{"id":1964,"date":"2024-01-22T12:05:56","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T20:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/?p=1964"},"modified":"2024-01-22T19:29:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T03:29:21","slug":"how-we-reached-1-on-product-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmkthinks.org\/blog\/how-we-reached-1-on-product-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"How we reached #1 on Product Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Product Hunt is one of my favorite marketing channels for generating leads, signups, and purchasers to a SaaS product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No other channel I know can offer quick results with a massive audience (millions of users) for no<\/em> cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, any <\/em>SaaS product \u2014\u00a0following a specific plan \u2014\u00a0can get great results from Product Hunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I’m going to show you how we launched TidyCal 3.0 on Product Hunt<\/a>… and reached #1 product of the day and week. We even beat out Notion \u2014 a company that has 100x resources \u2014 for the top spot. A big win for the underdogs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s not just a one-hit wonder either: We’ve had multiple <\/em>top five products over the years happen by following a repeatable framework that you can do, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I’ll show you our playbook to be the top product on Product Hunt. Plus, I’ll share our results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The advantage to getting the top product on Product Hunt is that you get lots of eyeballs \u2014 and their resulting downstream actions (leads, signups, customers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We strategically approached the launch to hit the #1 product for both the day and week because this milestone unlocks additional free promotion on the Product Hunt homepage and in Product Hunt newsletters sent to 500,000+ subscribers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here’s the three-step process we used to be the top on Product Hunt:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Use a Top Hunter to post your launch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We used Chief Sumo Noah Kagan’s Product Hunt account<\/a> to post. With 21,000+ followers, there’s a huge advantage to recruiting a Top Hunter to “hunt” (or post) your product. All of Noah’s followers got alerted with push notifications and\/or emails that he hunted TidyCal 3.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, the beginning of any launch is critical to grow bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you get to the top early, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: More people see your product, engage with your product, and keep you at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compare our most recent TidyCal 3.0 launch to our TidyCal (1.0) launch a few years ago below. Because of poor planning in the original launch, a random Product Hunt user with only 1,000 followers hunted our new product before we could do it ourselves. And the difference is staggering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The original launch didn’t come close to the top of the day, and was a wasted marketing opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding a Product Hunt user with 15,000+ followers is critical to stand above the competition and increase your chances of a successful launch. To find a popular Hunter, you can use this website<\/a> or search around on the Product Hunt for the top Hunters recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The short-term solution to get a top Hunter is simple: Pay them. As the old adage goes, you can have something fast, inexpensive, or good… but you can only pick two of the three. If you want a good Hunter to launch fast in the coming days\/week, it’ll cost money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have more time, a longer-term solution is to find a few Hunters you like and form relationships with them. Find out what would be a “win” for them, and they might even do it for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Set your launch plan and schedule<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preparation is the key to success. Give yourself a few weeks to prepare for launch. That will give you time to organize marketing activities, create designs, and get everything planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few basic settings I recommend for all Product Hunt launches:<\/p>\n\n\n\n