By Francesca Margherita
Photo by Dajuana Jones, featuring the hosts of the Know For Sure Podcast
Announce your Patreon to the world with these best practices for a strong start.
Launching your Patreon is a giant milestone. In the lead up, you’ve probably been doing all kinds of thinking around how you can make your membership a success, engage your fans, and create excitement around your work. Getting organized and strategic about how you roll out your ideas is essential to planning a successful launch — and making your first days and weeks on the platform a smash hit. This guide will walk you through key elements of prep and execution so when the big launch day comes, you’re feeling more ready than ever.
How to prepare for launch
Pick a launch day
First things first: Choose your exact launch day and get it on the calendar. Then, you can lay out a thoughtful and detailed launch timeline to help you run a smooth kick off. To pick your launch date itself, consider which week you’ll be fully ready to go — and then select the day that week when you’d typically release content or engage with your fans. For instance, if you drop videos every Tuesday, then pick Tuesday as launch day if you want to amp up the likelihood your community will be tuned in at launch time.
Pro-tip: Unless you usually launch content on weekends or have a very special weekend event that you’re tying your launch to, weekday launches tend to see higher engagement.
Get people excited
Teasing an upcoming launch builds anticipation amongst fans and gets them intrigued about what’s coming. It’s a highly effective strategy for a launch day success. So, what should your teasers be? Anything that gives a little taste of what’s coming, previews the experience you’re creating, or alludes to there being something big in the hopper.
To get people pumped, you can try things like:
- Offering a glimpse of exclusive content
- Sharing a first look at graphics related to the launch announcement
- Using language that will be associated with the page, such as the names of your membership level(s)
- Mysteriously mentioning something “special” or “new” dropping on a certain date
- Running a daily countdown to a special announcement on social media
In advance of their launch, the Know for Sure Podcast teased “a huge announcement” on Instagram to drum up excitement and intrigue: “We’ll give you a hint …. You will be able to get extra content. Set your alarms for noon eastern tomorrow!!!!”
The Know for Sure Podcast teased an upcoming drop to build excitement.
Pro tip: For more inspirational examples of teaser tactics, check out How to turn fans into members through authentic marketing.
What to do on launch day
The day and week of your launch are exciting! You’ll be channeling your happy adrenaline to get your audience as excited as you are, and you’ll be making some amazing memories along the way. Let yourself feel the good vibes, and make sure you’ve got a checklist of what you’ve got planned for the big day so you can stay focused amidst all the buzz.
Here are a few key things to think about and prepare, in order to make your launch a hit.
Craft your message
If you already know exactly how you want to go about this, great! But if you’re not sure exactly what to say in your announcement, or you just want to get some tried-and-true advice, take a tip from this mini guide to formatting your announcement:
- Announce your Patreon itself. Be clear and direct. You could say something like “Here’s the specific thing that’s live today!”
- List what you’ll offer. That means mentioning your benefits. Use keywords like "exclusive access,” “content,” “community,” and “membership."
- Tell the story behind why you’re starting this project. This can be just a few words or a full-on essay — you know your fans and channels and what they like best!
- Include a call to action. Use a straightforward CTA like "join" or "subscribe."
- Create a (happy) sense of urgency. Mention a members-only event you're excited about, and let your fans know they have to sign up by a particular time to get access.
- Share a teaser of exclusive content available through your membership and tell your fans how they can get access to the rest.
- Include the link where folks can become members, of course! Make it easy for them to find their way.
For inspiration, here are a couple real launch-day announcements from Patreon creators. Musician Rhiannon Giddens launched her Patreon membership with a snapshot of the range of content on offer. She also referred to her membership as a “club” to make it feel exclusive while fostering a sense of belonging.
Rhiannon Giddens announced her new Patreon with an invitation to fans to "join the club."
Writer and comedian Elyse Myers shared a launch video on TikTok the day she announced her membership, giving her fans an introduction to Patreon and the great content and experiences she’d be sharing with members every month.
Elyse Myers introduced her TikTok fans to her new Patreon with a fun introductory video.
Signpost your Patreon
Begin by considering all the possible places that your fans currently interact with you and your content — and prepare to share your membership in all of those places. You’ll want to combine both static mentions (like links in profiles or on your website) and dynamic mentions (like fun, new posts on social) so that you reach fans both synchronously and asynchronously. Remember: You’ll need to get ahead of some of these tasks, so be sure to carve out some dedicated time to do so.
Here are some places you can mention your Patreon:
- Add a link to your membership on your social media profiles
- Include a link to your membership in your profile on fan forums and similar spots
- Share news about it on those aforementioned fan forums
- Post about your membership on social media
- Mention it in your content
- Add a banner or other splashy announcement to your website
- Create a permanent home for it on your website — a nav bar link, footer link, and/or a homepage module, for example. (Use Patreon’s Brand Guide to help you out.)
- Include it in your newsletter
- Highlight it at a live event
- Add it to your collateral (such as digital business cards, postcards, and fliers)
Jot down where and how you’ll signpost your Patreon, and then you can start getting deeper into the creative details of your launch plan.
Make your announcement a big deal
Your energy plays a large part in the success of your membership business, so when it comes to how you design your launch announcement itself, the sky’s the limit! Real talk: Getting creative about how you make your announcement can be just as momentous as the announcement itself.
Here are some proven launch-day promotion ideas you can put your own spin on:
- Go live with a launch party
- Share a unique launch video announcing your membership
- Offer exclusive downloads to your first 25 patrons to get the ball rolling
- Make some special, unique merch for the first week
- Host a free Q&A
- Craft and share a fun behind-the-scenes experience
- Offer benefits at (temporarily) discounted prices
- Livestream an introduction to and walkthrough of your membership
- Post some enticing teasers of exclusive content
- Share thank-yous and shout-out videos in real time as new members join
Once you’ve decided which approaches you want to take, you’re ready to start fine-tuning the announcement itself.
Make a marketing calendar with the details
To help keep things organized and bring all the pieces of your launch together strategically and in style, it’s helpful to make a marketing calendar and chart a timeline of what you’ll share and when. We recommend that you start by mapping out the week leading up to your launch day, as well as the three weeks after.
To help you out, we’ve made this marketing calendar template, complete with example launch assets from real creators. Dig in!
What to keep in mind after you’ve launched
You did it! You pulled off a successful membership launch. Take a breath, thank your fans for being part of this, and give yourself a moment to bask in the afterglow. Then it’s time to enter the next chapter — the one where you turn this awesome launch into the foundation of a sustainable creative business. It takes an average of five to 10 mentions of your membership business to convert a fan to a paying member, so thinking about how marketing and promotion fit into your long game should be high on your list of things to do next.
If you’re newer to marketing, check out An introduction to authentic marketing to get some foundations in place, and if you’re a pro jump over to How to turn fans into members through authentic marketing, for some expert tactics and inspirational examples from Patreon creators.
