Powerful Techniques to Find Leads Using Product Hunt

Have you heard of Product Hunt yet? Product Hunt is a dynamic new platform created by Ryan Hoover which has exploded over the last two years.

Product Hunt is simply a website and mobile app that ranks new products every day. Hardly a day goes by without a success story of how Product Hunt helped some startup earn thousands of dollars overnight, or acquire their first 1,000 users, email subscribers, and so on.

The setup of PH is similar to Reddit, though it’s much more oriented towards entrepreneurs and personal-improvement - you won’t find news articles or memes here.

As a publisher, anyone can submit their product, idea, or startup, include a description and link, and reach tonnes of potential targeted users. You can also submit podcasts, books, and other resources.

As a user, Product Hunt is a goldmine. It’s the best place to find out first about new products, apps, software, and other resources that can give your business a serious competitive advantage.

For example, Product Hunt was where I first heard of Logo Joy (logojoy.com), an AIpowered logomaker. There are also tons of great products for growth hacking and productivity on the site and you can find out about them first.

If you’re visiting Product Hunt for the first time, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the site. Product Hunt doesn’t come with a beginner’s manual, and you’d be forgiven if you feel lost at first.

Ignore the front page and instead take some time to scroll through the goodies on producthunt.com/topics/marketing or producthunt.com/topics/growth-hacking and other topics of interest on the site, and use anything you find helpful.

From a publishing standpoint, browse the categories at producthunt.com/topics to see if any of your current products or resources are a fit for publishing to Product Hunt. For example, relevant categories for me might include: Podcasts, Books, Business Podcasts, Marketing, Get Shit Done, Growth Hacking, etc.

To begin making your own submissions to the site is simple and straight forward. Click the “+” tab in the top-right of the website, add your link, and include some information. Add a photo, give some information about the maker, and voila - you’re done!

Also of interest are a relatively new feature to Product Hunt - “Live Chats.” These are open forums where you can freely ask questions of successful entrepreneurs, similar to a Reddit AMA. You can also see transcripts of previous live chats. Past guests have included the CEO of GoDaddy, Tim Ferriss, Dustin Moskovitz, the Founder of Tinder, and (depending on when you read this) Snoop Dogg.

One important difference between Reddit and Product Hunt is that Product Hunt requires that you link your social media profile (Facebook or Twitter). This simple prerequisite dramatically cuts down the negativity and makes Product Hunt a much more civil and positive place overall.

The community is also very entrepreneurial and supportive, and inclined to help out other entrepreneurs. It goes without saying that Product Hunt users are a prime market for B to B businesses.

Product Hunt is an upvote-based site, where clout and connections matter. Take some time to use the site, interact, and build relationships. When you publish on Product Hunt, make it count. Drive followers and subscribers to your submission.

How To Find Targeted Prospects In 5 Minutes Using Product Hunt

Just like Twitter, Product Hunt provides a developer API which lets us “hack” the platform and do some really fun things.

Some friends of mine really created a really cool “loophole” that lets you find targeted users who are interested in projects like yours - and instantly contact all of them.

Finding “lookalike” audiences and reaching out to them with your message has been a favorite tactic of online marketers for a long time now, and the process is always becoming more and more efficient.

You can do it on Facebook (Groups, Custom Audiences), you can do it with Google (retargeting), you can do it with Amazon reviewers (using audiense.com), and now you can do it with Product Hunt too (for free).

You may be blown away by how easy this process is:

1. Search around on Product Hunt, find projects similar to yours (or that appeal to a similar type of audience). If you go to producthunt.com/topics and scroll down, you will find a near-endless number of topics and categories. The more upvotes a project has, the better. Command + click (Mac) to open a few of these in new tabs.

2. Click your profile icon in the upper right corner, select “API dashboard.” Click “Add an

Application.” You can name it anything. For the redirect URL, just input whatever you like - I used https://google.com. Now click “Create Token” and copy the token provided.

3. Visit this URL: https://product-hunt-upvotes.herokuapp.com/ and paste in your token. Visit one of the project tabs that you’ve saved, and click “Get It.” Let the page redirect you, and once it’s finished, copy that URL and paste it “Product URL” tab.

4. Click “SUBMIT” and you’re done! The tool will provide you a list of the Twitter handles of every single Product Hunt user who upvoted the product, along with links to their Twitter pages.

Using this simple method, you can easily and quickly create lists of thousands of targeted users. You can begin interacting with them manually, or plug these lists into Massplanner (see the chapter on Massplanner strategies), where you can automatically follow and contact these users.

