Maximizing your launch ROI: A timeline for success
There’s no right or wrong way to approach launching your product, but there are some key milestones to consider while you’re working through your launch plan. On Product Hunt, your product’s journey is more than just 24 hours. There are months of lead up time that you can utilize to start building your community of supporters and endless cycles of iteration to follow.
We’ve put together this launch timeline to highlight a few milestones you can keep in mind as you approach launch day in an attempt to ease anxieties and make sure you know you’re on track to success.
For all our tips and tricks, you can check out our extensive Launch Guide that goes more in depth on every consideration for your launch.
60 days out
Engage with the community
Authentic relationships go a long way. There’s no time that is too early to dive in and start participating in the Product Hunt community. There are thousands of tech lovers that visit every day and are looking for ways to learn, connect, relate, and ideate amongst others that are leading the charge in their area of expertise.
Don’t be afraid to jump in. Product Hunt can be more than just your promotional billboard. Start a discussion on something that has been rattling around in your brain. Drop a line or two on a launch that sparks your interest. You never know what you might gain - a supporter, a co-founder, an investor, a beta tester, or a BFF.
Why should you care? Your followers are notified when you launch something as the maker. There are a lot of ways you can growth hack a community, but remember that authenticity is a long term play. The more time that you invest in building supporters, the longer they will stick around.
30 days out
Schedule your launch & create a teaser
Prior to your launch you have 30 days to tease your launch on our site for free! By creating a teaser, a short description of your launch and single image will show up on a standalone page as well as on our Coming Soon page. Here, your supporters or other people interested in your launch can opt in to be notified when you go live. The notification is sent via email and will encourage your waiting list to show up and support you on your launch day.
To create a teaser, you should first have all of your launch materials prepared.
💡Pro tip: Make sure to add a category to your launch so your product will show up on our category pages once it's live.
- Click “Submit” in the upper right hand corner
- Fill out the launch submission form
- Schedule your launch 30 days out for 12:01AM PT
- Once your launch is scheduled, you will see an option on your “My Products” page to create a teaser
- Add a short description and image to your teaser and click submit
7 days out
Make a plan and communicate it with your team
Coming from a marketer, this is my favorite part of the launch process. A strong go-to-market plan is important for the success of your launch. There’s a lot of room to be creative here, but our best advice is to leverage the channels you already have available to you and are active on. Usually that includes social media, email, Discord or WhatsApp groups, and within your existing product if it’s not brand new. Special promotions and giveaways are acceptable, but avoid paying for or giving monetary compensation in exchange for upvotes so your launch doesn’t get disqualified.
If you have a large team, remember communication is key. Let everyone know what’s going on, when, and who is responsible for what. The more people you can get involved in responding to comments, posting on social, or sharing with their personal networks, the better! List out what goes live on which day, at what time, and who’s responsible for making sure it happens.
If you’re not a natural born marketer, that’s ok because we build a template with Notion that will help you check all the boxes as you prepare for your launch.
Some of our team’s favorite tools to prepare for launch are:
- Communications: Slack
- Planning: Notion
- Designs: Canva or Figma
- Copy inspo: ChatGPT
- Social scheduling: SproutSocial
- Link tracking: Short.io
- Email: Iterable
- Push notifications: OneSignal
Launch day
Remind your supporters that your launch is live & respond to comments as they trickle in
On launch day (or even up to a week before), start reaching out to your existing network and remind them that you’re launching soon. You can share a direct link to your post, but avoid asking specifically for upvotes (it just doesn’t feel authentic). Some things you can say instead:
“Will you support my launch?”
“Would you be willing to share your experience with my product in the comments?”
“You can check it out and leave feedback.”
“Come celebrate this milestone with us.”
Utilize your launch dashboard to watch as comments and upvotes trickle in. Make sure to respond to comments and answer any questions that arise. The launches that stand out are the ones where the maker or whole team is involved and interacting on the launch post throughout the day.
1 day past launch
Claim your Hub & consider advertising
After launch day, don’t forget to catch your breath and celebrate your wins. Maybe you didn’t get product of the day, but you did get a few new customers and some invaluable feedback. Maybe you just made a small step towards overcoming the fear of failure or imperfection. Whatever it is, there is probably a win in there somewhere.
Once you’re ready, you can pivot your focus away from your Launch Page and on to your Product Hub. Here’s the difference:
- Launch Page: The launch page is more singularly focused on interacting with the community and collecting feedback on a specific update to your product. Main CTA is “Upvote/Follow”.
- Product Hub: Product Hubs are the central page for your product on Product Hunt. All the information related to a product's journey on Product Hunt has been rolled up into one location. You can find launches, reviews, team members, awards, and news about products throughout the years. Main CTA links to your website.
It’s important to claim your Product Hub so you can continue to manage your page and make necessary updates.
After your launch day is over, you become eligible to start running ads for your product. We make sure no ads are active on launch days as to keep the leaderboard rankings authentic and uninfluenced. Ads are self-service and can be configured based on your desired campaign objective, budget, and duration. They are a great way to keep your product top of mind on some of our most popular pages across our website and mobile app.
For budgets above $10,000, reach out to our sales team to kick off a conversation about adding Product Hunt into your regular marketing mix.
1 week past launch
Collect reviews
Now that you’re officially focused on your Product Hub and how that can help you generate further interest in your product, reviews are key. Reading reviews have become second nature before making substantial purchase decisions, so making sure you have real user testimonials baked into your page is a huge benefit to you.
We’ve seen that products with reviews get up to 8x more traffic than those without. 🤯
Reviews boost the visibility of your product across our website and improve SEO.
Here’s a few tips for asking for reviews:
- Find genuine users - it’s obvious when you don’t
- Send a direct link to review your product through 1:1 outreach (emails or DMs)
- Pick the right time - users are more likely to review during moments of delight
- Add an embed to your website or email campaign
2-6 months past launch
Start to think about your next launch
We all know how quickly time passes. Soon enough, you’re ready to start preparing for your next launch. You’ve taken time to gather feedback, hear from your users, and build the next iteration of your product. Every launch is free, but we encourage you to have substantial updates to share before you think about launching again so you keep your followers engaged. Each launch you’ll continue acquiring more and more supporters, and we can’t wait to watch you grow!
Comments (12)
Chris Messina
🏆 #1 Hunter!
Ruben Lozano
Growth Marketing Specialist for Startups
Jamie Sprowl
Marketing & Community
Ruben Lozano
Growth Marketing Specialist for Startups
Julio Medina
I love the interwebs.
andrewblakemore
dev
michael askew
hi
Jimbo
Co-founder, building software
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