Product Hunt is where MVPs and startups go to die or thrive.

Which one are you?

If you launch successfully on Product Hunt, you can get thousands of subscribers and customers.

If done wrong, you’ll realize you never had a product people wanted or took the time to build an audience.

We did it the right way when launching the book, THE BAMF BIBLE which led to over 4,000 new subscribers and thirty high-quality leads for my agency – all within nine days.

Before reading on, ask yourself:

“Should I launch on Product Hunt?”

If you check off these requirements, then yes:

1. You have a product targeted at the early adopter market in the tech startup scene
2. You have a product people are willing to pay for
3. You’re not pitching a pure enterprise product
4. You have consistent value once they opt-in
5. You have an audience ready to engage

THE BAMF BIBLE is a book with 25+ growth hacking case studies from 2017. It fits the early adopter demographic because growth hacking implies you have a new secret sauce to grow startups. Moreover, people expressed over and again that they’d be willing to pay us for the book. And, most importantly, we had #4 and #5 covered.

This is where most Product Hunt launches fail.

They gather thousands of subscribers.

Then what?

They get a generic thank-you email, then there’s no follow-up.

If you don’t have an email or Messenger update that consistently provides value every week – don’t launch.

Otherwise, you’ll lose the people who visit your website and opt-in. Most people who launch on Product Hunt don’t have a valuable follow-up – that’s why most fail even with a thousand plus upvotes on their product. Ouch.

You can’t guarantee upvotes either.

You need momentum and that comes from a community who will engage with your launch.

“I launched my super awesome AI-driven GIF creator on Product Hunt. I’m guaranteed to go viral.” – Said no one ever.

You need to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and send out email and Messenger blasts. If you’re not active on social or run an engaged subscriber list, then your chances of success on Product Hunt are almost zero.

You can always spam many Facebook Groups and Facebook friends, then ask people to promote you for free, but this will make you look like an asshole and you won’t get results 🙂

Rather than rely on bad marketing, let’s rely on what works – systems with proven results.

I’ll take you step-by-step of how to create an audience, have a successful launch, and take care of your subscribers afterward:

Assemble Your Team & Create Trust

One of the main factors that contributed to my book’s success was the people involved. I had many high-level entrepreneurs, marketers, and founders who contributed. As a result, upon release, they’d share it with their communities.

Who’s involved in the making of your product?

Whether it’s beta testers or a huge community, ensure they’re the right people for when you launch. You don’t want them pretending to love what you do, then dropping out right before the finish line.

To highlight our contributors, we gave them a dedicated section at the beginning (NOT THE END) of our book. We wanted them to know we genuinely cared about their contribution. Then we used that page as one of the first pictures on Product Hunt.

Did it work?

Each one of them shared.

Plus, it better reflected the vision of those who wanted to engage – a product that represents the communal aspect of Badass Marketers & Founders .

The second half, I needed people to trust that this would be an epic book of growth hacks. People don’t have a reason to upvote unless you’ve given them tons of value beforehand. Imagine you’re on Product Hunt and never heard of Badass Marketers & Founders.

Would you upvote the book right away?

Of course not.

You haven’t even read it.

And we can’t expect people to upvote the book a month later once they’ve finished reading.

We needed people who trusted the value we were providing, so they’d upvote us before reading. This was a critical piece to our success.

By publishing growth hacks over the previous year, we had built that trust. It takes time – there’s no way around it.

Collect Emails & Subscribers

I took a different approach than many Product Hunt launches. Rather than building my email list beforehand, I built my Messenger list.

Why?

A small two-hundred person sample size on Messenger gave me ridiculously-awesome results:

An eight-times higher click-through rate and three-times higher open rate than email.

Looking at the data, my 1,000-person Messenger list before launch engaged as powerfully as a 10,000-person email list. To build my Messenger list, I used ManyChat because they have many landing page features that enable me to catch subscribers.

Not ready to jump one hundred percent into using Messenger, I promoted both my email and Messenger list. First, I promoted my Messenger list on my email list. This got me an initial several hundred subscribers.

Then I turned the home page of my website into a Messenger opt-in. I also created a Messenger opt-in specifically for my Quora following.

Within a month, I had seven hundred subscribers.

Next stop: LinkedIn.

