If you have an application and want to launch in the international market, Product Hunt will be the first place you need to think about!
This is the first time I promote a technology product on Product Hunt. Our product is called SaveDay - a tool that helps you:
- Save multi-format information (photos, videos, messages, podcasts...)
- Search the information that has been saved by the way you think
- Summarize the main idea of YouTube Videos, newspapers, blogs... to help users have a wiser reading choice
What is Product Hunt? Why did we launch SaveDay on Product Hunt?
Product Hunt is a platform designed to facilitate the introduction of new applications.
This is a community of technology enthusiasts, individual investors/investment funds, influential people around the world.
The most common reasons that developers promote products on Product Hunt are:
- Approaching enthusiasts of technology products worldwide, with high levels of interaction
- Receiving feedback to improve the product
- Validating product ideas
- Collecting authentic feedbacks from real users
- Finding new users from visitors of Product Hunt
- Finding fund (venture capitalists/investment funds)
- Attracting free promotion opportunities from the press, celebrity,...
- Finding co-founder or talents
Promoting products on this platform and using it is completely free.
According to data from semrush, Product Hunt received an average of 900 thousand - 1 million monthly visitors, more than 50% of them from the United States and India - 2 markets with great development potential.
In conclusion, free and big traffic, why do we not promote on Product Hunt?
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How does Product Hunt work? What is called a successful launching for your product?
Join Product Hunt means that you will participate in a contest organized by Product Hunt.
You will determine the day you officially promote the product above, until that day, your product will display on the homepage, competing with other products to promote the same day.
There will be 3 awards: Products of the Day, Product of the Month and Product of the Year.
A successful launch means that your product can achieve at least one of the three awards.
However, the product with the highest number of upvotes will not be ranked higher.
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As can be seen, the product in 3rd place has more upvotes than products in 2nd place but is ranked lower, that is because the upvotes from "quality" Product Hunt users weigh more than upvote from new accounts or have low "quality".
Knowing this through the previous research, our team has built a strategy to receive support from more Product Hunt users with good "quality" as much as possible.
We can't bend the rules...
The journey to become "Product of the Day"
Many articles about launching on Product Hunt said we do not need planning and success depends largely on luck. I don't think so.
I am proud of our team and our product because this result does not depend on luck.
We prepared for the official launch day 2 months earlier, with the prediction of the victory rate of 99%, the remaining 1% is probably because it is too unfortunate.
Some main points in the plan help us achieve this award are:
1, Set specific goals
2, Understand the rules
3, Choose the right launch date
4, Approach those with the highest upvote ability
5, Setup attractive launch sites
6, Answer all the comments and feedback on the product ASAP
1. Set specific goals
What's our team goal? Our goal is to achieve "Product of the Day" Award
We are in the process of approaching investment funds for our products.
With this award, our team can improve the chance of calling for capital when proving that SaveDay is no longer an idea, it has the first users who experience and evaluate well, recognized as being "Product of the Day" on Product Hunt.
In the current economic recession, it is very valuable to increase at least a few % of this opportunity.
This goal has shaped the group's strategy. If you have a different goal, the strategy will be a bit different.
To achieve this goal, according to our research, we need to achieve at least 600 upvotes to have the opportunity to achieve "Product of the Day" Award
2. Understand the rules
We start with reading Launch Guide of Product Hunt. Personally, I think this is a good and easy-to-read document, applicable to the launch on other platforms as well, not only Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/launch
This guide has mentioned everything quite clearly, but I will note a few important ideas that I find necessary:
- The time to schedule the Coming Soon Page is 30 days from the current day. Let's maximize the time allowed to gather the longest waitlist. Your product will be displayed in the Coming Soon tab.
- Nothing in the Guide talks about product ranking criteria and the rules that will ban your account. Nobody bans your clone accounts to upvote, but all of that could not help you climb to the top if those accounts have not engaged much on Product Hunt.
In addition, we also read many launching cases, a few outstanding articles are:
- https://www.growthmentor.com/blog/product-hunt-launch/
- https://www.guidde.com/blog/how-we-got-to-Be-1-product-Of-the-day-on-product-hunt
- https://www.softr.io/blog/producthunting
3. Choose the launch date
The launch date depends on your goals.
When scheduling the launch, we initially chose to launch on Monday. The reason is that Monday has a low competition rate.
The goal of our team is to get Product of the Day, so we choose Monday.
But, 1 week before the launch, I researched all the products that have been launched in the last 2 weeks and realized that not only Monday but all weekdays have a very high competitive rate:
1. The lowest upvote number of the top 5 was 600 upvotes, and the highest is over 1000 upvotes.
2, Products chasing each other only a few upvotes.
