You just made a cool shiny new product that could change the world
Yes, thatâs right⌠could. You canât very well bring forth change if no one knows who you are or what your cool new thing is. Product Hunt is an excellent way to shout about it. If you get to the top spot for a day, or even the top three, it gives you and the thing you made a juicy and valuable boost.
The front page of Product Hunt at the time of writing â lots of cool, useful, little things. And ButtssssssâŚ?
A Consent Manager was number 2 a couple of months ago â it gave us a nice growth spurt but it wouldnât have happened if we didnât follow these steps.
STEP 1: create an âupcomingâ page
This is vitally important â what an upcoming page does is let people on Product Hunt know that you have something burning and it will be launched soon. When we created an upcoming page, we were nowhere near done with the Consent Manager. But it meant that by the time we got to launch, we already had over a hundred subscribers who were interested in what we were doing.
An upcoming page should be done at least 2-3 months before you plan to launch. In that time you can also learn how Product Hunt works. Browse regularly, upvote things, comment on things, follow people who find interesting, etc. This counts for everyone involved in the making of this product.
This is stuff that you need to do before Product Hunt will let you list a product anyway. But also, you need to see and understand the space; what sort of things do people on Product Hunt like, and what gets ignored? Is there anything like your product already? If yes, and itâs popular, thatâs a good thing.
STEP 2: get your messaging ready
Right so youâve been on Product Hunt for a while now and you sort of seen how it works. You hopefully have a fair few people subscribed to your upcoming page. As mentioned, nothing will happen if no one knows who you are. Someone could solve world hunger but have a really crappy marketing campaign â a solution is not a solution if itâs a secret.
You need to scour the length and breadth of your network, and make sure youâre ready to let them know about your product on the day of launch. Remember: some people might not even be on Product Hunt, let alone know what it is (especially if youâre in Europe where Product Hunt is less well known). Getting the messaging right is key.
Depending on who you are, your network could consist of a mixture of friends, investors, colleagues, social media followers, and, if you did step 1 correctly, subscribers. Do not alert people in advance â do it on the day if you actually want them to upvote your product. Youâll have a lot people to message so get everything ready in advance
đ Build a list of people to email and **prepare emails that are friendly and personal. People are already flooded with emails as it is. Do not set up an official-looking email campaign full of cool graphics and banners. Those are the easiest to ignore, and they are lame. Just a normal plain text email is best. And keep it short â your backstory is not important right now.
đđťââď¸ Find the right Slack channels. Do not spam any old thing. If youâre not part of any channels, do not despair, because community finders exist. Getting the tone right in Slack is important: talk like youâre solving a problem (because you are), not like youâre simply trying to make up the numbers.
Someone could solve world hunger but have a really crappy marketing campaign â a solution is not a solution if it's a secret.
𤊠If youâre telling your friends about this let them know early, because Product Hunt values the upvote of users who have been active for a few months over the upvote of someone who just signed up that day.
đš Bonus: Hunt a hunter. This is entirely optional. Many guides will say that you need to do this in order to launch â incorrect. You can be your own hunter. Itâs a very standard way of doing it.
If while browsing you did come across someone who you think would hunt your product, go ahead and approach them. What a hunter does is post your product on your behalf. So you need to work closely with them to make sure they have everything they need (outlined in next steps) in time for launch day.
đŁ Get the messaging right. Remember, all youâre doing is letting people know youâve made something cool. Youâre only asking them to click one button behind a link. Keep it short and sweet, like âjust letting you know weâve launched [product] on Product Hunt and was wondering if you could give us an upvote?â. That is how the majority of your emails should sound. No frills at all.
STEP 3: Build assets and clear your calendar
By now youâve hopefully built up a bit of a following, and youâre ready with a fat list of people to message asking for an upvote. You now need to make some final preparations. Thereâs two bits to this.
Getting your product details and landing page together
Remember Product Hunt is best for launching singular and easy-to-understand products, not an entire company. So having a landing page that quickly and concisely explains your product is a good idea đ. For our Consent Manager, we made this. It shows how the product works and letâs people sign up to start using it. Something like this under âwebsiteâ is better than your actual website.
The landing page for the Consent Manager â still useful to this day.