For four months, I’d been publishing many engaging statuses on LinkedIn to build a following. Then I began to promote my upcoming book with teasers. For instance, I took a screenshot of possible book covers and posted it on LinkedIn asking which one they liked the most.

I kept a low barrier to entry to comment and made sure my audience knew I valued their opinion. All they had to do was type  “1,” “2,” or “3” to select a book cover.

As predicted, the post took off.

I ended up not using any of these covers, but I did get several hundred subscribers interested in keeping up with the launch. (A huge thank-you to Patrick Lyver for the final book cover).

Then I promoted my Messenger list in my Facebook Group by giving away viral LinkedIn outlines. This gave me three-hundred-and-fifty Messenger subscribers. A nice jolt to get my list above a thousand people.

Start the Product Hunt Hype-Train Announcements

The book had been planned for a year, but I wanted the extra push to finish it. I also wanted to gauge the demand for the book.

After the announcement, it was clear people wanted it – and they wanted it now. Many were excited to pay for it and didn’t realize I was releasing it for free.

I got a lot of engagement on the announcement because I’d been documenting my growth hacks online for an entire year while connecting to people in the industry. People knew, liked, and trusted me.

Many times I had talked about publishing a growth hacking book, but it never happened. Growth hacks get outdated fast. I had enormous pressure to keep the book current which meant replacing thirty-page chapters with up-to-date growth hacks. A four-month hype-train writing process turned into an entire year.

Find a Product Hunter

Having an invested Hunter will help drive more engagement.

If you’re new to Product Hunt, know that Hunter is someone who uploads your product to the site with images, a link to your website, and tags the Makers (creators of the product). Once he hits publish, the product is officially live.

Jack Smith, one of the top hunters on Product Hunt, had been a part of my community for awhile. As a result, he had an incentive to spread the launch via word-of-mouth or sharing online. I’m not sure how much of a difference this made, but anyone who has a loyal startup following and loves what you do will help make a dent in engagement.

When I reached out to ask him if he would hunt our book, he gave the okay. We did change the date several times, but he stuck with us. Thanks, Jack!

Oil the Hype-Train with Pre-Announcements

The day before the launch, I wanted everyone to know when the launch would go live.

We didn’t have the book entirely finished. It took us until 7 a.m. in the morning – an hour before launch.

Still, we decided to go all in and put pressure on ourselves to perform. With that said, it’s better to launch right after midnight because you only get one day on the front page. At midnight – every night – the front page of Product Hunt refreshes with new launches. By waiting until 8 a.m. to post, we lost eight hours of being live on the front page.

The good news: We still kicked ass.

We had the first pre-announcement in our Facebook Group. We tagged all the book contributors and I used a live stream to make sure I hit as many people in my community as possible with the message.

Ten minutes later, I announced it on my Facebook profile. This drove an insane amount of engagement.

And, of course, I posted on LinkedIn to keep the hype wheels moving.

Then came the Messenger blast which had a glaring typo (see if you can find it):

“Hey [First Name],

Tomorrow @ 8 a.m. PT we’re launching our free eBook on Product Hunt with 25+ growth hacking case studies from the best marketers and founders.

It took us an entire year to create!

Please share the book upon its release. We’ll notify you via Messenger. Let’s make the world a better place for marketers and founders.”

Four months ago, I had 1,500 LinkedIn followers.

Today, I have 26,000 followers (10K connections).

I used a systematic process for making this happen. This system allows me to create viral LinkedIn statuses every week and engage with thousands of prospects at scale.

In this piece, I’ll be covering the entire system for you.

This way you can get these type of stats in a matter of months:

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

Optimize Your Profile

When people look at your profile, they decide whether you’re worth connecting with in several seconds.

These are the questions that go through their head when making this decision:

Do they look like a domain expert?

Do they look like a leader?

Can they help me?

If you can trigger a “yes” to each one, then you can connect with venture capitalists, Fortune 500 founders, and thought leaders – at scale.

It starts with the headshot because people mentally digest pictures before they read.

You don’t need anything over the top. As long as the viewer believes you put in the effort to take a professional headshot, then you’ve increased your add-back percentage.

What’s an add-back percentage?

It’s the percentage of the connection requests you send out that get accepted.

