Le guide ultime pour faire exploser votre lancement Product Hunt

WTF is Product Hunt? 😳

If you’ve never heard of Product Hunt, I’m gonna guess you’ve been exploring Mars in search of alternative fuels. In that case: could you slip me Elon’s number real quick? 🙃 Don’t worry about the Product Hunt thing, I got you covered 👐.

Product Hunt is the little baby of Ryan Hoover. Ryan is one of those guys that just friggin’ loves everything that’s new and cool. Not just for fun. For Ryan, new products are an opportunity to learn and, most of all, a way of connecting with like-minded people.

Back in 2013, Ryan was looking for a one-stop-shop to discover the hottest new tech products. As he didn’t find anything, he did the entrepreneurial thing and started it himself. In its cute early days as an MVP, Product Hunt was a mailing list, build on this one question:

Quels sont les produits sympas que vous utilisez ?

It’s a question we all ask and it turned out to be one hell of a community builder. Within two weeks, Ryan’s little mailing list had 170 subscribers devouring discoveries from 30 hand-picked contributors, consisting of startup founders, VCs, and prominent bloggers. Ryan was on to something.

Today, Product Hunt is Silicon Valley’s favourite little playground on the web. A tightly-knit community of like-minded geeks who bond over anything hot 🔥 and the new ✨. Not just tech, but also books, podcasts and games — you name it. The site kind of works like reddit, with users posting products and the community making or breaking them with comments and upvotes.

More upvotes will get your product higher on Product Hunt’s frontpage, getting you some solid street cred with a community packed with early adopters, curious investors and avid entrepreneurs. It is the ultimate startup launchpad 🚀.

TL;DR

• Product Hunt a été fondé par Ryan Hoover.
• comme un guichet unique pour découvrir les nouveaux produits les plus cool.
• it’s a tightly-knit community of early adopters, investors and entrepreneurs
• ce qui en fait l'ultime rampe de lancement d'une startup.

OK… And why should I care again? 🙄

Avez-vous déjà entendu parler de la courbe d'adoption des produits ?

It’s one of those gazillion frameworks they show you in marketing class you then instantly forget about. I did anyway.

La raison pour laquelle vous devez vous en préoccuper est que vous voulez que les gens commencent à utiliser votre produit. Vous voulez cela parce que, eh bien, tout le monde qui construit un produit veut cela.

Pour y parvenir, vous devez comprendre comment un nouveau produit se fraye un chemin sur le marché et atteint de nouveaux utilisateurs.

The Product Adoption Curve is something all new kids on the block have to go through. Facebook, Slack, Uber and DVDs (still ring a bell?) — heck, even underwear at some point must have gone through it (hope those do ring a bell?). Some go faster, some go slower. Others just die along the way because they fail to understand how it works.

Les personnes qu'il faut faire monter à bord en premier sont les innovateurs.

Why? Because these are the ones willing to take your product for a spin when it’s still a baby. They‘re okay with it still shitting the bed from time to time 💩. They look beyond the bugs and spartan features to see if your product deserves to exist. They’ll share their findings with the world and, if they like what they see, may even end up promoting your product.

Innovators will get you across the chasm, which is the big wide gap sitting between you and your target masses. Or push you in. Whatever happens, you’ll be smarter than you were yesterday. It’s make or break. Sink or swim.

C'est ainsi que Facebook, Uber et Slack sont devenus de grands hommes. Pensez-y. Ces trois entreprises ont commencé par cibler un petit groupe d'utilisateurs et ont fini par dominer leur marché. Facebook s'est développé à partir d'Harvard, avide de popularité, Uber à partir de San Francisco, ouvert d'esprit, et Slack à partir d'entreprises technophiles désireuses de faire des tests bêta.

Innovators are like the first pin on a bowling alley. Knock it down and the other pins will fall along. Strike! 🎳

Now for the good part ☝

👉 Product Hunt is one big club of innovators and early adopters.

It’s a rocketship waiting to take your product to the stars ✨. If you want to launch a tech product or service, launch it on Product Hunt. All aboard! 👨‍🚀

Oh, did I mention Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList back in december 2016? You know, the world’s biggest network of angel investors 👼. Doesn’t hurt to get into their attention space.

TL;DR

• La chasse aux produits regorge d'innovateurs et d'adeptes de la première heure.
• ce sont les personnes que vous voulez voir examiner votre produit.
• they’ll give you invaluable feedback
• et sont susceptibles d'utiliser et de promouvoir votre produit s'ils l'apprécient.
• oh, PH is also owned by the world’s largest network of angel investors

YOLO 🤞 You Only Launch Once

Votre produit peut être mis en ligne une fois. Une seule fois. Vous n'avez qu'une seule chance de réussir. Faites en sorte que cela compte.

