What are some techniques startups use to initially draw attention to their product?

• Gathering email addresses of interested people pre-launch using a splash page, sending an email announcement to them upon launch.
• Pitching startup news outlets like TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, Mashable, etc.
• Offering A-lister tech commentators like Robert Scoble early access / in-person demos.
• Pitching local news outlets ("Area Entrepreneurs Tackle Big Problem Shared by Many Locals")
• Writing personalized emails to bloggers within their industry, explaining why they think they'd like it and asking them to try it. Usually offering some kind of incentive (Two months free access, etc.).
• Getting listed in as many startup directories as possible (Go2Web20, Crunchbase, Killer Startups, etc.)
• Guest-blogging at sites serving a similar audience.
• Creating & promoting content about their industry rather than just their specific product, drawing search traffic and links to how-tos, data roundups, infographics, interviews with industry notables, etc.
• Being active members within community sites that serve their target market.
• Attending / organizing events within their local area that serve their target market.
• Google PPC advertising.
• Reddit advertising. Gabriel Weinberg has a great write-up on this: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/b...
• Facebook interest-targeted PPC advertising.
• Create & promote activities related to current events. A music startup might try and spread a "Kill Auld Lang Syne Playlist Contest" for New Years, a teen social network could spread an anonymous "Leak Your Parents' Biggest Secrets" minisite during all the wikileaks attention.
• Create controversy related to an industry topic.
• Get double-sided business cards. One side with your contact info, the other side with 3 bullets (max), or a simple tagline that pitches your product succinctly. Cheaper & more useful than fliers, and more socially acceptable to hand out at networking events.
• Get listed on services that roundup similar services, like SitesLike.com (warning: NSFW in many places). Create content and make sure you're ranking for phrases like "Alternative to [competitor]".
• Setup Google alerts, twitter saved searches, and other monitoring tools for people asking questions about the type of service you provide.
• Monitor competitors for controversy / unpopular changes. Become the leading source of news about that topic. Offer incentives for people to switch. (SmugMug did a great job of this at some points in Flickr's history.)
• StumbleUpon advertising. (Much of this traffic may not stick, but it's cheap and it raises awareness. Also, getting in people's bookmarks has value.)
• Have a media kit on your site. Interesting stats, bullet points on why people should care, good graphics (preferably with URLs available for hotlinking), embeddable screencast demos, etc. Make it easy for anyone who wants to cover you to do so as interestingly as possible.
• If you have multiple competitors, search for comparisons of them ("Sprocket Co. vs Widget Inc."). Leave a value-adding comment on the article mentioning your own service, and/or email the creator asking if they'd be interested in comparing your own service to these competitors.
• Get on twitter as a person. Network with people in your industry & market. Always add value, and be likeable. Josh Bob does a great job of this: http://twitter.com/#!/JoshSamBob
• Get your company on twitter as a knowledge resource to people in your market. KISS Metrics is incredible at this: http://twitter.com/#!/KISSmetrics
• Leverage your first customers / users as much as possible. Ask for referrals, incentivize them to invite others, show them off for social proof, etc.

• Publicity stunt: Half.com Josh Kopelman paid 100K to a small town for it to be named Half.com, which gained him national coverage
• Blogger review: Paul Graham mentioned Reddit in one of his essays
• Craiglist posts: AirBnB massively replied to listers of rental property, offering them to list on AirBnB
• Deal with a Big Co:  Kayak's Paul English made a deal with AOL with only 10-page slide deck and a 2-person team
• Google adwords: NetTag's Mark Cramer bought low-value keywords and converted them through their shopping comparison engine into high-value leads
• Mailing list: Mint's Noah Kagan build up a mailing list of 20,000 subscribers. When Mint launched, they blasted the news out to 20K interested people.
• Demo at Tech Show:  Foursquare launched at SXSW which kicked of their growth. They added around 4k users that months
• Create a popular event: Startup Lessons Learned conference, organized by Eric Ries served a a springboard for his brand.

