Thinking of launching your product in the international market? Product Hunt might be the best place to start! Drawing from our experience launching twice in Product Hunt, our product, Klever Suite, accomplished #5 Product of the Day and #2 SaaS Product of the Week, competing against hundreds of products launching on the same day from all around the world. 

We’ve learned so much from our past launches so we thought we’d share a little bit of what we’ve learned with you, in this blog. 

What Is Product Hunt? 

Product Hunt is a free international platform where users worldwide can introduce new digital products and apps. A lot of early startups or solo founders have decided to promote and launch their Product Hunt to:

• Approach other tech enthusiasts with a high level of support and enthusiasm

• Receive user feedback to improve their product

• Validate their product idea

• Collect authentic reviews on their product

• Find leads for potential customers

• Acquire more traffic to their site

• Look for investments from venture capitalists or investment funds

• Boost free promotional opportunities 

As a new SaaS product, we wanted to leverage Product Hunt’s site traffic that boasts up to 900,000 to 1,000,000 monthly visitors, with most of its users coming from the United States and India, two of the biggest tech markets in the world, with excellent development opportunities. 

We knew launching on Product Hunt would help us  build more international awareness on our product’s capabilities as an all-in-one productivity workspace and expand our marketing efforts beyond our domestic market in Japan.

How Does Product Hunt Work?

When you join Product Hunt, you can submit your product for launch. Remember that anyone who’s not involved in creating your product can submit it to Product Hunt–also known as the Hunter. Many new Product Hunt members thinking of launching often reach out to the active and notable Product Hunt members who have a big following to get more eyes on your product's launch.  In our case, we opted to have one of our own team members as the Hunter of our product, which again is not the most determining factor of success of your launch. 

When you've determined the day of your launch on Product Hunt, your product will compete with other products launching on the same day as you to appear on Product Hunt's homepage. Product Hunt gives out three awards: Product of The Day, Product Of the Month, and Product of the Year. A successful launch in Product Hunt means your product can achieve at least one of the three awards.

Now, what guarantees your spot on Product Hunt's homepage? If you've secured significant upvotes from "quality" Product Hunt users and comments, you can rank higher than other products. By "quality," we mean the number of Product Hunt accounts active on the platform for over a week.

7 Lessons From Our Successful Launch In Product Hunt 

A successful launch on Product Hunt requires excellent planning (and some luck and timing). In our case, our team had prepared for the launch months in advance to ensure the best results during the launch and after the launch. 

If you're sure about launching your Product in Product Hunt, there's 7 points to keep in mind:

Set specific team-wide goals

Before launching, we knew that we wanted to reach the top 5 Products of the Day. Everyone has their reasons for launching a product on Product Hunt. 

What's your goal? What do you hope to achieve with your product's launch?

In our first launch, Klever Suite landed at #18 Product Of The Day with 100+ upvotes. During our planning process, we knew we wanted to be more ambitious with our goal and aimed for the Top 5 Products of the Day to successfully build more awareness of Klever Suite and promote our latest offerings: our free forever plan and three months free trial for both our Standard and Premium plans. Additionally, products in the top 5 Product of the Day will receive a special badge from Product Hunt and are featured in the newsletter Product Hunt sends out, boasting over an estimated 750,000 subscribers and more worldwide. 

Know the rules and how Product Hunt works

As we were planning for the launch, especially in our first launch, we started exploring Product Hunt's platform and how it works. We also made sure that everyone on our team had a thorough look and understanding of Product Hunt rules so everyone was on the same page moving forward with the launch. 

One of the best ways to familiarize yourself with Product Hunt is by reading the Launch Guide Product Hunt offers. Not only is it easy for newcomers to the community to understand, but it also provides rich insights on the best time to schedule your launch, where your upcoming launch is displayed, and more. 

However, the guide doesn't explain the product ranking criteria or any rules that'll get your account banned, for instance, creating clone accounts to upvote your launch, which won't help you reach Product of the Day because Product Hunt values active accounts that's been engaging in Product Hunt for more than a week. 

Be active in PH way ahead of time

Staying active in Product Hunt,  engaging in discussions and connecting with other Product Hunt members in the discussion forums is crucial to your launch. Our team was consistently active in engaging in Product Hunt’ discussions in order to build credibility and presence in Product Hunt.  It's also a great way to network with Product Hunt members surrounding interesting tech topics or the latest trends and ask for their support when the time comes for your launch. We noticed that the more active we were, the more members were likely to connect with you outside of Product Hunt and follow our Product Hunt account. Product Hunt members will likely ask to communicate with you outside of Product Hunt, particularly on LinkedIn. 

Choose the right launch date

The launch date of your product depends entirely on your goals and your team's readiness.

In our case, our team meticulously chose the time and day of our second launch during the weekdays to try and capture the traffic volume on the weekdays and chose a less competitive weekday at the time, which was Thursday. If your goal is to reach Product of the Day, strategically speaking, it's worth looking into the competition rate throughout the days of the week. For example, How many upvotes do products launched on Tuesday get, on average? How many upvotes will it take to reach Product of the Day that day? For instance, if weekends generally see a lower competitiveness, the chance to appear as Product of the Day is significantly higher than launching on weekdays. 

