A new product launch is never easy. Moreover, it's a headache for most founders and young entrepreneurs. A lot of questions revolve around a product launch. Like How to find the right audience? How do you find a large audience? What platform should we use? and many more.

If I say you can eliminate such challenges, they can be resolved on one platform. I am here with this post to walk you through Product Hunt. Here, we will learn how to use this platform the right way to launch your product and reach a suitable and large audience.

What is Product Hunt, and who should use it?

Product Hunt serves as a community-based website for users and founders. The website gives a stage for founders to launch their products and get feedback from the user community. Most of the creators use Product Hunt because the startups are taken very seriously here.

Product Hunt, if used properly, can bring you unexpected results. If I have to give you some examples, startups like Notion, Grammarly, Robinhood, and many more got their breakthrough from Product Hunt, and your venture can be next!!

As a founder, you can get honest and genuine feedback from the users who will be the first users of your product. One of the best things about Product Hunt is that no matter if you are putting your MVP or a product full of bugs. The community joins and will provide you with insightful feedback.

We are breaking it into three segments:

a. Pre-launch

b. During launch

c. Post-launch

We are going to take an in-depth look at all the steps in each of the above segments. So let's start with. 

Pre-launch preparations on Product Hunt

As an entrepreneur, your primary goal should be to create a product or service that solves a problem and meets the needs of your target market. Gaining a large user base, as well as attracting investors and media attention, will follow as a result of your success.

Tip: To maximize your success on Product Hunt, begin preparing from the day you start developing your product.

Start with setting up your profile on the platform and start engaging.

You need to create a profile on Product Hunt and establish a presence as a reliable and genuine founder/inventor. Below are some of the tips/pointers that you should keep in mind.

a. Create user profiles not just for the founders but also for team members who can assist with the product's reputation on Product Hunt.

b. Join the Makers Community by taking part in conversations, contributing insightful comments, and giving feedback on others' work.

c. Create a strong profile that highlights your background, knowledge, and personality. Include your bio, relevant social media connections, a professional photo, and a list of your accomplishments.

Well, this was just stage 1; now, the real challenge lies in the promotion of the product. Moreover, as we do know, pre-launch product promotion is something that companies spend millions on. Well, you don't have to spend millions here if you know the right way. Stay with me, follow the steps, and know. 

How to do pre-launch product promotion on Product Hunt?

The strategy of promoting your product on Product Hunt can take time but can be rewarding as well without spending a buck. The strategy lies in the brand trust, patience, and hype around the product. This can be achieved by engagement strategy. The pre-launch should start at least  30 days prior to the launch. 

You should be socially active and interact with the community to sell your product ideas. This will help to gain more followers, upvotes in your posts, and comments. This can be done as follows:

a. Before joining a community, make sure that the community has active users and that people are frequently engaging with posts. 

b. Tell stories that can catch the interest and engagement of your audience and give details about the creation of the product, achievements, and milestones.

c. Hence, it's thus far to motivate people, give promotions like discount vouchers, free trials, as well as referral schemes.

d. Moreover, you can also start building your own community over Linkedin, Discord, Newsletter, etc. 

Let me share some good insights. If your product gets listed of the first page, then you can expect a minimum of 2,000 unique visitors. Moreover, if you are successful in capturing the top position on the first page, you can get over 10,000 unique visitors and up to 1,000-3,000 genuine leads. 

And that's it; you can find articles that mention several pre-launch strategies. However, even if you follow the above-mentioned procedures, it'll give you a very good head start.

Now that you have noted the pre-launch steps, it's time to look at Tip:

a. Quality > Quantity

b. Set a real conversion goal, like capturing emails. Aim for a target of 1,000+ emails.

c. Optimize your website so that it can capture emails and onboard them.

d. Engage in communities like Indie Hackers and Startup schools to make a good presence. 

What to do on the product launch day?

Now it's time for the big day. There are some important things which you must keep in mind on the launch day. For instance, you can't set any big event on the same day. This is because you have to interact with the people commenting on your post. 

Keep the Product Hunt profile active all the time and answer every comment, review, and question. Additionally, keep an eye on the Launch Day Dashboard to see how many votes, reviews, and comments you have. You should also keep an eye on your startup metrics and numbers to see how you're doing.

Start spreading the word about your launch to your communities, alpha-beta users, co-workers, and connections.

Everything comes down to these two pointers: whether your product will get good engagement or not:

a. This is the day when you have to talk about your product, the time you have spent working on it, and the problem your product will solve. 

b. No matter how good the product is, people will only be interested in your venture if you're interested in theirs. 

Tips: Before launching. Moreover, the Product Hunt days start from 12:01 PST (Pacific Standard Time), so it's recommended to post and start engaging just after it. Most importantly, according to stats, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is considered to be the best time to launch. But it's not mandatory; everything depends upon your planning. 

Yeah, that's it; that's all that you have to do on the launch day. Be active and engage as much as you can. But the process doesn't end here. 

Tip: Having the right cover image and adding a product demo video can increase your conversion by 10-15%.

Now, it's time to boost the reach and engagement of the product. We will cover this in our last segment.

How to do post-product launch promotion?

Let's do the counting; you have nailed the pre-product launch, and you have successfully engaged with the audience during the product launch. Now, it's time to find a wider audience beyond Product Hunt. This is the time when your internet presence will come into play. 

Now, you'll start sharing your product launch on Product Hunt to different social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter or others. Remember one thing: once you share your link or write a short post about your product. Don't ask for upvotes; ask for genuine feedback. 

You can place a widget of your product on top of your company website. When someone lands on your website, he can be redirected to your Product Hunt profile and see your product by glancing at it from there. 

You can send a newsletter with the information and link to the product launch to your existing community members. These are some of the ways through which you can reach out to the audience outside of Product Hunt and those who don't yet know about your new product.

Finally, you can share the link with your colleagues, team, friends, and other connections. It will help you collect their feedback; moreover, they can initiate a good conversation in the section of comments as well. 

So after all this hustle and bustle plus hard work, now let’s have a look at:

The benefits of launching your product on Product Hunt

I've talked about several benefits of launching your Product Hunt earlier in the article, but the best is saved for the last. One of the features of Product Hunt is that if a product gets a good amount of upvotes and reviews, it is featured as the #1 Product Of the Day by Product Hunt.

Moreover, if you have successfully executed the three stages of your product launch, then there is a good chance that you can get the recognition of #1 Product of the Day. This tag can be featured anywhere: on your website, social media page, media coverage, newsletters, and many more. 

The best part is that there are many online publication that writes on the Product of the day. Your product can be featured on one of those website. Furthermore, you can also reach out to several publishing websites and feature your product as a guest post. 

Such steps can help you reach a wider and right audience for your product.

Now is the time to conclude this post, and lastly, let's take a look at:

Authors Verdict 

This article was the complete guide of do's and don'ts for the founders and higher authority to launch their product on Product Hunt. Keep this thing in mind: Every day, dozens of new products are launched on Product Hunt, which is why you need supporting text and pictures that stand out from the crowd. Avoid using jargon, cliched explanations, or subpar graphics. 

Lastly, preparation is the key. The process of launching on Product Hunt is not simple. You have little chance of success if you don't have a good strategy in place. So when are you planning to launch your next product?