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Reaching the coveted #1 Product of the Day, or should you do a actually distinctive job, #1 Product of the Week or Month, is all about nailing the fundamentals.
I do know that’s a boring reply however hear me out…
I’ve launched on Product Hunt a number of occasions. SavvyCal (#2 Product of the Month) and Swipe Information (#2 Product of the Day) most lately, however there have been just a few others prior to now.
Plus, many others have used my recommendation to launch to #1 of the day like Reform and Potion.
And there’s no secret. There is no such thing as a magic progress hack. There is no such thing as a silver bullet.
Attending to #1 Product of the Day will not be a couple of fancy technique. It’s all about execution.
Luckily for you, most individuals are horrible at executing a half-decent launch plan.
YOU CAN GET TO #1.
I’ll present you the playbook.
However first, some don’ts:
❌ Purchase upvotes
❌ Ask for upvotes on social media
❌ Criticize different launches in your day
❌ Spam / chilly outreach
❌ Have individuals create accounts to upvote you day of
❌ Get individuals to create second accounts
❌ Try and sport the system/algorithm
❌ Launch on Product Hunt the day after you announce one thing
❌ Launch on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday
This checklist alone will assist you carry out a lot better on Product Hunt.
Avoiding shady ways must be pretty apparent, however the final two are particularly necessary.
For no matter motive, I’ve observed that some individuals launch on Product Hunt the day after they make an enormous announcement or official launch. Why? I do not know. However the outcomes are by no means good. They’ve already used up all their social capital and the excitement is gone.
As a rule of thumb, I additionally usually advocate avoiding Mondays, when everybody launches, and weekends, when site visitors is far decrease and it’s tougher to get individuals’s consideration.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are a lot better days to launch.
Now, let’s get into the very best practices.
That is merely the results of reverse-engineering what’s labored for different corporations prior to now, plus some trial and error of my very own.
You may look by years and years of previous launches and see the place every put up ranked for the day after which examine what they did to get there.
We studied Product Hunt. I checked out what apps have been the highest ones of the day, prime ones of the week. What was their method and the way did that differ from among the different merchandise? What did they try this assist them stand out?
— Andy Cabasso of Postaga (#1 on 05/19/20)
What you’ll discover is that there are two distinct phases to the technique: earlier than launch day and launch day.
Right here’s an overview of what we’ll cowl:
Earlier than launch day
- Optimize your touchdown web page and onboarding circulation
- Discover a hunter
- Put together your put up media, copy, & supply
- Announce you’ll be on PH
- Schedule to put up at 12:01am PT
- Publication & social put up promo at 12:02am PT
Launch day
- Construct early momentum instantly after posting
- DM/electronic mail your community & communities
- Publish 3–4 further posts/newsletters all through the day
- Add PH badge to your web site and social profiles
- Reply to and upvote feedback
- DM PH Twitter
Opposite to standard perception, Product Hunt shouldn’t be your first advertising and marketing effort.
You have to have already got an viewers that may amplify you.
This’ll make much more sense as we get to launch-day methods however the essence is that Product Hunt positions are largely gained inside the first hour. To take action, you’ll want a military of supporters from social media and an electronic mail checklist.
As an alternative of utilizing Product Hunt to get your first clients, use it to achieve the plenty.
Consider it because the crescendo of your launch — the ultimate push that accelerates you into escape velocity.
By delaying your Product Hunt launch till later in your product journey, you might be way more assured that you may truly convert site visitors into clients.
What’s the purpose should you get #1 of the day, however your touchdown web page is poorly constructed and also you don’t get many new signups?
That’s the very last thing you wish to occur.
Earlier than we launched SavvyCal, we made some main updates to the touchdown web page copy and a few customizations for Product Hunters (solely above the fold proven right here) that tripled the customer to signup conversion price.
We additionally knew that signups have been changing into clients for the reason that trial conversion price was hovering above 50%. Time to amp it up!
Check your onboarding circulation and ensure individuals can truly efficiently use the product.