Look. If you had one shot. One opportunity.
To seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment.
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
(Eminem — Lose Yourself)

I’m your man on the inside. I’ve been to the Product Hunt. I’ve seen things. I survived and I thrived. And now I’m here to help you do the same and better.

Do you remember when Luke Skywalker and his rebels had one shot at destroying the Death Star? This is exactly like that. With the difference that Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels like Star Wars does. You don’t get to destroy the Death Star twice like Luke did.

Cela fait-il de moi votre Maître Yoda ? Oui, exactement ce que cela signifie.

Now, Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels. But it does do spin-offs. You can in fact launch a new feature of your product if it’s cool enough to be marketed on its own and provides real value to the early adopters. In the end, it all comes down to how you sell it (as always).

A full-blown launch of your product is more complicated. You can’t launch your product twice unless its essence is so new and/or improved that it can be considered a new product. Think of it as a reboot of a franchise.

Une deuxième chance de détruire l'Étoile de la Mort, vous pourriez l'avoir après tout, jeune Jedi.

TL;DR

• vous n'avez qu'une seule chance de vous lancer sur Product Hunt (en quelque sorte)
• do or do not — there is no try
• Je suis Yoda

1. Get in the tribe. Act as if you belong 😏

Connaissez votre public. Avant même de songer à vous lancer sur Product Hunt, vous devez d'abord vous rendre compte par vous-même de ce dont il s'agit. Qu'est-ce qui fait vibrer les premiers utilisateurs ?

Inscrivez-vous, immergez-vous et jouez au ballon. Plongez la tête la première. Apprenez à connaître les tenants et les aboutissants de la communauté en vous y intégrant.

Let’s cover some basics first 📋

• La chasse quotidienne 👀
  Product Hunt’s frontpage showcases products according to the number of upvotes they got (and more — there’s un algorithme secret). Le produit qui arrive en tête à la fin de la journée est le vainqueur. À 12 heures, la page est rafraîchie et la chasse recommence.
• Appréciations 👍
  Upvotes are Product Hunt’s equivalent of Facebook’s likes. If you like a product, you can vote it up and push it up the page. The more votes, the higher on the page it will end up at the end of the day.
• Chasseurs 🕵
  Les chasseurs sont des membres qui bénéficient de droits spéciaux chasse et les publier sur Product Hunt. Leurs pouvoirs spéciaux leur ont été donnés par d'autres chasseurs, ce qui fait d'eux les plus grands chasseurs du monde. élus de la communauté.
• Fabricants 👨‍🔬
  Ce sont les membres qui ont créé le produit.

Once you got the basics figured out, have your curiosity take the lead. Lurk around, check out similar products to yours and learn about their launch strategies. Spy on titles, taglines, logos, screenshots, comments and general wording. Steal with your eyes 👀.

TL;DR

• immerse yourself in the PH — community
• connaître les bases : les votes positifs, les chasseurs et les créateurs
• lurk around & steal with your eyes (en anglais)

2. Hunt down your Hunter 🏹

Pas de chasseur = pas de lancement de Product Hunt. Vous l'avez déjà compris.

There’s hunters and there’s hunters. What you want is one of the uberhunters. Il s'agit de la crème de la crème. Les crème de la crème. Les élus parmi les choisis.

Les éléments à prendre en compte pour trouver le Frodon qui emmènera votre produit unique au sommet de la montagne Product Hunt :

• Nombre d'adeptes 👥
  Lorsqu'un chasseur soumet un produit, tous ses abonnés en sont informés. Plus il y a d'adeptes, plus la visibilité est grande, plus vous avez de chances d'être propulsé en haut de la page.
• Historique des postes à succès🏅
  Vous savez donc qu'il a du talent.
• Affinité avec votre type de produit 🤓
  Vous savez donc qu'il reçoit pourquoi votre produit est génial.
  (we’re going to assume yours is, in fact, awesome)

Having a good hunter on your side is like being in pole position on the starting grid of a Formula 1 race. Your chances of finishing first are significantly higher 🏁.

Nail your pitch 🔨

You choosing a hunter doesn’t mean the hunter chooses you. You may be madly in love with your product, your hunter probably isn’t (yet). It’s up to you to make him/her fall for it.