To take it up a couple of notches, ideally, you should have a picture of you smiling. The next step is optimizing your cover photo. There are three photos that will increase your add-back rate:

1. You with a relevant influencer in your industry
2. You speaking in front of prospects
3. You at a local landmark (only works if you’re connecting with people in your city)

Once your viewers finish judging your headshot and cover photo, they’ll read your headline.

The more thought leadership you can portray here, the higher increase you’ll see in your add-back rate. This doesn’t mean writing “Thought Leader” in your headline. You need to list tangible accomplishments or awards, preferably with numbers; otherwise, people won’t believe you.

If you’re lucky, they’ve given a check mark to your headshot, cover photo, and headline.

Now they’re reading your bio.

This is your opportunity to get them to click-through to your landing page. The biggest mistake I see from almost everyone on LinkedIn is lack of specificity. I don’t know what they do and how they can help me. If you can’t state your business proposition in two sentences, then you don’t have a business.

For example, take a look at my bio:

“We drive ROI for growing companies using cutting-edge growth marketing and growth hacking tactics. We’ve worked with companies like TEDx, Mixmax, Voo, LawTrades, Book in a Box, Deputy, and Autopilot.

Services include: B2B growth hacking, PR hacking, chatbots, FB ads, SEM, growth strategy, personal brand management, and marketing automation.

We also manage a community, Badass Marketers & Founders, which has over 15,000 members. You can request access here: http://growth.chat/fbcommunity

Want to work with us? Shoot me an email at josh@bamf.media

For all speaking inquiries, please visit: http://growth.chat/speaking

For more information about me, please visit: http://growth.chat/me

On my free time, I pursue my passion for understanding psychology and neuroscience, especially with how they play into creation, innovation, and social media.”

If the copy works, then why change it?

I have the same copy under my first job title.

It doesn’t end here. You need to optimize every part of your profile.

Make sure you have a logo for each company you’ve worked at. If there’s no logo, viewers will assume the company didn’t exist.

Logos are nice, but recommendations are more tangible. You should have, at least, five. If you don’t, then ask your coworkers and peers for a minute of their time to write something for you.

Don’t be shy. It’s worth the ask.

If you’ve done everything listed, then your profile is optimized.

You’re now ready to expand your network.

Auto-Connect to Thousands of Prospects at Scale

With several clicks, you can connect to hundreds of targeted prospects at scale.

Founders of 500+ employee companies in the software space?

Done.

Directors of Innovation of 250+ employee companies in the marketing and advertising space?

Done.

And they’ll accept your connection request because your profile is optimized.

To make this magic happen, you need to buy the Chrome extension, Linked Helper ($15/month). To use the tool for expanding your network, write an invitation message. You’ll see the option in the middle drop-down. Write an intro message that’s NON-SALESY.

Focus on establishing a common bond. For example, in the message below I’m reaching out to founders in Los Angeles. I ensure to include both keywords (e.g. founders, Los Angeles) in my message. This message will go out to everyone you auto-connect with – possibly thousands of individuals.

Next, I plug-in a relevant search query into LinkedIn Sales Navigator. If you don’t have Sales Navigator, then don’t bother to run automation. You’ll get your profile banned.

Now I click “Connect all 2nd contact in Search.” The tool will automatically start connecting with personalized messages to everyone in the search query. Don’t connect with more than 150 people in a 24 hour period; otherwise, you risk the potential of getting banned.

If you send out 150 requests every other day, you can expand your connection base by a couple of thousand targeted prospects every month. Powerful.

Now that you have a strong connection base let’s ramp up engagement.

Publish Viral LinkedIn Posts Every Week

You have many prospects in your network.

Do you immediately follow-up with a sales message?

No.

You need to nurture them with value – every day.

Don’t bother with LinkedIn’s Publishing platform – it’s comparable to Facebook Notes. You need to leverage statuses to get seen and heard. An excellent status takes less time to create and will get far more eyeballs than your published post.

Look at this status I created – over 8 million views.

Before you jump in trying to repeat my success, you need to know how to write to drive engagement. It starts with the first two sentences. If those don’t pull your reader’s attention, then you’ve lost them.

Every quality piece begins with a problem, significant change, announcement, or credibility:

Problem:

Significant change:

Announcement:

Credibility:

The last two sentences are almost as important as the first two. If people don’t walk away feeling a strong emotion, then don’t expect them to like, comment, or share your post.

