I launched my 1st product yesterday and here's what I learned (failure and success)
Lead Hound — Put your prospecting and outreach on autopilot.
Hello Indiehackers,
Some backstory on me: I've been interested in business and wanted to run my own internet business for quite a while, but I never actually made something (you know... the usual story.) So I decided to force myself to make something, anything, within one month. Actually, I was going to make 12 different products in 12 months. This is the first of many.
So yesterday I launched my product on Product Hunt, posted it to a couple of Facebook groups related to it and made some posts on Reddit (I failed mostly on Reddit, which even led me create a new account and start fresh due to embarrassment of how badly the situation was.) More on that later...
To begin with I was doing quite well on Product Hunt, was 5th of the day, but with launches from both Intercom and Pocket, amongst others. I quickly fell down the list, though I still managed to stay on the front-page and at the end of the day ended up with 100+ upvotes.
As I mentioned, I didn't really have a great launch strategy. I simply launched on Product Hunt, shared that I had launched on Product Hunt on other platforms and that was it. But how I shared it on other platforms is where I really fucked up and where I could have definitely improved in order to have increase engagement. I didn't really try to tell a story or even get anyone involved, which is why I ended up getting banned from r/Startup and my post getting down multiple times from different subreddits. I didn't either have much engagement (in both likes or comments on Facebook) and Twitter was non-existent. I would definitely be more prepared next time with content and to ensure to engage people on different social media platforms. I'd also try to create a following for my product before I launch so that there's directly (x) amount of people that could potentially upvote the product.
Another thing I really failed with was the landing-page and to clearly describe the product. I had a lot of questions from people, some doubtful and others who felt that I didn't really provide with a lot of explanation (that has been improved since.) Next time I'll be more transparent and honest about what exactly is offered and how we accomplish it.
So ultimately, what did I do good? To be honest, not much. But considering that I still recieved good feedback and have been able to book 5 meetings with potential customers and have more than 10+ warm leads. I think it proves that if you're really solving an issue that company's have and you're offering a good solution, you can get away with not having the greatest presentation.
Here are more stats from the launch for those who are interested:
[1] meeting completed
[4] meetings scheduled
[10+] prospects / warm leads
The traffic (so far) was:
700+ users and 800+ sessions.
And for those who've read this far and are interested to see the product, it's: https://leadhound.co
Thank you for reading and I really want to have a dicussion with you in the comments :)
