August 27, 2025
Picture this: you've spent months building your dream product, you launch a waitlist with "Brand Name - Coming Soon! Sign up now!" and... crickets. Sound familiar?
You're not alone. Most founders make the same critical mistake when building anticipation for their launch. They create vague, generic waitlists that fail to connect with their audience or communicate real value. The result? The only people signing up are your mom and your best friend who already know what you're working on.
Here's what you'll learn in this post:
Walk through any startup community or scroll through Product Hunt, and you'll see them everywhere: bland waitlists that say absolutely nothing about who the product serves or what problem it solves. These "Brand Name - Launching Soon" pages might look clean and minimal, but they're conversion killers.
The harsh reality? People don't sign up for mystery products. They sign up for solutions to problems they're actively experiencing. Without clear messaging about your target audience and the specific pain point you're addressing, your waitlist becomes just another forgotten bookmark.
When you launch a generic waitlist, you'll get exactly two types of signups: your mom and your best friend. Why? Because they already know what you're building and want to support you. But here's the problem – they're not representative of your actual market. Building a business on the enthusiasm of people who love you personally isn't a sustainable growth strategy.
The most successful waitlists don't try to appeal to everyone – they laser-focus on one specific type of person with one specific set of challenges. This isn't about limiting your market; it's about creating a message so relevant that your ideal customers can't help but pay attention.
Take the example from the transcript: instead of targeting "all entrepreneurs" or "people with business ideas," the focus narrows dramatically to "women with tech ideas who don't know how to get started." This level of specificity took over a year to nail down, but it creates an immediate connection with the right audience.
When someone in that exact situation reads this messaging, they think, "This is made for me." That's the reaction you want – not "This might be relevant" but "This is exactly what I need."
Finding your ideal customer profile isn't a quick process. It requires:
Remember: you can always expand your audience later, but starting too broad means your message resonates with no one.
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Having a specific audience is only half the battle. You also need to solve a problem that's genuinely painful for that group – something they're actively struggling with and would pay to fix.
Using the same example, the problem isn't just "starting a business is hard." It's much more specific: "I have a tech idea but don't know the steps to get started, and I'm worried about missing something important that could derail my entire venture."
The solution addresses this directly: a personalized roadmap tailored to each startup idea that guides founders through every essential step, from identifying their ICP to setting up their EIN. It's concrete, specific, and directly addresses the fear of missing critical steps.
Before you finalize your waitlist messaging, ask yourself:
If you can't answer "yes" to all of these, you need to dig deeper into your audience's real challenges.
Successful waitlist copy follows a simple but powerful formula:
Instead of "Brand Name - Coming Soon," your waitlist should immediately communicate:
Once you have clear messaging, you need to get it in front of people who don't already know you. This means:
The goal is reaching people who've never heard of you but immediately recognize themselves in your messaging.
Generic waitlists are a waste of your time and energy. Your product deserves better than signups from people who already know and love you. It deserves to reach the people who genuinely need what you're building.
Start by getting crystal clear on these two fundamentals: who you're serving and what painful problem you're solving for them. Everything else – your messaging, your marketing, your product development – should flow from this foundation.
Ready to build a waitlist that actually converts? Take the next hour to define your ideal customer profile and the specific pain point your solution addresses. Then rewrite your waitlist copy to speak directly to that person about that problem.
The difference in your signup rates will speak for itself.
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