From experience, I see that product makers most often rely primarily on just 2 things:
1. Social media (and ads on them)
2. Influencers and UGC

As if nothing else existed.

We re getting ready for our second Product Hunt launch on Jan 31, and a post by @busmark_w_nika got me thinking.

What to do (that we didn't do the first time):

• Plan your launch. What does it mean?

  • Write down everything you need to do before you launch.

  • Cleaning your copy

  • Your product images

  • Your product video (demo under 60 seconds if you can)

  • For our first launch, we didn't do anything. Even though we got 2nd Product of the Day, I would not recommend others to leave it to their luck. Plan and maximize your chances of success.

• Keep it simple, stupid.

  • Don't overcomplicate your page with lots of marketing language.

  • Simplicity, clean product screenshots, and clear language.

  • I think this is the single most important thing to take into account when launching, and why we probably did so well on our first launch.

    • Ask yourself: Does the tagline make sense? Will others understand what the product does and what it is in under 10 seconds?

    • For us at @Pretty Prompt: Grammarly for prompting. (Grammarly = it is an extension.) Improve prompts in one click. (super clear what it does).

    • You can straight away visualise how you might use the product and what it will do for you.

• Focus on your strengths.

  • Don't give everything you got in one go.

  • Earn the right for people to read and scroll down. Read and scroll down.

  • Save some stuff for your pinned post.

  • People have a short attention span.

  • Hook people on your most important feature, showcase it front and centre, don't give me everything together cos I'll forget, and also I'll get lost.

  • For us at @Pretty Prompt: Improve your prompts in one click. Works inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Lovable, and more.

  • Even though you have about 10 other features on Pretty Prompt, we don't talk about them right in the beginning; we just feature that one "killer feature" and let users dive deeper afterwards.

• Product assets = show, don't tell.

  • Your images and video should be about your product.

  • Don't make it marketing-heavy. Make it product-heavy.

  • Show me what the product does, don't tell me about it.

  • For us: 60-second demo video actually using the tool. Screenshots of the top features (Improve - Refine - Save - History). Not fancy Figma designs, I mean screenshots of the actual product.

  • If you get big like Notion, Cursor, Claude, etc. you may also be able to add a more human video of you talking about the product, or new functionality, your story, etc. But for the majority, just show your product, and let the product win.

• Learn from others.

  • Though no two products or launches are the same, you can learn from others and pick the best things that fit your own product.

  • Checkout this post by @fmerian on "The Cursor Way to Launch". Great tips.

• Warm up the Audience.

  • Don't just rely on your followers.

  • Use as many channels as possible to maximise the reach and get people excited about your launch, even before you launch.

  • If you do this step well, the launch is just 50% of the job, and you're already a step ahead of most.

  • For us: I did a community post, Substack one, LinkedIn one, Slack one. We'll be recording a founder video too. I want it to be as human as possible; people buy into people.

Curious what s the most unexpected way someone s used your product? Looking for fun, weird, or totally unintended use cases.

I believe every project should have a website to showcase its offering, not to mention for SEO purposes. Whether SEO will still be relevant due to AI is another discussion.

Do you have any favourite websites that are both functional and beautifully designed?