In this post, I will show you how I accomplished my first successful launch on Product Hunt.
So far, I was getting most of my online sales through SEO.
By creating content pieces and hoping they will generate leads and sales over the long run. While this is a great long-term strategy, it is not the best strategy for testing out ideas.
For example, when creating a new product, it would need weeks or months until it reaches a high position in Google’s Search Results.
With launches, on the other hand, you can quickly build momentum and get feedback from day one.
Launching on Product Hunt
Most marketers would agree that Product Hunt is the best platform for launching new digital products. It is a website where new products are presented every day.
People can upvote products they like and (put simply) the more upvotes you get within 24 hours, the more people will see your product. This makes it a good place for testing new ideas or products and generating the first couple of sales.
But in the past, all my product launches on Product Hunt failed. Most of the time I couldn’t even collect more than 10 upvotes, while the successful products of other creators accumulated several hundred upvotes on their launch days.
That was pretty frustrating, but I’ve watched creators like Pascio who seemed to be perfecting the art of launching in 2022. Within some months Pascio became one of the most successful creators in the Notion space, not by relying on SEO or evergreen content, but by doing launches almost every week.
Planning my new launch on Product Hunt
So, I reached out to Pascio at the end of last year and asked him for launch consulting. Instead, he referred me to his ebook “The Ultimate Product Launch Guide” where he promised to reveal all of his tested launch strategies.
I purchased his book immediately. Last weekend – when launching the SEO Bundle for Notion on Product Hunt – I followed his instructions meticulously.
in the following section, I will give you a short overview of his launching philosophy.
1. Launching on Weekends
When I did my first launches on Product Hunt one year ago, I naively launched during the week because “most social media users are active during the working days”. However, on those days your product will compete against professional teams with a marketing department who easily get 1.000 upvotes or more. For somebody with a small following, it’s almost impossible to make a dent on those days.
2. Create a Preparation Post on Twitter
“Two days in advance of your scheduled launch date, you need to announce to your Twitter audience that you’re launching.” This is the post I created for my launch preparation according to Pascio’s guidelines.
ANNOUNCEMENT
I'm launching SEO Bundle on @ProductHunt on Sunday
3 of my best SEO products for Notion in one package
I'm hoping for all the support I can get, but I don't want to invade your privacy
If I can DM you the launch link tomorrow, drop a reply below to let me know pic.twitter.com/UoRgkLY769
— Philipp Stelzel 🚀 More productive with Notion (@dePAKES) January 20, 2023
3. Reach out to your tribe
For this strategy, it helps to have a strong Twitter account, because on launch day, you will mostly reach out to people who have reacted to your preparation tweet.
On launch day, you write another tweet (prepare it the day before and schedule it for 12:01 AM PT to). This post should link to your Product Hunt Post. Now when you reach out to the people you have collected in the days before, guide them to this post. This is important because if you copy and paste an outgoing link in your DMs, Twitter will flag your account as spam, but this doesn’t happen if you are redirecting them to a Twitter post. Plus, if the post is going viral, you will also get a lot of organic traffic to your Product Hunt Listing from Twitter.
In the guide, Pascio shares also some more outreach strategies. He also includes tons of templates for tweets, DMs, and the Product Hunt listing you have to write.
👉👉👉 Get The Ultimate Product Launch Guide.
How did my latest Product Hunt Launch perform?
The result was eye-opening:
In total, my launch generated 145 upvotes, which resulted in a final ranking of 6th place. Before, my creations have never ranked among the top 10 products of the day on Product Hunt.
Last weekend, I could have ranked higher but on the same day, Pascio decided to launch 2 products himself, which meant ultra-high competition for the top rankings.
For me, this was a test that pleasantly surprised me. I will certainly try to repeat this soon with a new product. And if you are thinking about launching something yourself on Product Hunt, I can now absolutely recommend Pascio’s guide:
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