Top hunters get pitched multiple times a day. Don’t waste their time. Make sure yours is on point. Pitching is an art: it takes time to perfect.

Good thing you’ve been doing it ever since you got started with your idea, right?

Still, I guess it doesn’t hurt to refresh your memory with these 6 golden pointers from top hunter Bram Kanstein ✌:

• Avant tout, montrez-vous enthousiaste et faites en sorte que votre présentation soit personnelle !
• Tell about the problem you’re solving 🎯
• Être voilà 👉 Montrez votre solution
• Show early results if you have them 📈
• Why are you the man/woman/team that’s going to take this to the moon? 🌝
• How can the person you pitch to help you? Asking for specific feedback is also good. It’s difficult to help when your question is simply: “what do you think?”

These are from Bram’s killer article 5 ways not to pitch your product — a must-read if you’re looking to get your pitch right.

Bram is not just any hunter, he is the hunter who launched the #1 most upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt. This product, Startup Stash — a carefully curated directory of startup tools and resources — also happened to be his own product.

Bram était #1 sur ma liste pour chasser Salesflare et la lecture de ses articles faisait partie de ma stratégie pour l'atteindre.

Rules like this don’t mean you can’t get creative with your pitch. My idea to hook him was to pitch Salesflare in the exact ways Bram tells you not to in his article. Something like this:

Bonjour Bram,

You’ll be amazed by this. We built the Uber of Sales! It’s a unique CRM that is going to change the way sales is being done. We’ve been working our asses off for more than 2 years but now our baby has finally been born. Everyone we showed it to loved it! It’s going to be yuge!

C'était juste pour attirer son attention. Je crois qu'il faut se démarquer. J'ai également tendance à faire le contraire de ce que les gens me disent de faire. J'aurais continué et présenté Salesflare de la bonne manière par la suite.

Le fait est que je n'ai jamais eu besoin de le faire. Bram venait d'épingler ceci sur son mur Twitter :

Je suppose qu'il en avait assez des courriels comme celui que je m'apprêtais à lui envoyer. Les tweets, c'est autre chose. Nous avons décidé de lui envoyer notre vidéo.

He went for it! 🙌

Remember to show your solution and be voilà? 👆

Well, nothing is more voilà than a video.

We had a video in the making for about 2 months and it was one of the crucial factors in deciding when to go full-in on our Product Hunt Launch. Not only does it help you pitch to hunters — it’s also kind of a must for your Product Hunt page once you actually get hunted.

TL;DR

• score yourself a top hunter (en anglais)
• il/elle vous donnera une longueur d'avance dans votre course au sommet.
• voyez (1) le nombre d'adeptes (2) l'historique des posts réussis (3) l'affinité avec votre produit.
• notez votre présentation.
• voyez votre produit en vidéo.

3. Cook up your Product Hunt Starter Pack 👨‍🍳

Now that you’ve found yourself an experienced general, it’s time to gear up for battle.

Les éléments essentiels à préparer :

• Nom du produit 💁
  C'est assez simple. Mais vous pouvez encore faire la différence. Nous l'avons fait Salesflare CRM pour s'assurer que les gens puissent nous trouver facilement lorsqu'ils recherchent un CRM sur Product Hunt par la suite.
• URL correcte du site web (+App/Play Store URLs) 🔗
  Throw them all in there. If you don’t have a website yet, you can just create a landing page with general information on your product and a download link if possible.
• Titre d'appel ☝
  Accrocheur et clair. Nous sommes allés chercher CRM de vente intelligent pour les startups qui se développent grâce à la technologie. CRM commercial pour définir clairement notre position dans le domaine de la gestion de la relation client, intelligents comme notre principal facteur de différenciation et les startups qui s'appuient sur la technologie to indicate who we built it for. Resist the urge to be overly creative here, you don’t want to confuse people.
• Logo 👁‍🗨
  Sure, you can just put your logo. But this won’t exactly get you points with the Product Hunt cool kids. Make it move. Like Jagger. We had a Salesflare Product Hunt cat pop up in our logo and combined this with some conceptual animations. It doesn’t have to the next Star Wars movie, just make it move. People are attracted by moving things. Especially when they’re quickly scanning a front page filled with all kinds of stuff.