The very last thing you need is to be troubleshooting bugs or fixing damaged flows whereas launching.
Now, to discover a hunter.
A hunter is somebody who posts in your behalf and is listed as a “Hunter” within the put up.
This web site has an entire bunch of distinguished hunters.
Hunters was much more necessary as a result of Product Hunt would ship a notification to all their followers.
That also occurs, however it’s a lot much less efficient today.
Now, consider it extra as influencer advertising and marketing.
Discover somebody with overlap in your business and who brings some credibility. They don’t even should be a “hunter” per se. That web site has a listing of oldsters who’ve been recognized to hunt prior to now, however when you’ve got a distinguished investor, good friend, or influencer that you just’d wish to leverage for his or her viewers, go for it.
Even then, you don’t want a hunter. You may hunt it your self. However a hunter is unquestionably a bonus.
I sometimes hunt merchandise myself. DM me on Twitter if you would like me hunt for you.
When you’ve recruited a hunter or determined to hunt it your self, it’s time to start getting ready your put up.
Preview Hunt is a free web site that lets you check out your put up.
Since updating their UI, it’s not a precise match anymore. However nonetheless useful when placing the whole lot collectively so as to confidently ship off all of your put up property to the hunter.
Consider your Product Hunt put up identical to you’d your touchdown web page. You wish to optimize it to transform into two issues:
- Upvotes
- Visits to your web site
The thumbnail, identify, and tagline are what guests will see after they’re scrolling the entrance web page of the positioning, so it’s completely important that you just draw guests into clicking in your put up.
You may select as much as 5 product classes relevant to your posting. That is principally for Product Hunt to assist group you with related merchandise and opponents, and to return up in search outcomes.
I at all times advocate importing a video walkthrough along with excessive constancy, annotated screenshots.
I exploit and extremely advocate Tella for creating these sorts of product demos.
The video must be now not than 2 minutes lengthy and may introduce the founder, the foremost product differentiators, and clear, seamless transitions between pages.
The pictures are completely essential to indicate off your product.
Guests will spare just some seconds to make a judgment of your put up primarily primarily based on scrolling by your product imagery. Add at the least two photos at a minimal .
The order is necessary. The primary picture can be used as a preview card on Twitter, Fb, and so forth, so give additional effort to it.
Preview Hunt will assist you crop your footage to a most well-liked ratio after importing.
You can too add a brief description beneath the photographs. It’s very brief and must be straight to the purpose about what your product does.
Consider it as an prolonged tagline.
And when you’ve got a coupon code to supply, the outline is a good place to supply it because it’s excessive up on the web page.
Subsequent up is the primary remark.
Make it personable, detailed, and simple to learn.
That is your elevator pitch. Speak concerning the origin story and the tremendous distilled model of why individuals ought to test it out.
Take into consideration the PR headline.
Should you do have a hunter, package deal up all of your property for them in a Google Drive folder or Notion web page.
Now we begin attending to the enjoyable stuff.
Within the outdated days, you didn’t discuss the way you have been planning on launching on Product Hunt for worry that another person would hunt you forward of schedule and screw up your plans.
Lately, the Product Hunt crew is exceptionally gracious about launching once you wish to and delisting if that have been to occur.
So there’s nothing to worry! Which suggests that you may construct up some hype forward of time to verify your viewers is anticipating your launch.
Should you’re actually crafty, you should use your upcoming Product Hunt launch as a method to get extra customers earlier than an entire bunch extra join and exploit a scarce useful resource like a username.
Right here we go.
Learn rigorously as a result of that is a very powerful half.
Everyone seems to be at all times skeptical once I inform them that that is a very powerful tip of all.
However after they do it, it clicks.
Be sure that to schedule your put up to go reside proper at 12:01am PST, as quickly because the clock resets and a brand new day begins for posts.
Then, advertise IMMEDIATELY as soon as it’s reside.
Keep up late. Schedule it. Pull an all-nighter. No matter it is advisable to do.