Provide them an “aha” moment:

Here’s another example:

You’re almost a pro. However, you’re missing everything in the middle.

Here you want to tell a story with tangible examples.

Without a story, no one will care.

To tell a gripping story, you need to pull out every adjective from your dictionary, including amazing, super, nice, great, wonderful, and best. Instead, you need to write with TANGIBLE examples.

Here’s the difference:

“Josh is our best salesperson.”

vs.

“Josh closes every prospect on the phone.”

The latter example you can imagine, the first one you can’t.

You know you’re a pro when you can re-enact conversation. A conversation is more tangible than any description.

Here’s an example piece:

If you can writing engaging content like this, then you’ll have no problem nurturing your connections.

Use Engagement Posts to Drive Subscribers

To turn your engagement into email subscribers, you can offer a relevant download or ask them for their opinion on a content release. For example, I asked my LinkedIn connections for their opinion on my book cover while providing a link to get notified when the book comes out.

Because LinkedIn decreases engagement for posts with links, I’ll put the link in the first comment. When I hit thirty comments on the piece, I’ll move it to the text area because garnering the initial engagement is the hardest.

Here’s an example piece I used to drive close to two hundred email subscribers:

Here’s another post that has a direct download. I asked people to comment “I’m in” if they wanted it. Then I went ahead and added a direct download after one hundred comments.

Engagement pieces are powerful, but you can’t overdo them. Release only a couple of every month; otherwise, you’ll look hungry for email address rather than someone who wants to build genuine relationships.

Use Appreciation Posts to Develop Key Relationships

LinkedIn loves when you appreciate people in your network.

They go crazy over it.

The formula:

1. Introduce the problem you had before your meeting
2. Explain the credibility of the person you’re meeting using a tangible example
3. Dive into the key learning lessons from the conversation using bullet points

Here’s an example post: 

Here’s another example post:

Publicly acknowledging how people help you is one of the best ways to create valuable relationships. It shows you’re willing to vouch for a friend not only to one person but your entire network.

Prep Your Statuses Using Quora

All my best LinkedIn statuses were written months before I began posting them.

How?

They were my answers to questions on Quora. In fact, 8/10 my most viewed statuses were initially written on Quora. I use Quora to validate my content before I post it on LinkedIn. This means that if my content gets high engagement on Quora, then I’ll repost it on LinkedIn.

There’s a slight mismatch. LinkedIn statuses only allow for 1,300 characters, unlike Quora which has no limit. As a result, when answering questions on Quora, it’s best to keep the 1,300 character limit in mind.

This piece was copied almost word for word to LinkedIn:

Quora:

LinkedIn:

I knew the piece would perform well on LinkedIn because it had already given me the validation on Quora.

It’s a nervous feeling guessing at how well your content will do.

It’s a powerful feeling already knowing.

Start writing on Quora.

Retarget LinkedIn Connections on Facebook

You’ve learned a few masterful tactics, but there are still more.

This one can drive many leads and engagement for you. All you need to do is export your LinkedIn connections to retarget them on Facebook with engaging content. You can find the option to do so in your LinkedIn Settings – Getting an archive of your data.

Once you export your connections, LinkedIn will send you a list of their emails. Upload them to Facebook as a custom audience, then start running ads. I run video ads because the cost-per-view is less than several cents while still keeping an option for them to click-through to my website with a “Learn more” button.

Here are a couple of example video ads I’ve run to my LinkedIn audience resulting in a 10/10 relevance score (highest score for a Facebook ad performance):

In this page post, I used as a Facebook ad, I’m giving value that’s directly related to LinkedIn – perfect for my connections who’ve seen my high engagement.

And again, a 10/10 relevance score.

If you publish engaging statuses, your LinkedIn connections will already know, like, and trust you. In turn, this will often be your best-performing audience.

Interview High-Value Prospects at Scale

If you implemented the content tactics outlined above every day for a month, then people are starting to follow every post you publish. Your network knows of you and people in their network know of you.

It’s time to make sales. We sell in a genuine way – by focusing on relationship building using content marketing. This tactic is more useful if you have high-value prospects. This means your average deal size should, at least, be one thousand dollars.