• URL du profil Product Hunt du fabricant 👨‍🔬
  Assurez-vous que les membres de l'équipe considérés comme des créateurs du produit sont tous inscrits sur Product Hunt avant le lancement afin que votre chasseur puisse répertorier tous les créateurs. Il ne s'agit pas seulement de vous donner une bonne image. Le fait d'être listé en tant que créateur vous donne le droit de commenter, ce qui est essentiel pour engager la conversation avec la communauté.
• Vidéo/Capture d'écran 🖼
  Votre chance d'être voilà. Don’t just stop at the video (yes, it autoplays) — your screenshots should be equally engaging. We put up animated GIFs showcasing different Salesflare features. You don’t have to put GIFs. I’ve seen great Product Hunt pages with static screenshots. Thing is GIFs just provide more value because… well, because they move and people love stuff that moves.

• Préparez votre commentaire d'introduction 💬
  It’s up to you to kick off the conversation on your product once it’s live. You don’t want to be putting something together in a rush at the very last minute, so make sure you write something beforehand you can just copy-paste when the time is right. Start off with why you built the product and lay out some of its core functionalities. Specify what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Mention the special promotion you have in store for the community (more on that later) and don’t forget to give your hunter a shootout for hunting you. Here’s ours:

• Tags 🔖
  Facilitez la recherche de votre produit en ajoutant des balises pertinentes. Voici quelques exemples de balises que nous avons choisies pour Salesflare tech, ventes, communication avec les clients, extension chrome et web. Don’t worry if you don’t get them right from the start, you can make changes afterwards. Product Hunt does closely watch these tags and may remove them they don’t agree. Feel free to chat with them if you think they made a mistake. We had a few tags removed and then put back again after we explained why we thought they were relevant for Salesflare.
• Date de lancement de la chasse 📅
  As a rule of thumb, Product Hunt’s busiest days of the week range from Tuesday until Thursday (I guess early adopters in California party from Friday till Sunday and then die on Monday — fair enough). Busy means more competition, but busy also means more people to upvote, try your product and leave you with valuable feedback. Ending up on top may be very exciting, the quantity of users getting in touch with you is probably more valuable for your business on the long-term. Tuesday is arguably better than Wednesday because you’ll have 24 hours more to be upvoted and make it into Product Hunt’s weekly digest. With all this in mind, we chose Tuesday and took about one and a half week to prepare our launch as soon as we got the green light from our hunter. You could easily do with less, but gathering support pre-launch while continuing to attend to every-day business stuff is no walk in the park. You don’t want to skip any of your shuteye time prior to your launch either— it’ll get kind of crazy once you’re live.
• Heure de lancement de la chasse 🕒
  A new hunt is launched every day at 12am PST. People typically say to post immediately after midnight, but this is probably not the best way to go. Product Hunt’s secret algorithm is said to penalize age in ranking products, so you’re probably better off waiting a few hours as the US’ awakening comes closer. This is if you’re confident your own network can help you get initial traction in the first hours, so you’ll be pretty high as soon as first New York and then San Francisco crawls out of bed. For Salesflare we initially proposed to be posted around midnight to our hunter but he said he found posting around 3–4am PST (12–1pm local time here in Antwerp) to be the most effective. This gives you enough time to push yourself up in the first hour and be right where you should be as Product Hunt’s core members start checking their smartphones hanging over their morning coffees.

Once you’re done, send everything over to your hunter in a nice email, well in time before D-Day. Use a Google Drive folder to share your screenshots and other media so you can still make last-minute changes if needed. We sent a Google Calendar Invite to set date and time to avoid any confusion for everyone involved.

TL;DR

• préparez l'essentiel pour votre lancement.
• name — clear & easy searchable
• tagline — catch & clear
• logo — make it move
• video — just have a video
• screenshots — make them stand out (by making them move)
• prepare your intro comment — why, what, thank hunter, promotion
• set a day — (1) somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday (2) take your time to prepare
• set a time —(1) after midnight PST (2) before the US wakes up
• donner tout à votre chasseur, sur un plateau d'argent.

4. Gather your fans 🤗

La formule secrète d'un lancement réussi sur Product Hunt se compose de deux éléments :

• un excellent produit (duh)
• traction initiale

Both things you can control. If your product is not great, stop reading now and come back once it is. Don’t worry too much about some features not being entirely on point yet. Remember, these are early adopters — they’re okay with your product still being an infant and will happily help you find and kill early bugs as long as they see some real value.

Getting initial traction on Product Hunt is a little bit like getting your startup its first 100 customers. You may have the greatest product the world has ever seen— if people don’t have it in front of them, they won’t upvote it. Don’t make yourself any illusions: even early adopters won’t scroll endlessly to find your product. It has to be right there as soon as the site or app loads. Slap ‘m in the face with it.

