Het ultieme draaiboek om je Product Hunt-lancering uit het water te blazen

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:

Welke coole producten gebruik jij?

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 is opgericht door Ryan Hoover.
• als een one-stop-shop om de coolste nieuwe producten te ontdekken
• it’s a tightly-knit community of early adopters, investors and entrepreneurs
• waarmee het de ultieme opstartbasis is.

OK… And why should I care again? 🙄

Ooit gehoord van de Product Adoption Curve?

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

De reden waarom je je zorgen moet maken is dat je wilt dat mensen je product gaan gebruiken. Je wilt dit omdat, nou ja, iedereen die een product maakt dit wil.

Om dat te bereiken, moet je begrijpen hoe een nieuw product zijn weg vindt op de markt en naar nieuwe gebruikers.

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.

De mensen die je als eerste aan boord moet krijgen zijn innovators.

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.

Zo zijn Facebook, Uber en Slack grote jongens geworden. Denk er maar eens over na. Alle drie begonnen ze met een kleine groep gebruikers en uiteindelijk werden ze marktleider. Facebook groeide vanuit het populaire Harvard, Uber vanuit het ruimdenkende San Francisco en Slack vanuit tech-savvy bedrijven die wilden bèta-testen.

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

• Product Hunt zit vol met innovators en early adopters
• dit zijn de mensen van wie je wilt dat ze naar je product kijken
• they’ll give you invaluable feedback
• en zullen je product waarschijnlijk gebruiken en promoten als ze het goed vinden
• oh, PH is also owned by the world’s largest network of angel investors

YOLO 🤞 You Only Launch Once

Je product kan één keer gepost worden. Eenmalig. Je krijgt één kans om dit goed te doen. Laat het tellen.

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.

Maakt dit mij jouw Meester Yoda? Ja, precies wat het betekent.

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.

Een tweede kans om de Death Star te vernietigen krijg je misschien toch, jonge Jedi.

TL;DR

• je hebt maar één kans om te lanceren op Product Hunt (soort van)
• do or do not — there is no try
• Ik ben Yoda

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

Ken je publiek. Voordat je zelfs maar denkt aan lanceren op Product Hunt, moet je eerst uit eerste hand ervaren waar het allemaal om draait. Wat maakt deze early adopters enthousiast?

Meld je aan, dompel jezelf onder en speel de bal. Duik er halsoverkop in. Leer de ins en outs van de community kennen door er deel van uit te maken.

Let’s cover some basics first 📋

• De dagelijkse jacht 👀
  Product Hunt’s frontpage showcases products according to the number of upvotes they got (and more — there’s een geheim algoritme). Het product dat aan het eind van de dag bovenaan eindigt, is het winnaar. Om 12 uur PST wordt de pagina vernieuwd en begint de jacht opnieuw.
• Upvotes 👍
  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.
• Hunters 🕵
  Hunter's zijn leden met speciale rechten op jagen producten en plaatsen ze op Product Hunt. Hun speciale krachten kregen ze van andere jagers, waardoor ze de uitverkorenen van de gemeenschap.
• Makers 👨‍🔬
  Dit zijn de leden die het product hebben gemaakt.

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
• leer de basis kennen: upvotes, jagers en makers
• lurk rond en steel met je ogen

2. Hunt down your Hunter 🏹

Geen Hunter = geen Product Hunt lancering. Dat heb je al.

There’s hunters and there’s hunters. What you want is one of the uberjagers. Dit is de top van het peloton. De crème de la crème. De uitverkorenen onder de uitverkorenen.

Dingen waar je rekening mee moet houden om de Frodo te vinden die jouw One Product To Rule Them All helemaal naar boven brengt op de Product Hunt berg:

• Aantal volgers 👥
  Wanneer een Hunter een product indient, worden al zijn/haar volgers hiervan op de hoogte gesteld. Hoe meer volgers, hoe meer zichtbaarheid, hoe groter de kans dat je bovenaan de pagina komt te staan.
• Geschiedenis van succesvolle berichten🏅
  Dus je weet dat hij een goede speler is.
• Affiniteit met jouw type product 🤓
  Dus je weet dat hij waarom jullie product is geweldig.
  (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 ✌:

• Eerst en vooral: toon enthousiasme en maak je pitch persoonlijk!
• Tell about the problem you’re solving 🎯
• Wees voilà 👉 toon je oplossing
• 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 stond #1 op mijn lijst om op Salesflare te jagen en het lezen van zijn artikelen was onderdeel van mijn strategie om tot hem door te dringen.

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:

Hoi 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!

Dit was alleen om zijn aandacht te trekken. Ik geloof in opvallen. Ik heb ook de neiging om het tegenovergestelde te doen van wat mensen me vertellen. Ik zou daarna zijn doorgegaan en Salesflare op de juiste manier hebben gepitcht.