Because almost every conversation leads into “What do you do?,” our angle is to get high-value prospects on the phone with you before they even receive a sales pitch.

How does this work?

We offer to include them in blog posts, podcasts, case studies, live stream videos, or even online magazines where you can highlight them. We’re playing to their ego – and it works.

Here’s an example message:

This message has over a thirty percent reply rate. Here’s why:

1. Appreciation

“I love the work you’ve done for [X company]”

2. Credibility

“Podcast that gets 2,000 listens an episode”

3. Community first

“As an entrepreneur building a vibrant community of founders”

4. More appreciation

“Knowledgeable speakers and people crushing it in tech such as yourself”

5. Example of a previous episode (not in the picture)

“Here’s an example of a previous interview with [insert credible name]: [link here]”

6. Straightforward call-to-action (not in the picture)

“Do you have fifteen minutes to talk this Wednesday @ 2 P.M. PST?”

With this template, I’ve had the founder of Zapier and Zoom respond to me. It’s that good.

Turn Your LinkedIn Connections into a Vibrant Tribe

Once you’ve connected with and nurtured many of your target LinkedIn prospects, you have the leverage to build a tribe. This happens in a Facebook Group, not a Slack community or a LinkedIn Group – those are dead zones.

To get people into your community, there are two ways:

1. Email
2. LinkedIn messaging (more painful, but still works)

1. Email

Here’s the email template I’ll send out to all my LinkedIn connections:

“Hey [first name]

As a LinkedIn connection and fellow founder, I wanted to personally invite you to a founder Facebook Group I organize that’s very active, Marketers & Founders.

I happen to run one of the largest marketing communities in Silicon Valley (3000+ members) and the Facebook Group (6000+ members).

The Marketers & Founders Facebook Group is moderated by a few of the best, so it’s invite-only.

Our moderators:

1. Aj Cartas; 1.2 million social media fans and is an influencer lead @TopBuzz
2. Taylor Pipes; content strategist @Evernote
3. Me 🙂 Past head of growth for @22Social, @UpOut, and @GrowthX. 

You can join the Marketers and Founders Facebook Group here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/growthmarketers/

If you want to know more info, feel free to reply.

Cheers,

Josh Fechter”

To email them at scale, you need to have a few warmed up email accounts tied to a domain you don’t use for your website or primary business but sounds relevant to your brand. For example, I used “marketersfounders.com”

Here are the two tools you need to send emails at scale:

Tool #1: Google Apps 

A Google Apps account will enable you to create many email addresses tied to your “temporary” domain. I recommend sticking below 300/day per an email address and starting off at 20/day for the first three weeks.

Tool #2: Mailshake

This tool will enable you to send thousands of emails/day if you have many emails attached. It’s the best tool for sending emails at scale with the shortest learning curve. It took me around twenty minutes to understand the entire tool and another twenty to begin sending emails.

2. LinkedIn Messaging

Andrei posted on LinkedIn whether people were interested in joining his B2B SaaS community. As a result, he received almost over 1,000 responses. That’s 1,000 new members from one post. He only had 2,000 connections when he posted this.

The next step is paying a VA to use your profile to connect with all these people and send them a message with your community link. After emailing and posting on LinkedIn, you should have a couple of thousand members in your community. Well done.

Encourage them to Subscribe on Messenger

The first step is to pick a messenger tool.

I use ManyChat because of its feature versatility to capture leads with dedicated landing pages or people commenting on a Facebook post. If you’ve ever used an opt-in tool on a blog, then you’ll have a similar experience when setting up ManyChat. The learning curve is only a couple of minutes.

To get the initial subscriber base, I ran a giveaway encouraging people to jump on. This gave me three-hundred-and-fifty Messenger subscribers.

When I had enough traction for the Facebook Group, I required members to opt-in via Messenger to gain access. As of writing, this approach has led to over five hundred more subscribers in the last month.

After a month of using ManyChat, I leveraged my base to bring in another several thousand subscribers by having the most successful book launch on Product Hunt.

Soon after, I ran another giveaway. If people commented on my Facebook Fan Page post, I’d send them my viral LinkedIn templates. I received over one hundred comments.

Per ManyChat, if someone comments on your post, they immediately become a subscriber.