This means you’ll need a fair amount of upvotes as soon as Product Hunt rush hour kicks in.

Le fait d'avoir un chasseur de haut niveau à vos côtés vous permettra déjà de faire un bon bout de chemin, mais n'oubliez pas que les batailles sont gagnées par les soldats, pas par les généraux.

Now, you cannot just ask all of your friends and family to upvote you. Product Hunt was built to make it easy to discover the world’s greatest new products, not to force-feed your own stuff to whoever. It is precisely this that makes Product Hunt so great at showcasing the best things out there. Not only should you respect that, Product Hunt’s algorithm will also increasingly push down your product if too many votes from brand new accounts come rolling in. So, what can you do? Here’s a few ideas:

1) Trouvez vos amis sur Product Hunt 👫

Il y a de fortes chances que vous ayez déjà quelques amis sur Product Hunt. Product Hunt synchronise les personnes que vous suivez sur Twitter, donc votre première action devrait être de vérifier qui d'entre eux pourrait être prêt à vous soutenir et à les informer de votre lancement à venir.

2) Demandez quand même à vos autres amis 🙈

You’d be surprised how many people know about Product Hunt without having an account. Maybe they’ve been peeking from time to time without really getting into upvoting. Or maybe they know about it but didn’t take the time to take a proper look yet. Your launch may very well be the perfect occasion for these people to sign up.

I know it says friends but what I really mean is network: friends, family, customers, business contacts, your dog,… Anyone you have a direct line with. We went through our contact lists and started asking people we thought of as early adopters if they had a Product Hunt account. If they did, we told them about our launch. If they didn’t, we told them about the community and how awesome it is. If it’s their jam, they’ll make an account and you have them onboard. If it’s not, you’ll leave them be.

Si Product Hunt n'est pas un simple canal de marketing à exploiter, vous pouvez tout de même en parler autour de vous. En fait, Product Hunt a besoin de ce type de visibilité pour continuer à se développer. Beaucoup de mes amis sont des utilisateurs actifs depuis que nous les avons introduits dans la communauté. Veillez simplement à le faire avant votre lancement et non le jour même.

3) Créer une feuille Google et assurer le suivi 📈

Now you’ll have tens or even hundreds of people lined up to support your launch and it’s your responsibility to make sure they come through. Keep track of the people you contacted so you can effectively follow up on the big day. Include name, channel (Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter,…) and status (did they vote already?).

4) Soyez sur le radar des personnes qui ont voté pour des produits similaires. 💡

Recherchez les personnes qui ont voté pour des produits similaires aux vôtres et assurez-vous qu'elles vous connaissent.

You can actually scrape upvoters of products posted on PH by using this little tool. Just put in the URL of the product and your Developer Token (head over to API Dashboard under your Product Hunt profile to get this) and you’ll get the Twitter handles of all the upvoters for that given products.

There’s tons of things you can do with this. For starters, you can follow them on both Product Hunt and Twitter. You can also tweet them or even target them with emails or Facebook Ads (you’ll need to do some data enriching first though).

5) Recherchez les gardiens sociaux 🌪

Accordez une attention particulière aux personnes qui ont beaucoup de followers et essayez de les inciter à partager votre lancement Product Hunt avec leur réseau.

6) Chat is king 💬

The magical word at this stage is chatting. Remember you need these people to commit twice: you need them to sign up beforehand and you need them to upvote you on the big day. This is why a channel like email will be far less effective here: it doesn’t allow for an engaging dialogue. Sure, you can send an email a week beforehand and another one on launch day but you’ll have zero control over people really making accounts and being active on Product Hunt prior to your launch. This may negatively affect your page ranking. We chose not to take that chance.

You can think of Product Hunt’s frontpage as a Google Search Results page — only the top gets clicked and visibility goes downhill fast as you go down the page. It’s like a snowball effect — make sure you have a big ball already once the heavy snow starts falling down. If your product really is great, the community will take over and make sure you stay on top.

BONUS: Thunderclap — it⚡👏

Don’t know what Thunderclap is?

Thunderclap is a platform you can use to create social media campaigns built on the strength of your network. You’ll basically have your friends and followers support a purpose of your choosing by means of Facebook or Twitter posts. Write up a message, set a date and invite your friends.

As soon as the campaign starts (once you’re live on PH) — tweets or Facebook status updates will go out from all the people who joined your campaign. At the same time. Needless to say, this will seriously amplify your reach.

I’m going to be straight with you guys here: we didn’t do Thunderclap.
Why not? We forgot. We just forgot.