Het punt is dat ik dat nooit hoefde te doen. Bram had dit namelijk net op zijn Twitter-muur geprikt:

Ik denk dat hij ziek was van e-mails zoals degene die ik hem wilde sturen. Tweets zijn iets anders. We besloten om hem gewoon onze video te sturen.

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 jezelf een topjager
• zij/hij zal je een voorsprong geven in je race naar de top
• kijk naar (1) aantal volgers (2) geschiedenis van succesvolle posts (3) affiniteit met je product
• nagel je pitch
• geef je product een video

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.

Benodigdheden om voor te bereiden:

• Naam van het product 💁
  Vrij eenvoudig. Maar je kunt hier nog steeds het verschil maken. We hebben het Salesflare CRM om ervoor te zorgen dat mensen ons gemakkelijk konden vinden als ze achteraf op Product Hunt zochten naar een CRM.
• Juiste website URL (+App/Play Store URL's) 🔗
  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.
• Tagline ☝
  Pakkend en duidelijk. We gingen voor Intelligente verkoop-CRM voor starters die gedijen op technologie. Verkoop CRM om onze positie binnen de CRM-ruimte duidelijk te definiëren, intelligent als onze belangrijkste onderscheidende factor en startups die gedijen op 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.

• Maker Product Hunt-profiel-URL's 👨‍🔬
  Zorg ervoor dat teamleden die beschouwd worden als makers van het product allemaal op Product Hunt staan voor de lancering, zodat je Hunter iedereen als maker kan vermelden. Dit is niet alleen om er goed uit te zien. Opgenomen worden als Maker geeft je recht op commentaar, wat cruciaal is voor het aangaan van conversaties met de community.
• Video/Beelden 🖼
  Jouw kans om 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.

• Bereid je intro-commentaar voor 💬
  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 🔖
  Maak je product gemakkelijk vindbaar door relevante tags toe te voegen. Enkele voorbeelden van tags die we kozen voor Salesflare zijn techniek, verkoop, klantcommunicatie, chrome-extensie en 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.
• Startdatum van de jacht 📅
  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.
• Lanceertijd van de jacht 🕒
  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

• Bereid benodigdheden voor je lancering
• 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
• geef alles aan je jager, op een presenteerblaadje

4. Gather your fans 🤗

De geheime formule voor een succesvolle Product Hunt lancering bestaat uit twee dingen:

• een geweldig product (duh)
• initiële tractie

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.

Met een topjager aan je zijde kom je al een heel eind, maar vergeet niet dat gevechten worden gewonnen door soldaten, niet door generaals.

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) Vind je vrienden op Product Hunt 👫

De kans is groot dat je al wat vrienden hebt op Product Hunt. Product Hunt synchroniseert de mensen die je volgt op Twitter, dus je eerste stap zou moeten zijn om te controleren wie van hen bereid zou kunnen zijn om wat steun te tonen en hen op de hoogte te brengen van je aankomende lancering.

2) Vraag het toch aan je andere vrienden 🙈

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.

Hoewel Product Hunt niet zomaar een marketingkanaal is dat je kan exploiteren, kan je mensen er toch over vertellen. Product Hunt heeft dit soort zichtbaarheid nodig om te blijven groeien. Veel van mijn vrienden zijn al actieve gebruikers sinds we ze hebben voorgesteld aan de community. Zorg er alleen wel voor dat je dit doet vóór je lancering en niet op de dag zelf.

3) Maak een Google Sheet en volg op 📈

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) Zorg dat je op de radar komt van mensen die soortgelijke producten hebben geüpvoted 💡

Ga op zoek naar mensen die soortgelijke producten als de jouwe hebben opgewaardeerd en zorg ervoor dat ze je kennen.

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) Zoek naar sociale poortwachters 🌪

Geef speciale aandacht aan mensen met veel volgers en probeer hen zover te krijgen dat ze jouw Product Hunt lancering delen met hun netwerk.

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

• Groot product + eerste tractie = groot succes op PH
• vind vrienden op PH
• ask your other friends if they’re on PH — if they’re not, tell them about it ask if they want to be
• maak een Google Sheet voor follow-up
• scrape upvoters van vergelijkbare producten op PH => doel
• vind zelf een aantal beïnvloeders
• chat met iedereen die je kent om ze te vertellen over je PH lancering
• start een Thunderclap-campagne
• !! don’t forget to set up a Thunderclap campaign (like we did)

5. Butter up the community 💆

Geef het product Hunter een speciaal gevoel.

Waarom?

