Cameron Olthuis

When I think of building pre-launch hype for products, it’s hard for me to think of a better example than 37Signals. 37Signals has built a huge following of loyal evangelists through their blog, Signal vs. Noise. The large audience gives them the perfect stage to build hype for their products before they launch, an art they’ve seemed to master.

Today they’ve offered us a teaser video of a new calendar they’re adding to Backpack, their most popular product. When you dig a little deeper you can see that just about every product or book they release is seriously hyped before it’s launched.

I’m not saying all the hype is generated by them, it’s not. They announce the products and/or give sneak peaks, which in turn gets the ball rolling. The audience then creates the snowball effect. The guys at 37 aren’t stupid though, they know anytime the announce a new product or feature that it will create buzz. They know exactly how to leverage their loyal customer base through guerrilla marketing techniques.

Hype is a form of buzz marketing. Hyping a product pre-launch creates buzz which also creates curiosity and expectations. Bloggers write posts and the press writes news articles and releases. Before you know it the word gets out to thousands of people all hearing how great this new product is. This gets them excited and they can hardly wait to get their hands on it.

With Hype can also come backlash, it often over-inflates expectations. For example my wife had been telling me for weeks about this great breakfast place she found. She kept telling me it was the best place she had ever been to and I just ‘had’ to go. She was building hype. I couldn’t help but imagine this wonderful place where the food just melted in your mouth. In my mind it was going to be unlike anything I had ever experienced. Well, we had the chance to go the other day and I was extremely let down. It’s not that this place wasn’t any good, it just didn’t meet the expectations that had been set.

What lessons can we learn from 37Signals? We can learn a lot from their method of marketing, it works perfectly. They don’t spend a single dime on marketing and yet everything they touch turns to gold. They even added a job board to their blog charging $250 per listing and it’s successful. A job board, who would’ve thunk it?

The problem is that we don’t all have a following like 37Signals, and even those that do can’t duplicate their success. What makes them successful is a combination of creating hype backed up by products that meet expectations. They deliver, and they have a reputation for it. So you know when one of their products is hyped it’s going to be good.