1. They run viral contests to engage and attract customers: offering relevant prizes to your product to attract your potential customers.
2. They monitored customer insights and segmented their audience: you can create groups based on your Facebook fans' activities on your page and promotions. And also you can collect your Facebook fans' email addresses and other information that is useful for your business.
3. What they didn't use but they could have for even better result is optimising the target of their Facebook ads: you can sharply promote your contest for your targeted audience with the use of Pixel ID and your fans' Facebook ID. For this, you just need to know who is your typical customer (the 1. and 2. points make this possible).
4. They sent personalized emails to convert leads into repeat customers: you can use the collected information and send your fans personalized emails with the help of your newsletter provider.

Launching digital products and attention grabbing is an art, science, and requires obsession.

Some Strategic Notes before getting into the nitty gritty.

• You need analytics systems. On some projects we use over 10 tools to measure in-flow, out-flow, and engagement. This means you need to know how to do custom events. The picture below is only 10% of the analytics apps that exist.
  
• UX Flow Knowledge. This means at any given time, you need to know user behavior across a variety of apps. You need to know the UX flows of several hundred apps and deduce user behavior from this. If you don't know the UX flows, views, and what parameters are being passed to and fro of every competitor in the space, you've already lost.
  
• Scraping - Know how to do it or have an outsourcer who can do it for cheap.
  
• Don't choose a shitty brand name. - Kumar Thangudu's answer to Are there any good principles/formulas to follow when selecting a new business name?
• If you have a ton of competitors, then you need to be an order of magnitude better. You need to delight users at every turn. - Over-optimize everything. Demand perfection on every piston of the business. Get position players on your team in this scenario. Keep in mind, the hunt for product market/fit should not entail a team of position players, you'll need swiss army knives for that.
  
• If you have no competitors, get your product out there quick and dirty. - The first version of our product LinkTexting - Create Text To Download Forms in Seconds  was laughable. Look at the delta on V1 and V2 of our landing page.
  
• Trending Events: Don't chase trending events for growth.
  

Overarching General Strategy.

1. Idea Stage - 90 days.  - Start curating content. You need to start curating content, starting a weekly newsletter, and more.
2. Product Alpha - 60 Days - Start setting up infrastructure. Landing page, brand, twitter handle, domain name, facebook page, google plus, and youtube.
   
3. Product Beta - 30 days - Gearing up for submission to BetaList and a dozen other such sites.
   
4. Final Launch - 0 day - Today's the big day. You blitzkrieg over 30 launch sites.

Main Tactics of Launch

Screaming Funnel

1. Queue - Viral Growth -
   
2. Viral Marketing Tool for Email Sign Ups  
   
3. Ignitabl: Grow your Launch List
   
   
4. PayWithATweet (dot) com.
   

Influencer Mining

1. SignupSumo - VIP Signup Alerts - it finds your most valuable users that sign up. Reach out to them and get them to blog about you. Schedule time to talk to them and make them allies. Add them to a facebook group. It is now open-source. :) asm-products/signupsumo-web
   
2. BuzzSumo: Find the Most Shared Content and Key Influencers - you can find influencers here. Export a list and have an intern reach out to them manually.  
   
3. MailMatch - if you have a list of emails, start shoving it into MailMatch to get more data.
   

How to Measure the Value of an Influencer

1. YouTube - base it on content quality, view count, and subscribers.
2. Twitter- use Page on favstar.com and mine the data.
3. Log In, Sign Up or Learn More - facebook page - crawl through their likes, and make sure the accounts look and feel real.     
4. Personal Blog - use the following tools: Check Out Our Social Media & SEO Tools , Bulk DA Checker - Domain Authority Checker Tool, Moz Authority,

Segment the Users Into Distinctive Buckets

1. Facebook Group : Put them in a private VIP facebook group and have an intern engage them.
2. LinkedIn Group  : Add them all on LinkedIn and put them into a private group.
3. Email Segments : Setup a separate segment in your email system for the early influencers.

Landing Page & App Innards Quality

1. GoodUI - You need to use the feedback you gather in combination with the GoodUI checklist to move the meter on your landing page from okay to great.
2. IxD Checklist - If your product is digital, then your product needs to meet as many of these well defined standards as possible.