7 Pre-Launch Marketing Moves That Beat Paid Ads (And Outwork a $50K Budget)

When you’d rather build belief than buy clicks

Photo by Stephen Audu

Marketing doesn’t start after your product is launched.

Marketing starts before the product exists.

Every early conversation, every piece of content, every bit of curiosity you create before your launch sets the tone for what’s to come. Instead of scrambling into a launch, wouldn’t you rather walk into a room that’s already buzzing?

The real product you’re building pre-launch isn’t the software, it’s belief. Belief in you, in your mission, in the inevitability of what’s coming.

You don’t need a Super Bowl ad budget to engineer that belief.

It takes three things:

1. Cultural fluency
2. Contrarian strategy
3. A refusal to copy Big Tech’s playbook

Here’s how to do it:

#1 | Micro-creators Are Your Biggest Cheerleaders

Forget the mega-influencer strategy you’ve been fed.

Big names with 100k+ followers? They don’t care about your untested product, and their audience probably won’t either. What you need is credibility, not…