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

• Maak dat de Product Hunter's zich speciaal en geliefd voelen.
• door ze een supercalifragilistisch deal

6. Become a cat person 😼

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

Op een dag bood Product Hunt-fan Jesse Thomas aan om een T-shirt te ontwerpen. De Glasshole Kitty was een van de ideeën die hij opstuurde. Het Product Hunt-team vond het zo leuk dat ze een heleboel t-shirts en stickers bestelden en begonnen te versturen naar de eerste leden van de community. Deze deelden op hun beurt hun Kitty-cadeaus op sociale media, waardoor het idee van de Kitty-mascotte ontstond.

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

• Product Hunt houdt van katten
• om de een of andere reden

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! 💎

U kunt 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=productjagen). Here’s what Salesflare’s website looked like on her big day.

TL;DR

• maak je website stralend voor de grote dag

8. Set the internet on fire 🔥

OK.

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

Zeg het voort. Laat de grote kanonnen komen. Laat de Kraken vrij!

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’.

Hierna volgt een lijst met PH-guerrillatactieken waar zelfs Rambo jaloers op zou zijn.

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) Breng je klanten op de hoogte via e-mail en/of livechat 🗣

Je klanten hebben je product al gekocht/zich erop ingeschreven, dus ze moeten het wel leuk vinden. Volg degenen die al op je lijst staan op volgens je pre-launchstrategie. De rest kun je bereiken via e-mail en livechat op je website (als je die hebt). We hadden een Intercom-bericht dat verscheen om gebruikers te informeren over onze campagne zodra ze zich hadden aangemeld bij Salesflare. Nogmaals, chatten heeft een streepje voor op e-mail als het gaat om het informeren van je ontvanger over wat Product Hunt is en wat ze moeten doen als ze je willen helpen.

3) Twitter overspoelen 🌊

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).

Maak je tweets grappig en leuk met GIF's en memes zodat je volgers ze eerder zullen delen. Houd het gesprek vervolgens gaande. Mensen zullen je gaan tweeten en retweeten. Help, blijf nederig, bedank, like en retweet. Herhaal.

Bedank je jager, je upvoters en Product Hunt zelf. We bedankten elke upvoter met een persoonlijke tweet waarin we Product Hunt tagden om onze kansen op likes en retweets te vergroten.

Pro tip – 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,… 🎈

Naast Twitter kun je elk kanaal gebruiken dat je op de een of andere manier volgt om het wereldkundig te maken.

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 en Pinterest kunnen ook geweldig zijn. Het hangt allemaal af van je type product. Laat overal ballonnen los, maar vergeet niet om je boodschap altijd aan te passen.

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.

Early adopters en ondernemers vinden elkaar tegenwoordig steeds vaker in speciale Slack Chat-gemeenschappen. Dezelfde regels: verken van tevoren en ga een dialoog aan met de community voordat je ze iets vraagt. Je kunt beginnen met zoeken naar relevante Slack-gemeenschappen hier en hier.

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
• volg je lijst op
• kletsen
• zorg ervoor dat elke tweet op Twitter over je PH lancering gaat
• repeat for other channels — consider blog post on LinkedIn
• leuk zijn in Facebook-groepen en Slack-chats
• verdien wat serieuze karma op reddit en HackerNews
• een yuuuuuuge e-mailcampagne
• make friends — be a human being

9. Fly high on comments and caffeine ✈

Als je dit helemaal tot hier leest, denk je misschien dat het bij Product Hunt alleen maar om upvotes draait. 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.

Zorg ervoor dat je PH-pagina 24 uur per dag bemand is. Zorg dat er altijd iemand is voor technische vragen. Ook die komen op je pad.

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

• upvotes worden overschat
• it’s about getting people to talk about your product
• uw kans om te schitteren
• lead the conversation — always stay positive
• zorg ervoor dat mensen in het team 24 uur per dag wakker zijn
• bereid je voor op slaaptekort

10. The Aftermath 💥

Als je het goed doet, is Product Hunt een geschenk dat blijft geven.

Goed gedaan 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/ en http://thenews.im/ evenals verschillende Twitter-accounts. Twee dagen na onze lancering kwamen er nog steeds veel nieuwe upvotes binnen.

Een week later waren we nog overal bezig met het opvolgen van de effecten van onze Product Hunt-campagne.

• 878 upvotes
• 2e meest geüpvote product van de dag
• #1 CRM op Product Hunt
• 250+ nieuwe Salesflare proeven
• 150+ vermeldingen op Twitter
• 500+ nieuwe volgers op Twitter
• 4000+ website bezoekers
• Chatten op Intercom is een fulltime baan geworden

Effects weren’t just short-term.

Naast de dagelijkse rage wint Product Hunt snel aan populariteit als bron voor geweldige apps. De site is succesvol in het tegen betaling crowdsourcen van een ruimte die traditioneel wordt gedomineerd door directories zoals Capterra en GetApp.

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
• streef naar de top 5
• PH kan een duurzame bron van leads zijn

Your move 👊

Daar gaan we, jonge Padawan.

Ik heb je niets meer te leren. Maak me trots.

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 😸