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š 6 proven ways to launch your product and get your first customers
... and the reading list on how to do it right (+my secret weapon for B2B)
Peter Nguyen
July 09, 2024
My āhobbyā is collect things. (Read: Iām a hoarder). One of them are all things business articles. I read everyday and collect them like people collect stamps.
Itās beginning to feel like if someone asks me about a topic, I can respond to them with: Thereās an article for that.
Todayās question is something I see new (often tech oriented) founders ask a lot: Where do I launch my product?
Launching your app/product/service can be nerve racking. A good launch can kickstart your business, verify your products, and give you a good emotion boost (the first dollar is always the sweetest, right?)
Launches are busy and stressful. You donāt want to waste time with tactics that donāt work. This is my collection of proven ways people have launched their business/products, with real life examples and tactics from founders.
š Table of contents
0. First, what you DONāT want to do on your launch day
Listing sites: Most listing sites are terrible and never bring any actual traffic. Iāve tried this first hand. In general, if something is easy and free, itās probably not going to do anything for you.
Some listing sites will give you a backlink for your trouble, which in the end is good for SEO, but that brings me to the next pointā¦
SEO: SEO will probably be a part of your long term marketing plan, but itās most likely not going to do anything on your launch day, so either do it before, or save that for a later date.
Content marketing: Like SEO, itās a decent long term marketing strategy, good for building an audience, but not for launch day.
With all that said, hereās what you should do instead.
1. If you read this handbook 1,3,6 months earlyā¦
If you have a following already on your launch day, great. Use it.
If you read this 1,3,6 months early and you donāt have a social media following, time to build one for your launch! Choose one social media that your potential customers hang out, and start making relationships there.
Alternately/in addition, build an email list
I will always be advocating for building a newsletter/email list, and thatās not just because Iām affiliated with beehiiv ;). A mailing list is the one thing that you never have to worry about algorithm changes, or policy changes, or whatever changes social media companies do that might take away all your audience one day. I have trust issues buried deep inside my brain, and having a mailing list is the only thing that has ever made me comfortable.
Now, growing a following is a huge task that canāt be solved by just reading a few articles. (Reading a lot of articles might help, subscribe to this newsletter for that. I send the best stuff I read everyday). There are reasons companies need one, two, or ten people working on this.
If youāre going solo, try to stick with 1-2 main channels, and learn how to grow those very well.
With all that said, hereās a few good reads to getting started.
Social media:
The most viral LinkedIn post - PJ Milani's 16k subs and 200k+ social followers are certified organic
Email:
2. Hackernews
If your product offers a generous free version, is open source, or innovative, or is cool and hip in general with the hackernews crowd (which is mostly Tech and Open Source oriented), you can try this method.
Thereās great upside to being viral on hackernews. I went viral on it for just an hour or two, and that brings thousands in referral traffic over my site.
The downside? The crowd over here is pretty judgy, grumpy, cynical, sometimes unreasonably so, and thereās nothing you can do about it. They will dig up your history and mistakes you made (and fixed) 3 months ago and use that against you (also true story happened to me). You have to be 100% on point with what you share on hackernews, and be as little salesy as possible (and maybe donāt get too personal like I did, itās not very good for mental health).
2 best posts Iāve found on getting on Hackernews.
3. Producthunt
Of all the free product listing sites, Producthunt is one of the few ones that might offer actual traffic and potential customers.
Despite that, people have reported the quality is going down. It seems like the consensus these days is a Producthunt launch can only be successful if your product is relevant to āother Producthunt launchersā. I can definitely see that.
Iāve been debating with myself for so long whether to just put Producthunt on the āthings you donāt want to doā column. In the end I leave it here, just because someoneās product might be relevant on PH, I guess.
Launching on Producthunt is actually not that complicated, itās just you might not like it.
The plan is simple: set a launch date, and then tell your audience to come there and upvote your product early on that day.
What if I donāt have an audience, you might ask?
Well the answer to that is simple. Go back to strategy 1 and start building an audience.
You can still launch on PH without an audience. You can still get some eyes on your product, but 100x harder. In my research, you probably need at least 100 upvotes to get to trending in that day (depends on the day of the week, and the more, the better). And then from there your product will get to a lot more eyes. And then if your product is good (for the PH crowd), it might just take off.
Hereās your reading list if you want to launch on PH:
4. PR/Publications
PR is hard, really. Unless you know what you are doing and/or you have established relationships with journalists already, thereās going to be a long road ahead of you.
First off, donāt bother with āthe wireā. Itās basically a network to blast your PR documents out. Those never bring any traffic, the links are also not permanent, and the general consensus is itās a waste of time for small business. Hereās someone elseās article if you need more convincing.
The way to do real PR for your launch is actually not too complicated.
Hereās a 2-step guide to do it:
Figure out your āstoryā. Thereās gotta be an interesting story on your product/your launch, or even yourself. Thatās what journalists want to hear.
Find the publications, and more importantly, the journalists in said publications that might be interested in publishing your story, and pitch it to them.
Obviously, itās easier said than done. I havenāt done it myself as well, so take all these with a grain of salt.
Hereās the best readings Iāve found on how to do PR right though.
How to Build A Media List (Without Paying For One) How to Contact Reporters For Your Digital PR Campaigns
How To Pitch to Journalists: Expert Tips From Techcrunch, NYT & More The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)
5. Paid Ads
Depends on your ROI and scalability, ads can be very attractive and profitable.
Paid ads should always be in a tool your arsenal, unless youāre targeting a very narrow crowd (say enterprises, CEOs, etc).
For beginners, I recommend Meta Ads. Itās simple enough to wrap your head around and is proven to work for a lot of businesses. My main job used to be managing ads for local companies, and Meta Ads has proven to be very profitable over and over again.
You can also try other social mediaās ads, if you think your audience hangs out specifically in those channels. Or you can do multiple of them if you have deep pockets.
Iād avoid Google Search Ads for now, as itās complicated to setup, takes a lot of work to figure out, and is quite expensive comparatively.
My one pro tip on Meta Ads would be to always select the conversion event that matters the most (sign ups/purchases). The ad algos will optimize displaying your ads to people that are more likely to convert for that event. Never do ātrafficā. Youāll get nothing but meaningless bot traffic.
Paid ads are potentially great if you have the budget for it, but it takes a bit of time to figure out whatās the best creative for your ads. It can be very lucrative though once youāve figure it out or you have huge ROI. Spending 1 dollar to get 2 dollars is always a no brainer.
Hereās your paid ads reading list:
A really detailed guide to writing high performing Facebook ads The Ultimate 2022 āBLUEPRINT" For Running Profitable Facebook Ads
5.1 Bonus: Paid Email Ads
This is kind of an āinsiderā knowledge from running a newsletter: Newletters and mailing lists are growing! Tyler Denk from beehiiv, which is the email platform I used, has reported that their ad network is the fastest growing revenue channel to date. There are more demand for putting ads in newsletter than supply (personal experience š).
Ads on emails look more natural, are highly targeted, and in general higher quality than other channels. I canāt speak for other platforms, but beehiiv vets the clicks authenticity pretty well. So try that if you want to run a different kind of ads.
6. Connect with influencers
Admittedly, Iāve never try this method before. This can be very attractive though if you got the right people to promote your business. Thereās not much for me to say myself, other than hereās a very detailed playbook to get started:
Going viral is always a dream, but itās very hard. Going viral is also (usually) not an accident. Building mechanics into your product seems to be the main way people do it. Hereās the readings Iāve found if you want to dip your toes in viral strategies.