Play ball where they play ball. It’s easier to get someone to subscribe via Messenger if they’re already on Facebook. The stats prove it: I average a 93% open rate and a 44% click-through rate.

Ready to join me?

Follow-Up with Quality Inbound Opportunities

I have a problem.

Too many messages. I get hundreds every day across LinkedIn, Facebook, and email. To sort them out, I hired an assistant. If you’re looking to stay lean, then you can hire a virtual assistant, too.

I’d check out Upwork; it’s one of the best resources to hire virtual assistants.

If you’re publishing content, building your list, and driving engagement, then you’ll get flooded with inbound opportunities. I don’t have the time to look through them all, so I hire people to do that for me.

I pay more to hire people who have experience in my industry. They’re far better at identifying valuable opportunities. Here’s an example of an opportunity I didn’t see for a month because I didn’t have an assistant.

Never again.

Only one of these opportunities can make it all worth it.

Create a Powerful Ecosystem

To excel at one social platform, it often requires the help of others because excellent marketing is an ecosystem. You’re competing for attention. To drive millions of views on LinkedIn, you need to combine the forces of Facebook and Quora.

Wherever your prospects go, they’ll see your engaging content. And by the time they hop on a call with you, they’ll already trust you. Say goodbye to your normal sales cycle by mastering LinkedIn.

I had submitted my portfolio to Facebook and heard nothing back after several weeks just like ninety-nine percent of people who apply.

I’ve wanted to work at Facebook for awhile. I had worked at a Facebook marketing software company for a year, written a two-hundred and fifty-page book about Facebook, helped create the first paid subscription Facebook group, and developed the first digital course on Facebook. Why wouldn’t Facebook like me?

There was a huge obstacle I had to overcome. I excel at problem solving, but I only learn technical skills when needed.

Facebook is all about technical skills. Plus, they want to see that fancy Ivy League school on your resume.

Well, I had opted out of Ivy League, and went to the school of hard knocks — young startups, and most of them failed.

So, I needed a way to stand out.

As a growth marketer, I thought to myself, Josh, you can do better. Be creative. Solve your problem. After all, it’s your job!

Then an epiphany happened. I was thinking of this Hustle article, The LinkedIn Hack That Made Me $120,000, where Jack Smith, co-founder of Vungle, used LinkedIn ad targeting to land an incubator spot in AngelPad along with $120k of funding.

Inspired, I thought to myself why not target Facebook employees in Menlo Park? If I were to target all Facebook employees, the chances are it would target too many people who say they work for Facebook, but actually don’t – there’s a surprising number of them. I realized that by using geo-location and a work demographic, my advertisement would be hyper-relevant and hyper-local increasing my odds of getting in front of the right people.

Here’s what my targeting looked like:

Next, I needed to be creative with my ad. Luckily for me, I’d taken a few pictures with Facebook employees about a year ago. This reminds me — never throw away your pictures! They may become useful at random times in your career.

The ad took the Facebook employees to a landing page I created on a Facebook Fan Page. I knew they would appreciate a landing page on Facebook over a website.

The landing page included a video I made at 5 a.m. that morning explaining why I wanted to work at Facebook. I only did one take. I was still sitting in bed when I made the video.

I also included a slideshow of me hanging out at marketing events, a messaging app to get in touch with me, copy outlining past accomplishments, Facebook comment section, and a download button for my resume.

The reason I included different mediums of content is that people prefer to consume in different ways whether video, images, or text. So, it’s best to have all three; moreover, it shows creativity.

In less than an hour, Facebook employees were sharing my portfolio around the company as an example of creativity and hustle. These were the comments I received from them.

You can check out the entire landing page here (it was hacked together in less than an hour): www.22s.com/joshuafechter/facebookresume

Within two hours, I had several employees contact me through my messaging app, comment on my landing page, a Facebook employee Tweet at me, and a recruiter contact me requesting an immediate interview.

This story may be about hacking Facebook to get into Facebook, but it’s really about getting in through a door when the more obvious ones are closed. Similar, hustling is getting results when a predetermined system doesn’t do it for you. It’s important you see life as more of a game where the only rules you have to obey are only the ones you choose to follow.

The best part of this story is that you can do it for the job you want. The landing page took me about an hour to set up, and the ad took about fifteen minutes. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be creative and implemented with some hustle.