Ask HN: How would you market a new product launch?

I know there are plenty of successful entrepreneurs who reads this site so I want to pick HN's collective brains on this. What are the steps you take to ensure a successful product launch?

A little background. We are days away from launching www.cardmunch.com, a dead-simple way to transcribe business cards on mobile device with unbelievable accuracy(launch pending AppStore approval). Until recently most of our efforts has gone into building the product over launch marketing. Now I find that being small and new really work against you when trying to get the attention of the big blogs.

Would you mind sharing some of your product launch strategies / experiences? There seem to be so much that you can do to market a new product. In your opinion, which approach is worth the time and effort and how would you prioritize it over other approaches? What are some of the time sink that I should definitely avoid? And any out-of-the-box ideas that ended up working out really well for you?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

P.s. If any HN readers has a pile of business cards that they would like to get the contacts right on their phone, shoot me an email at bowei@cardmunch.com. I'd be happy to give you a sneak peek of what are we doing.