However, I found that the competitiveness on Saturday is significantly lower. That means the chance to become Product of the Day is easier.
Immediately, our team decided to postpone the launch date from Monday to Saturday of the same week.
We were right with this decision. However, it is only right in our case. Just take it as an example.
4. Approach to those with the highest upvote ability
We approach people who have the highest upvote for us by directly messaging them
4.1. Approach friends and relatives of the internal team
These are the people who are ready to help you when you contact
We made a list and contacted them 2 weeks before our launch date. We have detailed instructions on how to create accounts and how to use Product Hunt to make sure they are "qualified" users (they are still using PH now lol)
4.2. Approach developers with products that are going to launch or launched recently on Product Hunt
The team approached in 2 directions.
Direction 1: Go to Product Hunt, search for the entire list of products that have been and are about to launch, then find the profile of makers on LinkedIn.
These are likely supporters who will upvote for you if you take the initiative to propose to them.We ourselves also received many invitations from other projects thanks to their invitations.
Direction 2: Go to Facebook to search for groups with the keyword "Product Hunt Upvote". This is the community that products are about to go to Product Hunt to seek support. Simply upvote their product first, then take the screenshot and comment below each of their posts with the link to your product.
90% of them will reply, and upvote for your products.
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4.3. Approach the community of startups in our home country - Vietnam
Launch is a community in Vietnam, where founders, entrepreneurs, and investment funds meet. Most members know Product Hunt and have this account available.
Our co-founder directly wrote articles about the reason for making products, SaveDay's main functions in this group.
The article has received much attention from the group members, creating a new source of upvotes.
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5. Setup attractive launch site
- Tagline: Use words that are easy to understand, do not use academic and scientific words.
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- Gallery Images: We set 4 photos. Photo 1 is Thumbnail (Product Hunt will take this photo to set the thumbnail when you share the link), and the remaining 3 photos are 3 images describing the main function of our product.
To attract users, the team focuses on beautiful design, synchronizing brand colors, using GIF images to make the image more vivid.
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- First comments: The founder shares the reason to create the product and calls for support.
Our comment started by sharing the motivation for us to make the product, followed by a brief description of the product then ended with a call to contribute ideas to the team. You can make a unique version of your product.
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6. Answer all the comments and feedback on the product ASAP
Product Hunt's algorithm not only counts the number of upvotes.
It also takes into account the comments when locating a product on the rankings.
Our team shares the shifts to answer every comment from the supporters. We always answer in an open direction so that supporters can extend the conversation, helping to increase the total number of comments.
The result of our launch on Product Hunt
We have achieved the goal of becoming "Product of the Day".
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Our detailed results:
- 830 upvotes
- 173 comments
- 1918 people visit the website, most of which are from the US and India (also the two markets we focus on in the near future)
- 937 new users for SaveDay
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Product Hunt Launch Checklist
This is the list of tasks that we have used during the launch process
1. A few weeks before launching
- Read the guidelines of Product Hunt
- Set the goal of launching
- Choose the right launch date for the goal
- Build a website and add tracking tool to measure the effectiveness
- Approach directly with friends/ relatives to create Product Hunt accounts
- Use Product Hunt actively to understand the rules and create account history
- Introduce the "Coming soon" page on social media channels (Facebook page, Twitter, Reddit, Discord...)
- Acquire the testimony from products lovers
- Create content and check the appearance on Product Hunt with Preview Hunt
- Schedule the launch
2. A week before launching
- Create content to call for upvotes
- Make a list of supporters on Product Hunt with their LinkedIn/Facebook profile
- Send message inviting them to notify on the Coming soon page
- Go to the post content on the Launch post
3. 1 day before launching
- Check the content of the website
- Check the tracking on the website
- Add badge to your website to guide visitors and support
4. Launch day
- Post on "Launch" community
- Ask friends to upvote and comment
- Send messages to the supporters who agreed to upvote
- Upvote for products that have been launched on Product Hunt on Facebook groups and ask them to upvote for our product
- Notify our launch on official media channels
- Response immediately to every Product Hunt comment
- Send messages to current users
- Follow other people on Product Hunt to increase product's visibility
- Follow our launch on Product Wars
5. The days after launching
- Record the entire launching process for the upcoming launch
- Send thanks to all supporters, both from personal and the official channel
- Attach the Badge "Product of the Day" to the website
- Share your experiences on other channels such as Substack, Medium for better reach
- Sum up all Product Hunt comments to optimize the product
- Follow all those who have supported SaveDay for future launch
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