A common theme I hear from creators of failed Kickstarter projects is that they were not aware of the amount of time and effort it would require to maintain momentum throughout their campaign. One creator I interviewed for KickstarterForum.com who experienced this was Mark Stein of Modern Medium: The Movie. When asked what he would have done differently looking back at his project, he shared:
“I think I would have spent a lot more time investing in a PR campaign to hit just before and during our launch. I went into this thinking we would get a fair amount of traffic from Kickstarter itself, but that didn’t happen. As best we can trace the activity, it looks like all our backers came from our own marketing and outreach. It seems that with so many projects “live” at any given time, each project really needs to be prepared to create its own traffic.”
When asked what other advice he would give to individuals launching a Kickstarter campaign he said to be prepared to spend hours every day interacting with your audience and spreading the word in various ways.
Crowdfunding websites are great because they allow everyday people to surpass traditional methods of funding for creative and business ventures. Unfortunately, many people believe that by simply launching a project on Kickstarter or a similar service, you will automatically guide eager backers to their campaign.
Slowly individuals are realizing that this is not the case, and the internet is teeming with advice on how to increase your chances of achieving your funding goal. While it has not become an exact science, the following are several suggestions to help manage your campaign and increase your likelihood of success:
Time is Money
This phrase can be applied to this situation in several ways; the more time that you dedicate to your project the higher your chances of reaching your goal, and finding ways to save time that could be better spent elsewhere can be very useful.
A good example of this is social media planning tools (like Hootsuite, Buffer, and TweetDeck) that can allow you to compose and schedule tweets, as well as posts on other social media networks, ahead of time. For more on automating social media marketing see this CrowdCrux article which explains 6 tools further.
Managing your time wisely and putting in a good amount of time before and during your campaign will help combat the lull that often occurs after the initial momentum of many Kickstarter projects.
Organization is Key
Successful Kickstarter projects have many different elements that need to be kept track of. There are aspects of design, manufacturing, budgeting, and keeping your audience informed through different mediums. Keeping contact lists and a calendar to help keep track of appointments, media deadlines, etc. can help make your campaign run smoothly and according to schedule.
Plan as much as you can before launch: how your product will be made, how easy it will be to ship, the cost (including Kickstarter and Amazon fees, as well as a cushion) and contingency plans in case something goes wrong or demand is higher than expected. Al Satterwhite, creator of the project The Secret of Muhammad Ali, gave this advice when I asked him in an interview what he would tell someone launching a Kickstarter project:
“[Y]ou need to consider all of your costs upfront before doing it – like what will it cost to ship? Produce? Who will you have to pay? Every little detail is important. On my first book, I forgot to include anything in the way of ‘profit’ – I was lucky and got far more than I asked for – if I hadn’t I would have been in serious trouble with print costs going over and a few other items, details are really important.”
Good Communication & Information
Frequent and consistent communication with friends, family, backers, and your target audience will help build support for your brand and keep driving traffic to your page. Communication is also vital for giving your audience a feeling of personal connection to you/your team that can help increase their trust and the likelihood that they will back your project.
Communication should always go both ways, be open, honest and kept interesting as possible. Another thing to keep in mind (especially when your project is tailored to an older audience) is that crowdfunding is still a relatively new trend for most people, and many are not knowledgeable about how it works. It may be necessary to explain, in the case of Kickstarter, the all-or-nothing model that they run on, the payment process, and how the reward system works.
Use the Right Resources for You
The increase in crowdfunding popularity over the last couple of years resulted in many individuals and businesses offering their expertise to inexperienced crowdfunders. Give some serious thought as to whether or not spending additional funds on hired help will be worthwhile in your case; not all of the services offered to help reach crowdfunding goals are effective.
One free tool that was created by the Kickstarter team behind the Soma water filter is the Kickstarter Status Board, and extension of Google Chrome. Despite the fact that their project was wildly popular, the Soma team experienced an issue – they were unable to get in touch with a backer in their highest reward category of $5,000 because they didn’t have any information about her – and decided to build this tool to keep track of as many aspects of their project in one place:
“With this tool, anyone running a Kickstarter campaign can track feedback on social networks, news stories about the project, web referrals and keep tabs on messages sent through Kickstarter — all in real-time and all in one place.” – Source.
They hope that people with similar issues will benefit from using this tool and offer their suggestions as to how it can be improved.
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About the author
Krystine Therriault is the community manager for CrowdCrux and has helped creators with their crowdfunding projects on KickstarterForum.org. She loves learning about new trending projects and dissecting them to bring new tips and information to creators. You can find her on LinkedIn here or Twitter here.
