Are you planning a major product launch for this holiday shopping season? Maybe you are planning a product launch in general and you’re looking for a way to build up the buzz in anticipation of its release. What can you do? It’s not like you can go about and start selling something that may not necessarily exist yet, can you?

This is where you can can provide an added incentive to encourage buyers to buy something, even before they have the actual opportunity to buy it. The concept of a pre-order is nothing new when it comes to DVDs and video games, but it can easily be expanded into all sorts of other areas as well. This could be as small as a new book or as big as a new car. But how would you go about convincing someone to promise to buy something when they can’t have the product in hand right away?

Try offering a presale bonus of some kind. Going to the example of a new book, you could start to build some buzz online — through Facebook, a blog, Twitter, YouTube, and so on — by letting people add themselves to a pre-order mailing list or something similar. In doing so, they will be given the most up-to-date information regarding your book’s release and you gain a valuable contact for your email marketing list. As an incentive to the prospective buyer, you can send them the first chapter of your book in PDF form as a free bonus for signing up.

I remember reading somewhere that in anticipation of the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, GameStop was providing a free gift card with 500 Nintendo Points to anyone who pre-ordered and pre-paid for the game. These points could be spent in the Wii Shop or on Nintendo DSiWare. It’s a small bonus, only worth about $5, but it meant the difference between someone buying the game at GameStop and buying it elsewhere.

Presales are also great for generating positive cashflow, which can help with expenses related to marketing, accounting, legal fees, and so on, even before you have a product that is ready for sale.