a six-week launch plan.

a launch is a distribution problem disguised as an announcement. brands spend weeks on the product and one afternoon on the plan to tell people, then compress every asset into a single day, wonder why reach was modest, and move on. the audience needed more than one exposure and got exactly one.

the shape below works for most categories: three weeks of build, one week of concentration, two weeks of sustain. six weeks total, and the assets come from one production block.

the same shape works for a new location, a service line or a rebrand. what changes is the length of the build phase: the less familiar the thing, the longer the audience needs before an announcement means anything.

— 01weeks 1–3: build the reason to care.

the pre-launch job is not teasing — it is establishing the problem your product solves. content in this phase should make the audience agree with a premise, so that when the product appears it reads as an answer rather than an interruption.

concretely: two or three pieces that name the problem, one that shows why existing options fall short, one behind-the-scenes piece about making the thing. none of these need to mention the launch date. they are doing the harder job of building an audience that is already nodding.

this is also when you collect interest signals — a waitlist, a broadcast channel, a "notify me" form. a small list of people who asked to be told is worth more on launch day than any amount of reach, and it costs almost nothing to build during a phase where you are publishing anyway.

operationally, shoot everything for all six weeks in this window. producing launch-week assets during launch week is how brands end up publishing something rushed at the moment attention is highest.

— 02launch week: concentrate, do not spread.

publish the strongest asset first, on the day, and support it for the rest of the week rather than moving on. the instinct to save the best for later is wrong — early engagement determines distribution, so the best piece should get the largest possible initial audience.

then repeat the message in different formats across the week. the same launch, explained as a demo, as a founder piece, as a customer objection answered, as a comparison. this is not repetition to the audience; almost nobody saw the first one.

put paid behind whatever performs organically within the first 48 hours, not behind whatever you assumed would perform. and make sure the destination — page, dm flow, checkout — has been tested on a phone by someone who did not build it.

keep community coverage tight this week specifically. launch questions arrive fast, in dms, and an unanswered question during the one week people are paying attention is the most expensive silence in the calendar.

keep one person free of production duties during launch week specifically. if the person answering questions is also editing tomorrow's asset, one of the two jobs will slip, and it will be the one with a customer waiting on the other end.

— 03weeks 5–6: the sustain phase nobody plans.

most launches stop the day after launch. that is precisely when the second wave of the audience is encountering it, and when the first customers are producing usable proof.

so plan two more weeks: early customer reactions, the questions that came up repeatedly, a demonstration of the thing in use, and one piece answering the objection that turned out to matter most. this content is cheap because the launch generated it, and it converts better than anything published before launch because it contains evidence.

this is also where you decide whether the product becomes a permanent part of the content mix or a moment. if it worked, the formats that carried the launch should stay in the library.

write the debrief in week six while it is fresh: what the audience actually asked, which asset carried the week, what you would shoot differently. launches are one of the few moments that produce concentrated evidence, and most of that evidence is lost by the time the next one is planned.

— 04what to prepare before any of it.

four things, all boring, all capable of wasting the launch. a destination that works on mobile. tracking that records a purchase or enquiry correctly, verified with a live test. an answer to the price question written down for whoever handles dms. and a decision on what you will do if the first two days are quiet — because panic-discounting on day three is a decision better made in advance, calmly, or not at all.

one more: decide what success means before launch. units, enquiries, waitlist conversion, or simply awareness for something with a long sales cycle. a launch without a pre-agreed measure gets judged on whatever number happens to look best, which teaches you nothing for the next one.