Before the cold start, the first thing to do is to polish the product, ensuring that the product has a relatively complete Onboarding (user guidance) process, allowing end users to get hands-on experience with the product through a Self-Serve (self-use) method.
It is particularly important to note that the product should preferably have a corresponding free mode, such as Freemium or Free Trial, which can help you successfully convert and retain the traffic and users given by Product Hunt.
Regarding the timing of the product release on Product Hunt, a special note here: use Product Hunt as a channel to obtain a large number of users in the market after internal testing, not as a channel to obtain early internal testing users. Therefore, before launching the product, remember to first conduct small-scale testing, that is, the polishing of the Alpha version, and then launch the Beta version to achieve a wider range of user testing with Product Hunt.
In the early beta testing process, it is very important to establish a user community for the product in advance. For instance, you can find the earliest users interested in your product through social media such as Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook, then consolidate them into communities like Slack, Discord, and Messenger, and build relationships with them ahead of time. After you launch your product on Product Hunt, these users will give you the earliest endorsements and comments, helping you establish a leading advantage.
When you decide to launch a product on Product Hunt, as early as possible, get every member of your team (or mobilize your relatives and friends if you're just a solo developer) to create an account and actively participate in community activities. This will help increase the weight of your account and ultimately help your product achieve good results. At the same time, you can form good relationships with these early users in the Product Hunt community, helping the product to continuously iterate and optimize.
It is recommended to prepare at least 3 months in advance. This will help you get to know and familiarize yourself with the operating rules of the whole community and have plenty of supporters. Since the Product Hunt algorithm assigns different weights to different users, these people will play a crucial role in the voting and ranking of your product after it goes live. For a detailed introduction to weight, you can continue to read below.
The next thing to clarify is what the launch goal is. For example, do you want to gain new users? Product exposure? Media exposure? Or attract investors, etc. Then, set different Metrics (indicators) according to different goals, such as the number of Upvotes, comments, visits, and downloads, etc. A core point here is: set a quantifiable goal. Once you have set a goal and related quantitative indicators, you can start preparing promotional materials.
In terms of preparing materials, a practical tool called Preview Hunt (https://previewhunt.com/) is recommended. It can help you build a preview version of the release page, and you can also download all kinds of materials needed for release with one click, helping you prepare for the release.
Note: This Mock function is not very accurate, as some image sizes do not correspond well, and the word limit seems not to be completely accurate.
Next, let's take a look at the materials needed for release:
The above is the list of all the content that needs to be prepared. Next, let's pick some core parts to focus on.
For the posts you publish, the two most important optimization targets are likes and product official website click-through rate. The three main contents of your post presented on the homepage are thumbnail (you can use GIF format to attract attention while presenting more information), product name and tagline. These three are the key factors that attract users to click into your post.
Here are some small tips for the tagline, generally speaking, about 6 words is the optimal length, you only need to describe the core value of the product. You can also select five different topic tags for the product, which can more accurately push to the corresponding audience and be presented in search results.
In terms of the content on the specific product release page, what users see at first glance is your product image or video, so these two materials need to be carefully prepared. This determines whether users are willing to further understand the product.
Here, it is strongly recommended to put up an introduction or related Demo video of your product, which can help users discover the value of the product more clearly at the first time. You can use video recording tools like Loom or Tella to make relevant videos. The order of different pictures is also a detail that needs attention because your first picture will be used for preview cards on social media such as Twitter and Facebook, so you should choose the most representative and beautiful picture.
Next, in the description, you can list the unique features of your product in a concise language, who your target users are, how you help them solve problems, and end with a CTA (Call-To-Action), inviting users to actively comment and give their suggestions. More comments will also help your product gain higher weight, thereby gaining more exposure and recommendations.
【Note】Pay special attention not to directly tell users to vote for you, this is strictly prohibited by the official, because it is suspected of ballot stuffing, which may affect the weight of the product and even be removed from the shelves.
In terms of discount plans, this is a very popular attraction method in the community, which can help you attract more community users to participate, thereby increasing click-through and registration rates. It can also help the product to do a good user layering and gather a group of hardcore users.
The discount method can be a free trial for a period of time, or a percentage discount and cash discount, etc. Users can see the corresponding discount content on the left side of your product details page, click to copy the exclusive discount code.
Finally comes the first comment from the Maker, where you can briefly introduce who you are, what your team is like, and why this product was born. The most important thing here is to tell a compelling and convincing story, mainly from the following perspectives:
In addition to text content, you can also add some images, videos, and Emoji expressions. For example, when listing core features or key points, you can use fun expressions instead of numbers like 1, 2, 3.
In terms of overall tone, it's best to approach it from the user's perspective, using a humble, sincere, and approachable tone. Describe the product in simple language and highlight the target audience for the product.
The following image is an official sample for your reference.
After preparing these key materials, let's see what preheating preparations can be made before release.
The first is to let each team member update their personal homepage, because after you release the product, there will be more community members visiting your personal homepage to understand your team members. A good personal homepage can endorse the product and also bring you more followers, thus enhancing your personal weight.
Another very important point is: before the release, you can create a landing page for the upcoming product on Product Hunt, which can help you announce in advance and collect the emails of potential interested users, helping you build a Mailing List. This way, you can get enough traffic and votes immediately after the product is officially released through the Mailing List group mail method, keeping the leading position.
For example, the product Gamma, before the official release, has already created a landing page and has over 5000 subscriptions, which has also laid the foundation for them to get the first of the day and the first of the month in advance.
Everyone can use the official Product Hunt toolkit, Ship, to build a landing page. It will automatically recommend corresponding landing page templates based on different demand goals. After simple information input and content modification, a landing page can be launched. Moreover, the landing page launched through Ship has the opportunity to be selected for the Upcoming products column. Once selected, it can bring you early exposure and attention, thus occupying a favorable position when actually launched.
Don't start by posting products, you can be active on ProductHunt first. ProductHunt Discussion is a community for everyone to discuss, so it can be quite casual. In fact, many active friends in ProductHunt also have products they want to promote, so as long as you interact with others, they are willing to support you.
For example: After you post a discussion about your product, a big brother will come over to praise you, and then ask you to vote for his release. After you vote for him, when you release a product, ask him to vote for you. Isn't this interaction up!
You can create some Product Hunt Collections in advance, where you can include some products that complement your product, such as a collection of marketing tools, development tools, and sales tools. After your product is launched, you can add it to these collections to gain more exposure.
Indie123