The Solution
Back in their day, hugely successful e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and Webflow had all previously launched on Product Hunt. Slack and Figma also leverage Product Hunt's community, as well as established players such as Facebook and Google also releasing new products and features regularly onto the platform.
It was important that the goal of the launch wasn't centred around being #1 Product of the Day, but rather to build a community of early adopters, gain high quality product feedback and establish relationships with key movers and shakers.
Product Hunt launches shouldn't be viewed as a once-off event, but rather as joining an active community where Swell needed to be contributing value regularly to the ecosystem. Thus, the game plan for the Product Hunt launch started long before launch day.
Key strategies that I used included:
- Identified key movers and shakers to build relationships with, reaching out to them well in advance of launch on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Engaged with other startups in similar verticals and contributed high quality feedback on their Product Hunt launches
- Tested the Swell landing page headlines and positioning so they were ready to jump out at potential customers on launch day
- Locked in Leandro from the Product Hunt team to be Swell's hunter — having a person on the actual Product Hunt team made the process really smooth! Leandro brought so much knowledge and up-to-date insights about how the platform worked, which we were able to leverage in order to launch on Product Hunt's main page.
- Built hype a few weeks prior to the launch with the Swell user base and network through engaging with them via email and social media
- Made sure our creative assets were designed to be easily shareable on social media as well as being clear and engaging for the Product Hunt community
And on the actual launch day, there were a few more things I made sure of:
- Having a brightly coloured eye-catching giphy logo for the launch 👏🏽. I know this sounds like a small detail but every little detail adds up when differentiating your launch against a sea of other giphy logos.
- Making sure that the Swell team was ready to launch at midnight SF time in order to take advantage of the timezone and additional momentum in upvotes before New York morning came along
- Ensuring that everyone on the team had their network ready to engage with the launch
- Making sure a dedicated person was actively engaging on Twitter and amplifying any tweets made about Swell's launch, so that Swell would be on Twitter fire for the next 24 hours 🔥
- Asking high profile advisors of the company to leave high quality feedback, tweets and comments
- Making sure Swell's first comments were anchored onto the launch page and gave a clear and concise overview of the company
- Last but not least, making sure we responded to every comment that was made on the launch, and ensuring that we had authentic engagement with any negative feedback or criticism
The Results
In the end, the launch was a success! Not only was Swell featured as a Product of the Day, but they also caught the attention of the Product Hunt Daily Digest newsletter editors who published the headline "Swell -> the next Shopify?" to their audience of 500k+ tech readers.
As a result of the Product Hunt launch, Swell also built a strong community of early adopters, received a huge influx of signups from high calibre brands and marketing agencies looking to partner. Swell also managed to close their funding round of $3.4 million dollars several months after — right during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
