.

"Costing you zero dollars, in the end, it truly doesn’t hurt to ask."

—Elliot Schwarcz, Becca's Home

10. Launch on Product Hunt

"Product Hunt has become the go-to discovery tool for 'product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out.' If you follow all the right guidelines on launching the product on Product Hunt, you will not only get early adopters/customers, but you will also receive a lot of feedback. Product Hunt has amassed a large and active following, including key tech influencers, celebrities, reporters, and more recently, venture capitalists."

—Muhammad Saad Khan, Cloudways

11. Look into startup programs

"Before signing up with a service provider, have a quick check to see if they offer a startup program—you usually need to go one or two pages deep on their website to find it. There are a lot of generous startup programs out there that provide free credits. These programs are available for all types of services, ranging from marketing (Microsoft Advertising), hosting (AWS, Google Cloud), and productivity tools tools (Notion)."

—Joel Sturmfels, Seenly.io

12. Provide a service, not a product

"Offering a service (instead of a physical product) is one of the best ways to bootstrap the launch of a startup and future products. It's usually easier and cheaper to provide a service than it is to develop a product from scratch, reducing the barriers to entry and making it easier to get started. Another benefit is you can use the revenue you earn from your service clients to fund product development. This is a very common strategy among consultants, many of whom go on to "productize" their knowledge as a way to offer a similar level of value without needing to invest so much time into each individual engagement.

"Offering a service is also a great idea if you don't yet know the exact product you want to build, since you can collect customer feedback and validate your idea along the way. If you're planning to raise capital for your startup, but don't want to give up any equity, providing a service in the short-term might just be the alternative funding solution you're looking for."

—Jordan Bishop, Yore Oyster

13. Balance stock levels with your marketing budget

"One of my clients is a small, natural skin-care company. For their first product and brand launch, we were working with a small budget. Because their story and process is so unique it was a huge success—so successful, in fact, that they ran out of stock almost immediately. Rather than switch off the ads, which were snowballing and risk losing momentum, we managed to make some small changes and turned the campaign into a lead generation campaign with an emphasis on building their email list. They obtained leads at a ridiculously low price and are still making money from that list to this day.

"I learned a valuable lesson: small businesses with low marketing budgets do not need to purchase large quantities of stock in advance. Purchase enough so you still retain a marketing budget, and if you oversell, simply tell clients that the demand was so great they will have to wait a little while. We discovered that the majority of clients are happy to wait."

—Ross Kernez, HealthPlanOne

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