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After a 24 hours marathon we became product #4 of the day and #1 Marketing product of the week.
But is launching on Product Hunt worth it and what can you expect?
I guess we all have these questions before launching. So I thought it’s a good idea to share our experience and learnings with you in this article.
Table of content:
- Our launching strategy - What we did to make it in the top
- Preparation phase
- Launch day
- Our learnings - What we would have done differently
- Our results - What was the actual gain
OUR LAUNCHING STRATEGY FOR REPLIQ
To understand our strategy it’s relevant to first understand what RepliQ is about. Here’s our headline and description to quickly get an idea:
RepliQ PREPARATION PHASE
I would say that the preparation phase is the most important phase of your launch. Everything you do before launch is what’s going to determine how your launch day turns out. Here are our best tips for an effective launch.
Hunt the Hunter
Since our tool is all about making a bigger impact and getting more replies on cold emails and Linkedin campaigns we had to do what we preach - to reach out to the Hunters on cold email and make them WANT to hunt RepliQ. So what we did was to use this leaderboard to find Hunters to reach out to https://upvote-bell.com/leaderboard
After having the list we needed to create a message that would make them want to talk to us! So we thought - What would be a better idea to actually use the tool that they are going to hunt to reach out to them? So what we did was simply to use RepliQ to create videos in bulk where we recorded 1 video and used RepliQ to generate the Hunters Product Hunt profile in the background of our video to pique their curiosity and make them click and watch our video.
Here’s our email:
To quickly break down the email template, this is what we did:
- Used personalization in the subject line
- Start off with a joke
- Made the intro copy personalized
- Used a RepliQ video with their Product Hunt profile in the background of our video
- Finish off with a question they can ONLY answer if they watch the video
- Used liquid syntax that changes after the day the email is sent to make it feel less automized
We sent this to the top 100 Hunters and Makers to ask for their feedback and their first impression of RepliQ.
So, did it work?
Here’s some of the replies that we got:
These are just SOME of the replies we got and it’s from Product Hunt's TOP Hunters and Makers!! This gave us fuel to say the least for the launch as we got extra validation that RepliQ works! As you can see we had few options to choose from but in the end we are happy with our choice.
Now was it worth it to have a Hunter?
For us it definitely was as it’s not only giving you more visibility but also credibility to have someone experienced in your field to back your product. Also, since it was our first launch it was priceless to have someone reviewing our material and giving us feedback.
Engage in the community
Several weeks before the launch we started to engage in the community and support other launches. We tried to keep our streak and posting in the community to get insights and get to know other members. What we saw that others did was to change the background of the profile picture to the same color for the entire team to get noticed in the feed. We really liked the idea and did the same for our team to increase our brand awareness.
Join FB, Linkedin, Whatsapp, Discord, Slack groups
Weeks prior to the launch we joined different groups and started to engage there to make people know about our launch.
Here are the top sources we got our biggest support:
- PH community in the discussions
- Support sheet with 100+ emails for people that will launch and have launched https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ViMpPoFHsClkK8jV5N2zOzshyjYU4mQIFPSs9sb4P4A/edit#gid=0
- Invincible ProductHunters Whatsapp group
https://chat.whatsapp.com/B9AT5bd5sDZGpz3YZu4NXF - Builders’ Hub Whatsapp Group https://chat.whatsapp.com/DNW2S9mio0U948zGTF7cRc
Other groups we joined:
- Product Hunt groups on FB (just search for it and you will find a bunch)
- Several growth hacking and cold emailing groups on FB (join groups that makes sense for your product)
- Prospecting and lead generation groups on Linkedin
We didn’t get much engagement here but we see that we got several hundred views from our posts in each group
- Last but not least we notified our own network and email list to inform them about our launch.
Prepare food and snacks
The night before we did some team pep talk and prepared food and snacks to be ready in front of our screens for a long and intense 24 hours race. This moment was special for me, excited and nervous at the same time as I had no idea what to expect! Whatever the outcome we promised to have fun and make the most of the day.
REPLIQ LAUNCHING DAY
So we chose to launch on a Monday as we understood it’s less competition on Mondays and Fridays. But we wanted to ride on the wave the entire week we ended up choosing to launch on a Monday.
All makers made a post in the community
First thing we did in the morning was to make the first Maker comment. After that the 3 of us made a post each in the discussions. When we notified our network for our launch we also notified them about our discussions to make them engage in the threads. As we started off having upvotes on our discussions we climbed to the top where the whole team was visible and the PH community saw that we were launching. This was incredibly powerful and gave us amazing support from the community. We had so many giving us great feedback and upvotes to support us. This was one of the key moves for our successful launch.
Post in all communities and groups
Before launch we preparead posts to post on different channels. Remember to differentiate the posts and structure depending on the channel and the topic of the group you’re posting in to bring value and not just ask for upvotes. When posting in the growth hacks and lead generation groups we talked about their challenges and just a quick note that we are launching on Product Hunt.
Follow up after every 4 to 6 hours
Follow ups are really efficient, obviously you need to be humble and not spam! But doing it a couple of times during the day gave us bigger support. Remember that many of the members get the question daily to support launches and it can be tiring so it’s important to be understanding. I believe everyone wants to help but many times it just falls between the chairs.
So why was this work necessary?
Because you want to be in the top in order to be visible on the top front page which drives more people and more upvotes. These support upvotes gave us a chance to be visible to our target audience and go from support upvotes to upvotes from the ones that really are interested in using RepliQ.
Learnings
- Start to prepare for your launch earlier than you think
We started off several weeks before the launch and created an upcoming page just a week before. Now afterwards I think we could have gained more subscribers if we started off earlier and drove more traffic to the upcoming page.
- Prepare a detailed plan for launch day
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when the bell rings and you are up on your launch day. Preparing a detailed plan for the day helps you be on track on the things you should do and reminds you of things that could be easy to forget.
- It’s not over after launch day
After a 24 hour battle we thought it would just die out after launch day but the traffic and engagement continues and you should ride on that wave as long as possible. As we still are on the top in the discussions we still get upvotes and comments on our launch page and therefore still getting traffic to our webpage. Seeing that our competitors' upvotes stopped after launch day and ours are still counting, we see that our efforts are paying off!
- Utilize the experience and the traffic for more content
Continue to use your launch for more content to drive more traffic, like this article.
RESULTS
So what was the final gain on our Product Hunt launch?
- 585 Upvoted and counting
- 1100+ website traffic between 14-17 november
- 66 signups as of november 18th
- We still continue counting 200+ website traffic a day
Besides this we also got amazing visibility by Product Hunt tweeting about us:
Product Hunt Linkedin Post:
Featured in Product Hunt Newsletter:
Besides more website traffic, sign ups and meetings we see that people know about us as they mention RepliQ in different channels and groups:
https://producthuntroulette.substack.com/p/repliq?sd=pf
We also got several meeting requests from potential partnerships, investors and VC’s.
For us launching on Product Hunt was definitely worth it in terms of results and visibility. But above all it was a great experience and it created an amazing team spirit. Having a deadline on a launch also pushed us to create marketing materials and copies that we will use in many other campaigns outside of the launch. I hope this was helpful and start preparing your launch today!
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