Ten ways to promote your website launch

After weeks or months of pouring yourself into the creation of your website, you’re finally ready for launch day.

You have a coming-soon page hiding all the work you’ve just finished, and you’re seconds away from hitting the button to take that page down. Your finger nervously hovers over the mouse, you breathe in deeply, and then you click fast and hide your eyes.

Will they like it? Or will your followers think it’s a disastrous wreck?

An hour goes by, and you check your analytics to see how many people have clicked to see your spiffy new site.

Zero? That can’t be right, can it?

You walk out to the mailbox to distract yourself, make yourself a fresh cup of peach tea, and then open up your stats once again (good thing your best biz buddy showed you how to check them!)

Still nothing.

What in the world is going on? Why isn’t anyone visiting your site?

You had something entirely different in mind when you thought of launching your website. You pictured this elaborate party amongst your followers and that you’d have a ton of new email subscribers that first day.

Well, the bad news is that if you don’t let your followers in on what you’re doing (and let them know frequently), they’re not going to have any idea that you’ve done anything new.

You have to promote your website, or it will just sit there looking pretty without any new clicks and probably only a few new subscribers.

Click to Tweet – “You have to promote your website, or it will just sit there without any new clicks or subscribers.”

The great news is that there are a lot of options of how you can promote your new site and get people over to check out your new digs. 

When my clients are not sure why people aren’t going over to their site or blog, I always ask them the same question:

What are you doing to promote your website? Here are a few website launch ideas that you can try after your website redesign or if you’re struggling to get pageviews:

1) Have a few new blog posts up on the site, ready to go. And share those posts EVERYWHERE.

Blog posts are my absolute favorite way to get people over to my website. By implementing a few SEO techniques, I can get organic traffic to my site to read these posts on an everyday basis.

I can also share my posts on social media. Typically, I use the social share buttons (through the Add This plugin) to share my posts out immediately after their published. I just go through and hit each button, making sure to share it everywhere I can.

Click to Tweet – “Ready to launch a new site? Have your blog posts ready, so you can promote it and get new viewers.”

I always post on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, and Reddit right away. Then over the next few days, I try to either share a photo on Instagram that mentions the post or I scroll through the post and share it through my Instagram stories.

If you have a few posts ready to go right when you launch your website, you’ll set yourself up for success in those first few weeks when your design is fresh and new.

2) Host a scavenger hunt on your website.

One of my favorite clients, April Bowles-Olin, hosted a scavenger hunt right after we launched her website. She wrote up the rules in a blog post and let her followers know that they could win prizes if they were able to complete the scavenger hunt within a specified time.

This got viewers over to her site and had people searching around and taking in all the changes that we made.

It was a fun and unique way to get the word out.

3) Host a giveaway.

I recently ran a giveaway on my site using the King Sumo plugin. I love that this plugin allows your followers to share your blog post/website for you. To enter, they share your post or giveaway on social media which brings more people to your site.

I ran my contest over several weeks and not only added hundreds of new subscribers to my list, but I also got fresh eyes on my website.

Make sure to give away something that is relevant to what you do, so that you’re not just getting a bunch of spammy contestants.

4) Provide various sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes posts in anticipation of the launch of your website.

You may want to share things like your new color scheme, your font choices, or your new Brand photos on social media. Think about what parts of the process your followers would love to be involved in and post those things on things like Instagram Stories or Facebook Live.

Some of my favorite posts of the people I love to follow are the behind-the-scenes posts. People are drawn to watching how other businesses make things happen, so they’ll follow intently in the days leading up to your launch.

5) Use live video to share your launch.

I know that this isn’t everyone’s favorite method of marketing but if you’re not camera shy and you like to hop on FB, YouTube, or IG live, then consider doing a few live sessions during the website launch process.

You might even hop on a live call right when you’re about to hit that button to take down your coming-soon page! You can share your nerves and your excitement and get live feedback from your followers.

6) Make a creative or funny short video and boost it on Facebook.

Think of this as a little commercial that will let people know that you’ve revamped your website.

You can make up a jingle or tell a story. Brainstorm and think outside of the box for this one! Video ads on Facebook tend to do better than photo posts in my experience, so if you’re able to create something and boost it for a few dollars, you might have some new views, and your followers might have a bit of fun watching you.

7) Create a new opt-in and share that anywhere and everywhere you can.

Your opt-in will give people the motivation to head on over to your site. You’ll also bring in people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer since your opt-in should be related to your products/services.

8) Host an online workshop or webinar.

If you’re an introvert like me, this may not be something you want to see or hear. But I’ll be honest; this is one of the best ways that I’ve found to not only get new people to my website but to also grow my email list. Giveaways have won the trophy for most list growth with any promotion that I’ve tried in the past, but workshops are a close second.

9) Do one of those Instagram grids where you reveal something fun is coming over several posts and keep your viewers waiting in anticipation of what that is.

I’ve done this with a challenge that I’ve promoted, and I still have people mentioned how much fun it was to see a part of the puzzle every day. My followers tuned in each subsequent day to find out what the picture would be.

Here is an example of when I used an Instagram grid to promote the launch of a seven-day challenge at the beginning of the year.

10) Ask a business buddy if you can share your new website in their Facebook group or if they’ll share your site/opt-in with their email list.

Now with this particular idea, you’ll have to make sure that you have something to give your friend’s audience. You can promote your newest opt-in, or you can host a workshop or free video course. You’ll want to give something in exchange for this new audience to come on over to your website, or they won’t see the value in visiting.

Think of how you can reach out to audiences that are similar to yours but that you haven’t tried to get in front of before.

The bottom line is that you have to promote your website to get people to visit your site. If you’re not sharing what you’ve done with your followers, they probably won’t know that you’ve made some changes.

I typically like to promote something larger (like a website redesign or a course launch) over the period of several weeks leading up to the launch.

You’ll want to sit down and write out a plan that includes two or three of the ideas above and try your best to execute those. Need extra help coming up with a promotional plan and how to launch your website? Join my monthly membership program where you can learn about launching and so much more!

Have you tried anything else to promote your website not included in this list? Let us know in the comments below what fun thing you had up your sleeve so we can draw some inspiration from it!