How to make a product launch video that lands

What a launch video needs to do

A launch video isn’t a full demo. In a few seconds, it should make clear what your product does, who it’s for, and why it’s worth trying. Everything else (pricing, details, edge cases) belongs on your landing page.

For a detailed walkthrough to go with your product page, see our product demo video guide. This page is about the launch-day video: the one that plays on X, LinkedIn, Product Hunt and in your announcement email.

• The first 3 seconds show the product or the result, not your logo.
• One flow: the one that makes people go “oh, that’s what it does.”
• Readable with the sound off, through on-screen text or captions.
• A polished look, because the video signals the quality of the product.
• One clear call to action at the end.

The 60-second structure

1. 1

   0–5 sec: the hook

   The end result on screen, or the problem in one line: “Still spending an hour editing every demo?”

2. 2

   5–15 sec: the problem

   Show the pain concretely: the old way, the endless spreadsheet, the ten open tabs.

3. 3

   15–45 sec: the product in action

   One end-to-end flow, at a brisk pace. Every important click is zoomed, typing is sped up.

4. 4

   45–55 sec: the result

   The deliverable, the time saved, the final screen. Hold on it for two or three seconds.

5. 5

   55–60 sec: the call to action

   Product name, URL, and your launch offer if you have one.

One recording, every format

Product Hunt’s daily leaderboard runs midnight to midnight Pacific time, which is why most teams launch at 12:01 a.m. PT. Your video needs to be finished and live the day before.

Prepping the recording

• Script the flow click by click and rehearse it two or three times. Hesitation shows in a launch video.
• Set up a spotless demo account: believable names, realistic numbers, no “asdf” test data.
• Use a reasonable screen resolution (1440 × 900 or 1920 × 1080) and bump the UI zoom up a notch.
• Want a richer voiceover? Record it on an external mic; with Clarcut Pro, the track syncs to your screen automatically. You can also drop in background music.
• Record several short takes, one per step of the flow, instead of one long risky take.
• Hide anything that isn’t announced yet: a feature in progress, placeholder pricing.

Editing with Clarcut

• Automatic zooms on clicks that you can fine-tune: level, framing, motion blur. This is what makes a launch video readable.
• An extra-smooth cursor, macOS style, click ripple, hidden when idle.
• Photo or gradient backgrounds, rounded corners, shadow and a mock window, so your screen looks like a presentation visual.
• Logo overlay and style presets, to keep the same branding across every version.
• Automatic sped-up typing and manual speed-ups to fit in 60 seconds.
• Automatic captions (Clarcut Pro) in a social or karaoke style, essential for muted autoplay.
• 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5 formats: the framing adapts without re-recording.
• Export up to 4K at 60 fps with Clarcut Pro, or as an animated GIF for email.
• Clarcut Plus share links for sending a preview to press or partners, on your own domain and with your logo thanks to white label. These pages aren’t indexed by search engines, so the public video still belongs on YouTube and your site.

Mistakes to avoid

• Opening with a 5-second logo animation. Half your audience is already gone.
• Showing every feature. Nobody remembers any of them.
• Relying on the voiceover. In a feed, the video starts muted.
• Posting the same 16:9 video everywhere. In a vertical feed, it’s a thin strip in the middle of the screen.
• Finding out on launch day that your Product Hunt video is private or unlisted.
• Forgetting the call to action, or including three of them.

Distributing and measuring the launch

Prepare every version before launch day: the 16:9 file on YouTube for Product Hunt and your site, the square or 4:5 cut for LinkedIn, the vertical cut for mobile feeds, and the GIF for email. Upload the video natively to each network rather than posting a YouTube link: autoplay in the feed works in your favor.

Track completion rate on each network, but above all clicks to your site and signups, with a tagged link per channel (UTM parameters). If the video gets plenty of views but few clicks, your call to action is too weak or comes too late.

What Clarcut won’t do for a launch

Clarcut edits screen recordings; it doesn’t make animated films. There’s no motion graphics, no animated titles, no drawn annotations (arrows, shapes) and no advanced multitrack editing. For a highly produced trailer, many teams record the screen sequences in Clarcut, export them as MP4s, then assemble everything with titles in a traditional video editor.

There are no AI voices or avatars, either: the voiceover is you or whoever you choose. And Clarcut doesn’t post to social networks for you: you export, then upload.

Frequently asked questions