TBBL #9: How Rapti made Bugasura rank #1 on product hunt 🚀
Discover the launch secrets and strategies from Bugasura's Head of Marketing
Hey launch pilots 👋
This is Nithin and Karthik from LaunchPedia, How is your week going?
This week we interviewed Rapti, Head of Marketing at Bugasura & got ton of product hunt hacks to make your next launch a big bang 🚀
Before we get into it, here are some exciting updates for you to catch up.
💡 Resources Spotlight
CtrlAlt.cc - Discover a super useful startup tool + an inspirational maker story, directly from your inbox, every Friday.
Product Hunt checklist - A step-by-step playbook for a 3-week period before the launch, on the day of the launch and after the launch on Product Hunt by Abash Kumar.
⚡ A quick intro about Bugasura
Bugasura is an all-in-one bug tracker for SAAS products.
Begasura launched on Product Hunt on Nov 23 2022 & here is their Launch Performance:
Upvotes: 975
Day Rank: 1
Weekly Rank: 2
Rapti, the Head of Marketing at Bugasura, was the mind who pulled off Bugasura’s tremendous Product Hunt launch.
Let’s unlock all their launch strategies and secrets from Rapti.
🎤 Interview
Hi rapti, welcome to the big bang launch newsletter. Could you tell us a little bit about you & your role at Bugasura?
My name is Rapti and I’m a marketer by day and horror writer by night. I have been in marketing for about 11 years. I started my career as a journalist at International Business Times and went on to work for startups later on as a content marketer.
I joined Bugasura a few months ago to lead the marketing efforts here.
Why did you decide to launch Bugasura on Product Hunt?
When I joined Bugasura and played around with the product, I knew this was a great tool. I knew there was a genuine problem that Bugasura was solving but not many people were aware of our solution. Discovery was our main problem.
I had heard of product hunt campaigns from seasoned marketers and how a decent launch can offer great branding and awareness benefits. I wanted to try that out for Bugasura. A V1 of our product had launched on Product Hunt a few years ago but that barely got us any traction. I knew we had to re-attempt the launch because the product had evolved, and so had our messaging and the value it’s creating for technologists all around the world.
What were your goals for the launch? Is it brand awareness, getting new signups or any other metric?
Our goals were to get:
Website Traffic
New Signups
How long did you take to plan for the launch - Can you share your step-by-step action plan?
I followed Abash Kumar’s Product Hunt checklist for planning the launch. (You can find the checklist in the “Resource Spotlight” section of the newsletter)
I divided the work into two sections to help keep track of our launch.
Week 1 - Internal Work:
Set a date for the launch.
Made a list of folks from our network that are on Product Hunt
Made a list of customers and friends who are not on Product Hunt but can endorse us on Linkedin, Twitter and communities
Work on scouting a list of communities to become a part of to distribute the launch
Work on content and collateral required for the launch
Email Invites
Whatsapp Invites
Social Media Posts
And Product Hunt Launch Assets
Informing internal teams about the launch date and planning out server capacity to accommodate new traffic on launch day.
Week 2 - External Work:
Once all the internal work was done, we started to reach out to people on our lists.
First message of launch went out one week ahead of the launch
Second message went out 2 days before the launch
A reminder went out a day before the launch
Why did you choose to launch on a Wednesday?
It was a slightly risky launch for us because the world was entering holiday mode the week we decided to launch - With Thanksgiving coming up and many Black Friday deals.
We picked Wednesday as it is a high traffic day on Product Hunt and we can get more eyeballs to our product.
What is your action plan on launch day?
The plan was to go all guns blazing. We blocked the whole day for the launch and dedicated all our hours to distributing the launch everywhere.
We launched at 12.01 AM PST
As soon as we launched, we put out our social posts and asked teams to share as well
Our idea was to start strong. So, We sent the launch link to our lists and asked them to come to check us out
Within the first hour of our launch we were at #3
We made sure someone was posting about us every hour.
We replied to and upvoted every comment on product hunt page
We also started a discussion thread on the Product Hunt community to get more people check us out
We took part in active discussions on Product Hunt communities and other groups we were part of and requested them to check out our launch.
It was truly a day to remember!
What were the top traffic sources that got you the most upvotes on Product Hunt?
Linkedin
Whatsapp And
Slack
Could you share some numbers from the Product Hunt launch?
Website traffic: 18% hike
Signups - 1,500+
Paid signups - 30+
What are the tools you used to prepare for the launch?
Canva - Images
Invideo - Product video
Adobe after effects - Thumbnail GIF
What are the biggest challenges you faced while launching on Product Hunt? And how did you overcome them?
Our biggest problem during launch was that a lot of our supporters created their product hunt accounts on launch day to support us. This led to PH algorithm thinking that they weren’t fair votes.
So we kept lagging at #3 despite having more votes than the product at #2.
But thankfully, we were pacing out the PH community votes and made full use of reach outs. We kept putting out reminders till the last moment to bring in quality over quantity.
What are 3 advices you would give to creators who are launching on Product Hunt?
Never underestimate the power of your own network and communities. Make sure you tell them to create their product hunt accounts in advance to support you (in case they’re new)
Prepare the operational bits of the launch beforehand and just keep the launch day to distribute it on your networks
Have fun with the launch! Get everyone in the team involved and push people to try your product.
What are your future plans for Bugasura? Are you launching on any other platforms?
While we will definitely be flaunting our Product Hunt win, we are also in touch with the users that signed up. I have just discovered other alternatives like Product Hunt and I will probably be exploring this list.
We have other campaigns in mind too and I hope you’ll see it on your social media (just like you saw our launch).
Thanks a lot Rapti, for sharing your Product Hunt strategies and secrets with us.
🤝Let’s Grow Together
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👋 That’s it from our side guys
Let’s meet next week with another successful launch story.
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