Launching your product on Product Hunt should be part of your wider go to market strategy, according to Sélim Benayat, founder of Bento, a platform for building personal pages, which was recently acquired by link in bio tool Linktree.
Product Hunt serves tech savvy, early adopters who value design-focused products. It may not be a platform for everyone but it can have a huge impact for the right product — for Bento, it exponentially increased its user growth and became a sustained user acquisition channel for months after launch.
In our Startup Life newsletter, Sélim shares his top tips for launching on the platform.
Decide if it's the right platform to launch on
Product Hunt should be treated as one part of your overall go to market plan. Don’t just do it because everyone else is — it needs to makes sense for your company. Launching on Product Hunt can help you reach your target audience if:
- You’re a community-driven product
- A consumer app for the developer and design community
- You help make people’s work more efficient
- You support the creator economy.
Have something for users to play with
When you launch, you want your product to be at a stage where people can experience it in some shape or form — it doesn’t have to be perfect or anywhere near done — to understand your value proposition.
Let people know you’re going to launch on Product Hunt
If you already have a community — either for your startup or a personal one — let them know on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and email channels when you’re going to launch and why their support is important to you. Be clear with your call to action: Do you want them to upvote? Do you want them to comment on their experiences with your product?
Invest in a product video specifically for the platform
Product videos need to explain a user journey and express the values and benefits of your product. They need to speak directly to your audience (in this case, Product Hunt’s community) and grab their attention within the first three seconds.
You need to be hands-on on launch day
You need to engage with the Product Hunt community by answering each and every question and by jumping into discussions. You’ll find the conversation often moves to Twitter too, so make sure you’re monitoring that. This will help build authentic connections with the community and show your potential users that you care about the product and about their thoughts.
On the subject of... Product Hunt
💡 Why Product Hunt exists. “The more people with large networks who love the product, the more people they will bring into the fold.”
🔎 How to "hunt" a product. A step by step guide.
🚀 Launch your no-code product. No code platform Softr made it to number one on Product Hunt. Here’s its checklist to support you from pre to post launch.