TL;DR

• un grand produit + une traction initiale = un grand succès sur PH.
• trouver des amis sur PH
• ask your other friends if they’re on PH — if they’re not, tell them about it ask if they want to be
• créer une feuille Google pour le suivi.
• scrape upvoters of similar products on PH => target.
• trouvez-vous des influenceurs
• chat avec toutes les personnes que vous connaissez pour leur parler du lancement de votre PH.
• mettre en place une campagne Thunderclap
• !! don’t forget to set up a Thunderclap campaign (like we did)

5. Butter up the community 💆

Faites en sorte que les chasseurs de produits se sentent spéciaux.

Pourquoi ?

We’ve been over this.

Because they’re innovators and because you need their help to cross the chasm. Besides, as you are in the early stages of your product, their feedback will be invaluable. The more, the merrier.

It’s common courtesy to offer Product Hunt members special deals. If done right, Product Hunt will be a gift that keeps on giving. It’s only right you give something back. For Salesflare, we gave the club a very steep discount (very steep… of the likes we don’t give out anymore, but, hey, it was early days!).

TL;DR

• faire en sorte que les chasseurs de produits se sentent spéciaux et aimés.
• en leur donnant une supercalifragiliste accord

6. Become a cat person 😼

In case you haven’t noticed: Product Hunt loves cats.

Un jour, un fan de Product Hunt Jesse Thomas a proposé de concevoir un t-shirt. Le Glasshole Kitty est l'une des idées qu'il a envoyées. L'équipe de Product Hunt l'a tellement aimée qu'elle a commandé une série de t-shirts et d'autocollants qu'elle a commencé à envoyer aux premiers membres de la communauté. Ces derniers partageaient à leur tour leurs cadeaux Kitty sur les réseaux sociaux, ce qui a donné naissance à l'idée de la mascotte Kitty.

While Product Hunt never really changed their logo, the kitty is everywhere. It’s big in social media posts and has been adapted to launch several Product Hunt projects like books, podcasts and their Snapchat account.

So if you’re looking to get that meowntain of upvotes from the community, you’ll better put turn into a crazy cat lady for the day.

TL;DR

• La chasse aux produits aime les chats
• pour certaines raisons

7. Dress up your website for the big day💄

Your Product Hunt launch is a day of celebration so it’s only right your website looks all nice and pretty for the occasion, don’t you think?

It’s also a great chance to once again highlight that special Product Hunt deal you prepared for your fans. Shine bright like a diamond! 💎

Vous pouvez utiliser IntroBar (yes, it’s free) to put up a nice-looking welcome bar on top of your website when people click through via your PH-link (this will end in /?ref=product hunt). Here’s what Salesflare’s website looked like on her big day.

TL;DR

• faire briller votre site web pour son grand jour.

8. Set the internet on fire 🔥

OK.

You’re live on Product Hunt. Showtime! 💥👊

Faites passer le message. Sortez l'artillerie lourde. Libérez le Kraken !

The goal is simple: to make sure the whole world knows you’re on Product Hunt. Now remember: Product Hunt frowns upon asking for upvotes. So don’t. Instead, say things like ‘come say hi’ or ‘join the conversation’. Just let people know you’re on Product Hunt but spare no effort.

There’s this rumour that Product Hunt’s algorithm penalizes you if you send people directly to your PH — page. To this day, I have not found compelling evidence of this being true. We were careful about it though, sending people to the search results page for the the query ‘Salesflare’.

Vient ensuite une liste de tactiques de guérilla des PH dont même Rambo serait jaloux.

Let’s hustle ✌

1) Go through your list 📄

Follow up on the people you know have a Product Hunt account following your pre-launch efforts and give them a quick reminder. Make sure you miss no one and be thorough. Just because people say they will take a look, doesn’t mean they will. Check if their vote is already there and follow up again if needed. They may have just forgotten — it’s your big day, not theirs. Be careful not to spam though. We called it quits after two reminders.

2) Notifiez vos clients par courrier électronique et/ou par chat en direct 🗣

Vos clients ont déjà acheté votre produit ou s'y sont abonnés, ils doivent donc l'apprécier. Suivez ceux qui figurent déjà sur votre liste en suivant votre stratégie de pré-lancement. Vous pouvez cibler les autres par courrier électronique et par chat en direct sur votre site web (si vous en avez un). Nous avions un Intercom-message pop up notifiant les utilisateurs de notre campagne dès qu'ils s'inscrivaient sur Salesflare. Encore une fois, le chat est plus efficace que l'email lorsqu'il s'agit d'informer votre destinataire sur ce qu'est Product Hunt et sur ce qu'il doit faire s'il veut vous aider.