Depending on who you are and what kind of product youâre launching, the various details you need to get together for the launch will be different. But, here are some tips about certain elements:
- Title: donât be too precious about it⌠our âtitleâ on Product Hunt was âthe end of cookie bannersâ. Thatâs because no one knows what a âConsent Managerâ is yet, really. And remember: this is a product launch; putting your company name as the title is not a good idea.
- Description: be prepared to keep it short â there is a 250 character limit
- Media: 3-4 bits of media is good, and preferably a mixture of things. Still images are great but a GIF might illustrate the benefits of your product more effectively. Little explainer videos are also good for people who donât like reading.
- Product thumbnail: đ make đ it đ animated. Otherwise thereâs no point. Just⌠just trust me.
- First comment: As the hunter, take your time to write a really good initial comment. Outline the problem your product solves and why itâs the best at solving it. And, most importantly, use plain English.
Clear your calendar
If all goes well on launch day, you will be flooded with comments, questions, and probably bug reports. Launch day is not a normal work day. Either you or a dedicated team need to be prepared to talk to a lot of people. Have some way for people to reach you, be it email, Twitter, or a live chat thing like Intercom.
STEP 4: Actually launch it
You should now have:
- A heap of people who will upvote your deliciously innovative product
- A concise and exciting-sounding description
- Assets that are consistent with your brand (even if your brand is a bunch of rubbish scribbles, consistency is key), including a simple landing page
- (Optional) a Hunter who is not you
- A bucket of hope and another bucket of optimism
Yikes I guess that means you are ready to launch đ. How to handle launch day:
Timings
Launch a product when youâre audience is awake, online, and hungry for new things. No one can be bothered to pave the way for innovation on a Friday. No one is awake on a Monday. Midweek is best, like a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Time of day is also important. Product Hunt will keep products listed under âtodayâ for 24 hours, starting from 00:00 PST, which is 8am UK time. Scheduling your launch for this time is how you ensure itâs on the front page for the longest time, and therefore reaches the widest possible audience.
Getting to the front page is the important thing
Itâs 08.01am and the upvotes have begun â if you donât get upvoted to the top ten in these first couple of hours, you wonât be on the front page, and you will not gather those crucial organic upvotes. Itâs time to send out all the drafts you wrote in step 2: email every subscriber (Product Hunt allows you to do that), blast every Slack channel, and just bother anyone else you can think of.
âď¸âď¸ IMPORTANT: do not link people with a direct link to your product hunt listing, e.g. like this
Just link people to the Product Hunt homepage and let them find your product themselves. They will find it easily, because it should be on the homepage under âtodayâ. Direct links to your listing followed by an upvote are much less likely to get you to the top. The algorithm prioritises upvotes that look organic. We learned this the hard way â for most of our launch day we had more upvotes but remained in the number 2 spot throughout.
Customer support and feedback
This is why you cleared your calendar. You will get all kinds of things coming at you including but not limited to:
âI really like this product thank you and well doneâ: a great comment, everyone loves these. It is a very good idea to respond to all of these with a thank you and a smile. Especially if these are direct comments on the Product Hunt page
âIâm using it and itâs not working, uh ohâ: you know youâre own product better than anyone else â jump on helping new users straight away so people know that you are taking this seriously. Itâs also possible that they found a bug for you which is great
âThis is a cool product but it could do with these featuresâ: respond with a thank you, write down the feature, ask them for their contact details so you can notify them when the new feature is ready (if you feel the new feature is worth implementing).
âI actually think this is a bad product for the following reasons,â: this is one of the best kinds of comment you can get because itâs an opportunity to learn. Do not be defensive. Thank them for their feedback and even engage in some discussion. Most people are trying to be constructive.
âI donât see the point in this product [no further detail]â: comments which donât offer anything constructive are actually very rare, but we saw a couple. Best thing is to ignore them. The last thing you want is an argumentâŚ
The absolute rollercoaster of launch day â it could happen to you
Phew, you did it đĽł
Chances are youâve made something exciting and new, and people will actually be interested in engaging with it. The most important thing to remember about a good Product Hunt launch is that no matter how good your product actually is, relying on organic upvotes alone simply will not cut it â that is the reality of the saturated platform. If you roll your sleeves up and follow the above steps, youâll very likely get into the top 3. Enjoy the growth đł
Georgia Iacovou
Content Writer