However please hear me: Drive site visitors to your put up instantly after posting so you can begin constructing upvote momentum.
You wish to get 30–100 upvotes inside the first hour of posting.
One of the simplest ways to do that is to put up on social media asking for “help” and to ship out an electronic mail (sure, at midnight PST) to your viewers. Ship it to your private checklist, your person checklist, your mother, your folks… everybody.
Bear in mind, Product Hunt has a world viewers.
Midnight PST is 8am within the UK, so that they’re simply beginning their workday, and 5pm in Australia, so that they’re simply wrapping up their workday.
Right here’s what we despatched out for SavvyCal:
So why am I placing a lot emphasis on selling at midnight?
💡 The highest 5 positions are gained and misplaced between 12:01–1:00am.
Take the #1 place by constructing upvotes instantly after midnight → guests come to the positioning and click on on the #1 place → a proportion of these upvote → #1 place stays #1 by getting upvotes from random guests.
It’s a virtuous cycle.
The Product Hunt entrance web page is just like the entrance web page of Google. The highest 3 positions take the lion share of the site visitors. However in contrast to Google, you’re not on the mercy of an opaque algorithm to get to the highest of the web page.
If, for no matter motive, your put up isn’t exhibiting on the entrance web page, DM the Product Hunt crew to ask to be featured.
I often DM them regardless simply to verify I’m seeing the identical factor as everybody else.
Product Hunt nonetheless does an excellent quantity of curation so that you wish to be sure you’re seen on the positioning.
This manner, they could even tweet about you as effectively. Later within the day, they often tweet about just a few of the top-ranking merchandise of the day.
When you construct that early momentum and safe a prime place, you simply should play protection the opposite 23 hours of the day.
Add a hyperlink to your private and company profiles to drive site visitors to the put up from of us who go by your profile.
Preserve momentum by persevering with to put up on social and even sending a further 1–2 emails.
Different concepts:
- Host a Twitter Area
- Livestream product demo
- Thread about what you’ve realized up to now
- Thread concerning the timeline
- Thread about the way you’ve constructed the product
- Thread about methods clients use the product
Add Product Hunt badges to your web site.
If somebody doesn’t upvote after which involves the positioning, that is your likelihood to transform them into an upvote.
Additionally, anybody who didn’t come from Product Hunt can now additionally provide you with an upvote.
Upvote and reply to each remark.
I’ve no information to show this however I’m 99% positive that feedback affect the rating algorithm because it creates extra exercise to attract individuals to the Product Hunt put up.
You can too put up or ask pals to put up in different communities for you.
DM/electronic mail pals to:
- Upvote
- Go away a remark/evaluation
- Like/remark/RT
Put up in:
- Fb teams
- Slack teams
- Circle teams
- Indie Hackers
- Entrepreneur teams
You actually wish to be spending your complete day devoted to selling your Product Hunt put up.
Hustle. Scrape and claw for each single upvote.
All of those seemingly insignificant ways add up. The distinction between ending #1 and #2 might be just some upvotes.
You don’t wish to lose steam late within the day solely to have your #1 spot stripped away on the eleventh hour (actually).
SavvyCal had the #1 place all day till about 11pm PST through which one other put up overtook us. We realized that lesson the arduous method!
Should you’re actually fortunate, you may even get featured within the Product Hunt publication the following day.
This article characteristic despatched 3x extra site visitors to SavvyCal than the precise web site posting itself.
Put up-launch:
- Thank your supporters for serving to out
- Add your Product Hunt badge to your footer for social proof
- Hyperlink to your Product Hunt put up in automated emails for continued upvotes
To recap…
- Nail the basics of the put up
- Construct early momentum as quickly as you launch
The remaining will care for itself.
Product Hunt has the potential to be an inflection level to your MRR progress.
Don’t take it without any consideration!
You can too take heed to a podcast interview I did for Artistic Parts and watch this workshop I recorded.
For extra tactical SaaS advertising and marketing recommendation and a group of founders & entrepreneurs to study from, take into account turning into a Swipe Information member.
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