Get support from your community

Before your launch, reach out to your community of entrepreneurs, founders, close friends, personal connections, or Product Hunt support groups to ask for support for your upcoming launch.  Our team was able to successfully reach out to more than 100+ Product Hunt members we connected with over time and ask for their support for our upcoming launch.  Our team also connected with other Product Hunt members in social media groups and created group posts asking for support on the upcoming launch.

Plenty of Product Hunt groups exist on Facebook, Telegram, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms, and it's essential to be a part of them before your launch to help boost your launch further on the day. A simple search for these groups with the key term "Product Hunt" would usually show the results. 

Setup a unique launch page on Product Hunt

There are multiple elements to remember to ensure your Product Hunt launch page conveys the right eye-catching message to users. To make our launch page more interesting, we decided to add a GIF of our  logo to give an interesting visual cue, although it only appears when users hover over your launch page. Using easy-to-understand words in your tagline that accurately captures the value of your product is a must-have. Our marketing team made sure that our tagline captured the true value of Klever Suite in just one sentence, and avoided complicated words as much as possible in your tagline. 

In the gallery images, we included multiple photos including a thumbnail, video link, and other supporting images that describe your Klever Suite’s main features. Including an introductory video of your Product is a fantastic idea that you can't ignore since it offers a rapid and easy way for Product Hunt users to get to know your product.  Afterwards, you can also write your 1st comment on launch. Our launch’s 1st comment included a brief overview of Klever Suite, what was new in our 2nd launch compared to our 1st launch and other new features, as well as a direct link to signing up for Klever Suite. 

Think of the 1st comment as a place where you can share the reasons for launching your product, a brief description of what your product does, and the highlighted features users need to try out. You can also use this space to share any promo code for Product Hunt members to purchase or try your product.

Answer all the questions, comments, feedback and reviews on the product

Once you launch the product, you must answer the reviews, comments, and feedback Product Hunt members share on your launch page in the first 24 hours. Our team had three and more members actively trying to answer each question or comment we received from the supporters of our launch in the first 24 hours, on top of sharing our launch link to other social media groups and sending outreach messages on LinkedIn, Telegram, and Facebook. When answering comments, it's essential to keep the conversation open when answering comments from Product Hunt members so you can extend the conversation further and suggest any action items they can do after they've checked out your product.  It’s important to note that Product Hunt's algorithm accounts for the number of upvotes in your launch, and the number of comments and feedback your launch page receives.

Our Product Hunt Launch results

As a result of our launch efforts, Klever Suite was #5 Products of the Day and #2 SaaS Product of the Week, with over 583 upvotes and 204 comments, as we competed with hundreds of other products launching on the same day, including OpenAI’s Sora. We saw a spike in site traffic and sign-ups to our latest Free plan offerings, the latest addition to our pricing offerings.  Since we were the top 5 Products of the Day, Klever Suite was featured in Product Hunt's newsletter the next day, keeping our launch momentum.

Product Hunt Launch Checklist

To help you prepare for your launch, here's a checklist of tasks that we used before and during our launches: 

A month before launching

• Reading guidelines and rules of Product hunt

• Create a product hunt account and ask your team to create their account.

• Engage actively with Product Hunt members in discussions, etc.

• Connect with other product Hunt members on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. 

• Join Product Hunt groups on other social media channels. 

• Plan your launch date.

• Creating social media posts announcing your launch and countdown posts

• Build your product website and implement the right analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, to help synthesize valuable insights.

• Create the contents displayed on your launch page (including images, your 1st comments, and brief descriptions of your product)

A week before the launch

• Reach out to your community to ask for support during your launch.

• Send messages to your connections on LinkedIn and other Product Hunt groups to ask for their support during the launch.

• Creating a social media countdown post about your launch

• Engage actively with product hunt members in discussions, especially launch discussions.

One day before the launch day

• Check your website's contents and ensure all the tools and contents are accurate and implemented correctly.

• Check the contents of your launch page and see if all the images, logos, and descriptions are properly written and uploaded.

Launch day

• Post on the Launch page
• Send messages to your connections on LinkedIn and other Product Hunt groups and ask for their support. 
• Offer support on their launch days as well, and keep note of the people who helped you during the launch so that you can do the same favor for them in the future.
• Review your Product Hunt group's discussion, upvote for other launched products, and ask for their support on your launch.
• Announce your launch on social media and share real-time updates with your audience.
• Respond immediately to comments, reviews, or feedback from Product Hunt users.

Post-launch

• Record the entire launching process for the upcoming launches you'll have in the future.

• Send a thank you message to all the supporters of your launch.

• Display the "Product of the Day" badge on your website.

• Share your launch experiences on Product Hunt's discussions, creating a social media post or blog post to educate other Product Hunt members. 

• Review the insightful Product Hunt comments to help improve your product further.