All good things take time and this couldn’t be more accurate for launching a product. Strategizing is the most important part of launching a product, except for having a Product Hunt account. So, you can’t wake up one day and decide to launch a product on the same day. Well, you couldn’t even if you wanted to.
Why Start Before You Launch?
Let’s go over it from the beginning. You don’t need to have a product to create an account, but you definitely need an account to launch a product. This means that you can create an account to get the latest app software and keep yourself in the loop; launching a product is not a requirement. However, if you want to launch a product, then you need to create an account to hunt the product or to be added as a maker.
So, you sign up and fill in your information for your profile. Create a ‘personal’ account since brands or companies cannot have an account. The next step is to validate your account by the way of email confirmation. So far, so good. Now that you have an account, you can check out featured products, jobs, discussions, and upcoming product launches.
How Do You Make the Most of Product Hunt?
1. Onboarding Process
If you want to hunt for a product, you will have to wait for a week. Product Hunt has an onboarding process, and only after that can you post a product on the platform. If you cannot submit a post even after the week, then you should get in touch with Product Hunt’s Customer Support to straighten things out.
Read More: 6 Best Practices: Your Ultimate Guide to SaaS Customer Onboarding
2. Product Launch
You can only hunt (post) the product once. You do not get do-overs. To make the most of your launch, strategize your launch and marketing. There are several fields you will need to fill out when launching your product, like the description, topics, gallery, etc. So do not be afraid to take your time to get everything proper and in order. All your elements, content, and visuals, will have to be the best to bring in upvotes and customers.
Read More: Checklist for Launching a New Software on Product Hunt
3. Hunting a Product
A few points before we get started on this:
- A maker is someone who built or helped build the product in some capacity.
- A hunter is someone who posts the product on the Product Hunt platform.
- And hunting a product is to post it on the platform.
Now the thing is that you don’t need to be someone who helped build the product to be a hunter. So you can have someone else post the product for you. You can reach out to popular or influential hunters and ask them to post your product. The advantage of this is that all the hunters’ followers will check out the product. A disadvantage would be that you will have to give up some control over the product’s launch.
If you end up hunting your project yourself, you can have complete control over how the product launch does. Granted that this method will take a lot of effort in marketing and engagement creation to present the product. But, no one knows the product like the person who built it. You can explain the product and its function better than anyone else, moreover, you get to control conversion from the get-go.
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4. Videos in The Gallery
Adding videos is a great way to highlight the product’s functionalities and the value it brings. A plus point is that Product Hunt supports YouTube videos (so long as you do not set them to private). Remember that any video that you might add will be the first element in the gallery. This means that the first thing users will see in the gallery will be the video. So make sure that the video has high value and does justice to you and your product.
Read More: What is Activation Rate & 5 Strategies to Improve SaaS Activation Rate
5. Interact with Others
You can start interacting as soon as you get your profile set up. The platform works on the up-vote system, quite similar to Reddit or Quora. The only way a product performs well is if it gets a lot of up-votes. Now you could make an account and go about planning your launch, but that will do very little for your product.
The tick to Product Hunt, like any other community-based platform, is engagement. With the Product Hunt platform, you already have an audience that is actively looking for your product or something similar. Thus, it will be easier to build a community around your product compared to other platforms. And the best way to create a community is to engage.
Leave comments on other posts, upvote products, create a newsletter or respond to comments that other users leave on your posts. Like any other media platform, it is important to have a strong presence before you decide to launch a product.
Build up a community and an audience around you and your product. This will pay off when you launch your product because you will already have an audience that will want to check out your product as soon as it drops. You can create anticipation with the right mix of marketing and interaction.
Read More: 10 SaaS Growth Strategies to Try in 2022
6. Scheduling Your Launch
When you are creating your product launch on Product Hunt, you will have two options:
- Launch Now
- Schedule Launch
If you select Launch Now, your product will go live that instant. If you select Schedule Launch, you can select the date and time of the launch. The thing with the option Schedule Launch is that you will only be able to select a date within 14 days of the current date. There is no option to launch after 14 days.
If you decide to schedule your launch on the 1 of April. Y can select a date and time by the 14th of April. If you decide to schedule a launch on the 2nd of April, you can select a date and time by the 15th of April.
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7. Timing is Everything
The Product Hunt platform follows the PST timeline and does not adjust for local time. Plus, you can launch your product at 12:01 AM, since the new day starts then. Product Hunt releases a newsletter every day that contains the top 5 products from the previous day. Product Hunt stops the cycle at 11:00 AM PST for featuring new uploads on the home page.
Now the longer your product is on the platform the day you launch it, the better chances it has to get upvotes. If you can get in the top 5, you get features on the homepage and in the newsletter which can boost your traffic significantly.
Read More: 10 SaaS Marketing Metrics You Should Absolutely Use
8. You Can Add a Status for Your Products
If you have a product that is still in the works, you can use the status option to let your audiences know. You can use it to let people know if the product is still in the beta phase or if you didn’t fully release the product’s functionalities.
Read More: 10 B2B & SaaS Email Marketing Tips That Work!
9. Everyone Loves a Good Offer
Promo codes and offers are a great way to get people to get your product. It’s a good incentive and can increase traffic to your website or increase download rates. Providing some sort of premium discounts or services for early adopters can do wonders for your traction and can get people to use your product.
Read More: 5 SaaS Pricing Models for a Balanced Revenue
10. Earn Honest Upvotes for Your Product
Asking for upvotes on Product Hunt is a big no-no. The most that you can ask for is feedback on your product. The Product Hunt team monitors all upvoting activity and they will flag down products that suddenly get a boost in upvotes from new accounts. If the Product Hunt team identifies bot activity or face accounts, then your upvotes will drastically go down. Product Hunt will not appreciate it if you try to game the platform. If you want your product to perform well, then you will have to adhere to guidelines laid out by Product Hunt.
Read More: How to generate more reviews for your (Software) SaaS business?