3) Inonder Twitter 🌊

Most of Product Hunt’s core audience is on Twitter so it would be great if you get people to talk about your launch on there. Go for both quality and quantity. It’s a good idea to prepare some tweets the day before so you don’t lose time coming up with something funny in the middle of the storm. Tweet as soon as you’re live and keep it up as you reach several milestones (every 100 upvotes for example).

Rendez vos tweets drôles et sympathiques avec des GIF et des mèmes afin que vos followers soient plus enclins à les partager. Ensuite, faites en sorte que la conversation se poursuive. Les gens commenceront à tweeter et à retweeter. Aidez-les, restez humble, remerciez, likez et retweetez. Répétez.

Remerciez votre chasseur, vos upvoters et Product Hunt lui-même. Nous avons remercié chaque votant avec un tweet personnalisé dans lequel nous avons tagué Product Hunt pour augmenter nos chances d'être aimé et retweeté.

Conseil de pro – you can automate these tweets by hooking up Zapier to a Google Sheet you fill up with Twitter handles. Beware of the fact that both your DMs and Tweets per day are limited. We sent our tweets out by hand on launch day — this makes it more personal too— and had final automated thank you’s go out the day after.

4) Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest,… 🎈

En dehors de Twitter, utilisez tous les canaux que vous suivez pour faire passer le message.

Facebook is obvious. We posted the same kind of stuff as we did on Twitter — just a little less because it’s somewhat harder to make something go viral there using hashtags and mentions. Also have team members post from personal accounts.

Apply the same strategy to LinkedIn. Although you might want to put up a small blog post there while you’re at it — those get great visibility these days. Be sure to have it prepared though.

Instagram, Snapchat et Pinterest peuvent également s'avérer très utiles. Tout dépend de votre type de produit. Lâchez des ballons partout, mais n'oubliez pas de toujours adapter votre message en conséquence.

5) Facebook Groups and Slack Chats 😏

Where do people on the internet hang out these days? Nowadays, you’re probably best off looking at Facebook Groups and Slack Chats.

A lot of geographical regions have their own dedicated Product Hunt community. Just ask for access to as many as possible prior to your launch and keep track of which ones they allow you to. Examples of Groups we posted in include Product Hunt France, Product Hunt Berlin and Product Hunt London. Make sure to be active before your launch so you’re not a total stranger when you post about your launch.

You can also post in other Groups on stuff like startups, entrepreneurship and growth hacking but it’s not as easy. Increase your chances by being a valuable member and preferably having a good relation with the group admin. You can try to post about your launch with a post that provides actual value to the community. For example, we put together a post on some of our pre-launch marketing tactics — then referring to our launch in the first comment. This worked for some groups, not all of them.

De nos jours, les utilisateurs précoces et les entrepreneurs se retrouvent de plus en plus souvent dans des communautés Slack Chat dédiées. Les mêmes règles s'appliquent : explorer au préalable et s'engager avec la communauté avant de lui demander quelque chose. Vous pouvez commencer à rechercher des communautés Slack pertinentes ici et ici.

6) reddit and Hacker News 💣

Reddit and HackerNews can be equally powerful channels to get the word out on your PH launch. But, again, you’ll need to prepare this beforehand. Write a post that brings value and isn’t too spammy. It’s probably also a good idea to build up some karma on your account beforehand as well. Make sure you have some guys/girls ready to upvote your post so people actually get to see it. The share your startup thread over at the /startups subreddit is a great place to start.

7) A yuuuuuuge email campaign 📫

“Stick a fork in email, because it’s D-O-N-E.”

It’s not.

Email is still one of the backbones of the Internet. I’m sure you agree and have a big fat email list all ready to fire the news about Product Hunt launch at. If you don’t, start right now.

Your email doesn’t have to be too fancy. Just put the word out: explain a little about what Product Hunt is all about and include a call-to-action to join the conversation.

8) Make friends. Help out & create value 👬

By now it will probably have hit you that a lot of this stuff has to do with network and preparation. Sure, you can try to pull off some last-minute hustle and hope for the best but it won’t get you very far if no one knows about you.

The single best piece of advice I can give you is to make friends online. This is not too different from making friends in real life. Just start talking, ask about projects, help out where you can, show support, throw in a joke or two… You know how to be a human being, right?

