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Launch
Launch
3-2-1 blast off!
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Step 1: create your launch plan
Launch Tactics
🖥 Create a landing page
Add to plan
Design a page that effectively sells your product to the target audience.
Good for:
✅ Very few products can do well without a good landing page unless the product itself can effectively act as the landing page
🎥 Create video
Add to plan
Create a marketing video that can be shared on your landing page and across other channels
✅ You have the skills or weeks of time needed to get the skills to make a great video
✅ You have the budget to hire a professional
✅ Your product demos well
🤝 Get featured by a platform
Remove from plan
Get the platform that hosts your product to feature you.
Good for:
✅ If your product is has a general enough audience for a broad feature
✅ If your product uses the latest features of the product
✅ You have a way to get connected with folks who work at the platform
📺 Get press coverage
Remove from plan
Pitch your story to the press.
Good for:
✅ If you have a newsworthy story/angle
✅ If your product plays into a trend writers are already covering
✅ You have a way to get connected to journalists
⬆️ Get to the homepage of upvote channels
Add to plan
Submit your product to platforms like ProductHunt, Reddit, and Hacker News.
Good for:
✅ If your product is relevant to a popular upvote channel
📢 Announce to all your audiences
Add to plan
Cash in on all the interest you’ve been building up.
Good for:
Step 2: execute the launch plan (2 tactics)
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Your customized launch checklist
🤝 Get featured by a platform
2
Find an angle
Put yourself in the shoes of someone working at the platform your product is on, whether that be the iOS App Store or something like Webflow. What are the reasons someone from that company may want to promote your product? Is your product in a category that the platform is currently really pushing? Does it show off a recent feature of the platform? Is your product exclusive to the platform or couldn’t be built any other way because of the value the platform provides? All of these could be angles for why a platform may want to promote your product.
Try to get connected to the team
The most reliable way to consistently get featured by a platform is to develop relationships with the people building or managing the platform and consistently show them that you are building quality stuff on their platform. Even if it’s someone who doesn’t directly curate the platform, people within a company usually can spread the word internally about your product or connect you to the right people. So you can look through your Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections to see if you know someone (or knows someone who knows someone) who you can connect with.
📺 Get press coverage
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Build relationships with journalists
PR is a long term game. To play it well, you need to develop relationships with journalists over time. Engage with them on Twitter, find ways to add value, meet them at conferences, etc.
Create a list of journalists you will pitch to
Go to publications that your target audience reads and find the journalists within those publications who tend to cover the kind of thing that you are pitching. Pitching a specific journalist will generally give you a better success rate than a generic pitch. Volume matters because whether someone will cover your story can be very circumstantial (they may have 3 other important stories that week
Create a press kit
A press kit is usually shared folder that contains some basic things that make it easier to cover your product. These can include logos, screenshots and GIFs of your product, images of founders or other pictures that could add interest to the article, and sometimes a press release.
Send email pitches to each journalist
A week or two before launch, send your email pitches. The content of this pitch is really important. It should communicate the problem your product is trying to solve, what your product does, and why it is unique and newsworthy (which could include tying it to some bigger trend or adding in a unique part of your story).
Make sure to include the basics too: when your product launches (and if you want them to wait to publish until a specific day/time), how much it costs, the landing page URL, the press kit URL, and any information they need to access the product for free.
Follow up
Journalists are busy. Don’t be pesky but do follow up if you haven’t heard back (and definitely follow up if they respond back to you).
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