All well and good, but what type of message should you send? Remember that Twitter only allows 140 characters (not including your link). My advice is the simpler your “tweet,” the better.

Massplanner allows you to customize tweets based on a Twitter user’s first name, but I don’t recommend this as people will often not use their personal name - for example, if someone calls themselves “The Dude,” then their first name would be “The.” If you start a tweet saying “Hello The!” it’s a dead giveaway that you’re using automation.

At any rate, test different messages and see how well they are responded to, and save the best ones. In our tests tweets that are friendly, engaging, and provide a clear and easy benefit for the recipient work best.

BLOWING UP A LAUNCH: PRODUCT HUNT’S FRONT PAGE AND DAILY NEWSLETTER

Part of what makes it so easy to launch on Product Hunt is the supportive network of startup founders, creators, and early adopters who comprise its community. These are early adopters, product enthusiasts, tech lovers who love to be the first to try out a new product. Even if its only partially complete, these individuals love to test your idea first, offer feedback to improve it, and even help promote it. This community of “low hanging fruit” is exactly the market we want to reach when coming out with a brand new product.

There are a bunch of guides around for how to launch a new product on Product Hunt successfully, and many follow the same standard pattern: success comes down to belief in a product, passion, promotion and sharing, generosity, etc - all that squeaky-clean “white hat” stuff that sounds great. But what many of these guides don’t say - and fall short, is that they don’t describe the secret, behind-the-scenes tips that really make or break the success of a launch.

Logging in via Facebook or Twitter, and posting, downloading, or upvoting products on the site is easy enough. But if we really want to have a successful launch (the type that can explode our business overnight), we need to be a bit strategic. When launching on Product Hunt we should have three objectives: 1) to be the most upvoted product the day we publish on PH, 2) to have our product featured on PH’s front page, and 3) newsletter. Being listed on the front page and within the newsletter is where all the action is, the “holy grail” of launching to massive amounts of success.

What most tutorials on how to launch on Product Hunt won’t tell you is that if you have the right contacts, you can bypass most other products published to Product Hunt and skip directly to the front of the line. There are two sections where new “hunted” (published) products typically end up: in “Upcoming” and “Featured.” To be featured, you need to have a so-called “super user” publish your product to the site for you.

This select group of privileged individuals make up the heavy influencers - investors, journalists, creators, power users, and so on. And as being part of this elite group, they have the ability to publish your product directly to the front page of the site. You can find super users on producthunt.com/about. Or you can also look for other featured products on PH page by searching and see who hunted them. Come up with a small list and reach out to these users via twitter / email. Offer to give them free access to your product, personalize your request, ask for advice or feedback. See if they bite.

Once you have a super user onboard, treat them like a member of your team. They want to help you and if your launch blows up, they get kudos as well. You’ll want to coordinate with them and have all of your ducks in a row when you launch. Timing is important: ask your hunter to publish your product during morning, European time. This will give you a chance to gain momentum (and upvotes) ahead of peak traffic time. Most PH users are based on the US west coast, so it’s important to acquire as many upvotes as you can by the time they wake up.

Next, create a special offer for Product Hunt users. They really appreciate when you make them feel special, as the community does a lot to help early stage startup growth. Create an offer that’s exclusive to PH, such as a special extended trial or discount for the product. Be engaged, and reply to each and every comment.

With these steps done, all that’s left to do is promote the heck out of your product. Tap your network, mail your list, reach out to LinkedIn contacts. See the “Engineering Viral Launches” chapter for an extensive guide. Get as many upvotes as you can possibly manage.

Ideally, you’ll have several hundred upvotes by the time peak traffic hour arrives. The winners are chosen by lunchtime PST. If you make it into the “Top 5 for the day,” you’ll be included in the daily digest the next day, so it’s absolutely critical to pull out all the stops. Also, make sure not to post on the weekend, because daily digests are only sent out during weekdays, so you’ll have to compete with products posted between FridaySunday.

Finally, regardless of the type of product, remember that your audience is made up of Silicon-Valley types. These people love tech, they love innovation, they love “hacks,” individuals on a mission to “make the world a better place” somehow, and so on. Know your audience and if at all possible, use language that speaks to them.

I can’t promise that you’ll earn millions of dollars if you follow these steps, but there’s no question that PH can deliver you tens of thousands of visitors, users, subscribers, and revenue. Ignore it at your own peril. Give these steps a try and see how it goes!