This will all take quite some time, but if you’re real about it, it won’t feel like work. Before you know it you’ll have a whole army ready to die for you and your Product Hunt glory. Time to light sh!t up!

TL;DR

• make sure the whole world knows you’re on PH using guerrilla tactics
• suivi de votre liste
• continuer à discuter
• faire en sorte que chaque tweet sur Twitter concerne le lancement de votre PH.
• repeat for other channels — consider blog post on LinkedIn
• faire bon ménage avec les groupes Facebook et les chats Slack.
• gagner du karma sur reddit et HackerNews.
• une campagne d'emailing gigantesque.
• make friends — be a human being

9. Fly high on comments and caffeine ✈

En lisant ce document jusqu'ici, vous pourriez croire que Product Hunt ne s'intéresse qu'aux votes positifs. It’s not.

Upvotes are easy. A lot of people on Product Hunt will give you one just because you have a nice logo or because your screenshot moves. Maybe it’s because you look pretty in your profile picture ☺ who knows.

It’s all about sparking a conversation about your product and upvotes will make it easier to get that going. These are early adopters — product enthusiasts who will show a genuine interest in why and how you built your product. They have tons of value to give you, make it easy for them to do that. It’s up to you to take the lead, help people out and demonstrate your appreciation for constructive criticism.

If handled well, your PH page will become a treasure of ideas and connections. From the second you’re live, gear up to quickly answer any question that pops up. Always stay positive, even if people are grilling you for no reason. Thank people for their feedback. Lead by example.

Veillez à ce que votre page PH soit gérée 24 heures sur 24. Ayez toujours un interlocuteur pour les questions techniques. Celles-ci vous parviendront également.

Your Product Hunt launch is going to be one of those SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK kind of days. And after it’s going to be one of those SLEEP FOR A WEEK kind of weeks. Which of course you won’t be able to do since your traffic, signups and requests will be going through the roof and you won’t know where to look first.

We’re loving it. I’m sure you will too.

TL;DR

• les votes sont surfaits
• it’s about getting people to talk about your product
• votre chance de briller
• lead the conversation — always stay positive
• veillez à ce que les membres de l'équipe soient éveillés 24 heures sur 24.
• préparez-vous à la privation de sommeil.

10. The Aftermath 💥

S'il est bien fait, Product Hunt est un cadeau qui ne s'arrête jamais.

C'est bien fait means finishing in the top 5 of the day. This will have you highlighted in PH’s newsletter the next day, which will be sent out to (hundreds of) thousands of people. You will also be picked up and featured on sites like http://thetopfives.net/ et http://thenews.im/ ainsi que divers comptes Twitter. Deux jours après notre lancement, nous avions encore beaucoup de nouveaux votes positifs.

Une semaine plus tard, nous étions toujours en train de suivre les effets de notre campagne Product Hunt.

• 878 upvotes
• 2ème produit le plus voté de la journée
• #1 CRM sur Product Hunt
• Plus de 250 nouveaux essais Salesflare
• Plus de 150 mentions sur Twitter
• Plus de 500 nouveaux adeptes sur Twitter
• Plus de 4000 visiteurs sur le site web
• Chatter sur Intercom est devenu un travail à plein temps

Effects weren’t just short-term.

Au-delà de l'engouement quotidien, Product Hunt gagne rapidement en popularité en tant que source d'applications de qualité. Le site réussit à crowdsourcer un espace qui est traditionnellement dominé par des annuaires comme Capterra et GetApp, moyennant paiement.

It’s more than just a launch vehicle for some early-morning traction — it’s also a directory of great products people trust more than alternatives.

In fact, several startups (including ourselves) have seen their Product Hunt feature generating high quality leads long after they were featured: more than 3 years after we still get about 10 signups per month from it. This is why becoming the most upvoted CRM was such a big deal for us. Salesflare is right there when people search for CRM on Product Hunt. Another strategy we’ve worked on is to target resourceful PH collections we feel are close to our space and customers and try to get included.

This comes to show there’s more to Product Hunt than just a day of madness. It’s a one-time opportunity that, if seized well, will bear fruits far beyond early traction and feedback.

TL;DR

• PH is a gift that keeps on giving — if done right
• viser le top 5.
• PH peut être une source durable de prospects.

Your move 👊

Et voilà, jeune Padawan.

Je n'ai plus rien à t'apprendre. Rends-moi fière.

If you’re not so sure about that, feel free to hit me up on on Twitter @gillesdc. Ask me anything or tell me about your project. I love to chat — you probably got that already.

Oh, and come say hi on Product Hunt 😸