101 Guide to Launch Killer Products Like a Pro
How to avoid the dumb mistakes I made & gain maximum popularity!
Frankly, creating a product is hard. Launching a product is harder. When you mess up the launch, you end up wasting all the effort you put in and ultimately, getting frustrated.
As always, by following a strategy you can avoid this and make the most out of your precious effort. That's exactly what I'm gonna share with you in this article...
The Golden Rule
"Create a product and offer it in such a way that it becomes irresistible for the consumers not to pay attention!"
🏗️ Building an Audience
When I started, I barely had 10 followers on my social media accounts. So, every product I created ended up failing since not more than 10 people knew about it.
That made me realise that if I don’t have a large enough audience, there’ll be no one to sell a product to.
So, the first thing you should do is try your best to grow an audience on your social media accounts, especially if you don’t have enough money to spend on advertisements.
Indeed, it’s far easier said than done. Still, there’s a simple strategy you can follow to quickly gain more followers!
See, everyone undergoes the same hardship when growing on social media. As a result, most users have started following whoever follows them. It’s sort of like helping each other.
By using this, I was able to gain more than 100 followers within a month, starting with around 6 followers! So, you can trust me on that.
Start by following different people. Especially, look for people whose “following” count is far greater than the “follower” count. That means they are even following the same strategy. So, there’s a higher chance their followers will follow you if you follow them. It’s also a good thing to consider the people you follow would be potentially interested in buying your product.
By the way, focus more on Product Hunt because that’s a popular product-launching platform. If you can gain a considerable number of followers Product Hunt, no doubt, there’s a higher chance your next launch will be successful!
📦 Create a Sick Product
Now, say you have gathered a huge audience. Still, no one would use your product if it's not worth it!
That's why this is the most important phase of the whole process. The quality of your product determines everything!
To create a successful product, you need to solve a problem through your product. You should research and analyse whether the problem is painful enough for the consumers to use your product.
In fact, the problem you solve and the solution you provide via your product is the backbone when it comes to marketing it!
To make sure you are on the right track, ask for opinions from your audience through polls or quizzes. That's even a good way to interact more with your audience and keep up your follower count.
Here's the summary,
Find an idea
Research if it's going to solve a problem that's painful enough for the consumer
Execute the idea
"To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions."
~ Steve Jobs
Speaking of my experience, here’s a breakdown of all the products I have unsuccessfully launched and the problem each product was trying to solve.
Link Orchard — A link-in-bio tool to allow users to share only one link that would redirect to their other social media websites.
StudySphere — A fully automated Notion template to seamlessly integrate scientifically proven study techniques into users’ study journeys.
Full disclosure:both of these products are free and open-source (the reasons are explained in the following paragraphs).
I didn’t research before creating any of these products. I had no plan whatsoever to inform more people about them. Plus, there was already a saturated market for Notion Templates and link-in-bio tools.
For instance, Link Orchard was not something 99% of people would be interested in. Popular tools such as Linktree had already acquired the market.
StudySphere, on the other hand, was quite technical. You need Python and some other dependencies to set up the command-line interface it comes with. Even though the whole process would take only 15 minutes at most, it was pretty hard to market since it didn’t have a Graphical User Interface.
Well,I could have implemented one, but I was too lazy 😉*…*
📢 Market Your Product
A Rule of Thumb: Never launch your product immediately after finishing it! Instead, you must create a conversation around your product, attract people and capture their interest!
If you need some real-world examples,
Apple Vision Pro was first announced on 5th June 2023. But it was only released almost 8 months later: 2nd February 2024.
Tesla Cybertruck had a 4-year gap between its announcement and release 🤯!
However, you shouldn't leave a large time gap especially if you are just starting. 3 to 4 months is a sufficient time gap!
During this time gap, you should be posting content that revolves around your product. Here's a fancy strategy to follow:
Make the consumers aware of the problem and emphasise how much pain and loss it causes them.
Present solutions to that problem. Then, insist that your product is the best at providing those solutions! You can show some previews of your product to validate your claim!
You can choose which type of content you are going to post. Still, make sure to have a wide variety. Here are some examples:
Tweets
Blog Posts
Podcasts
Videos
Posts on Instagram or Facebook
I’m gonna be candid here :)
When I first came across this marketing strategy, I was like, “Hell NO!”. You see, it takes a lot of effort to create a product. How on earth can I wait longer to release it to the public? True, I could have been holding the marketing campaign while working on the project, but… (cough, cough)
You should NOT be like me. So, please be a bit patient and execute this marketing strategy. It will definitely pay you off.
🚀 Launch the Product
Ha, finally, the most exciting part!
If you have been keeping up with the marketing campaign we discussed above, you just have to announce your product is now available. Make sure to summarise the problem your product is trying to solve and how well it does so. That way, people who haven’t even engaged in the marketing campaign will be interested!
🥹 Get Feedback & Improve
Every year, a more refined product gets released by pretty much every tech company. That's how they can sustain their brand identity and provide the best service possible!
You should do pretty much the same! For instance, you can address issues with your product and get user feedback to improve it further.
👋 Conclusion
This is just a bird’s eye view of a product-launching strategy. I’m planning to write in-depth articles for each section. So, feel free to follow me on Hashnode!
To sign off, let me leave you with a nice analogy.
Your product is your child. By launching the product you are only giving birth to it. Afterwards, you have to feed it and make it grow. The more you love and care for it, the more it will yield!
Along the way, have some fun raising your cute little product baby! Best wishes! 🤞