If you find that your Kickstarter campaign isn’t getting the traffic, pledges, and traction that you expected, don’t fret! There are some ways that you can boost your results.
Keep in mind that often times, lack of interest can be the symptom of an underlying problem with your product. Quite simply, it might not be as compelling as you originally thought. Maybe it doesn’t solve a real pain point?
However, if you’re convinced that you’ve created a great product, and for whatever reason, just can’t find any backers, some of the strategies below will help!
1. Invest in Facebook Marketing
Facebook has exploded as an effective way to get new customers for your online store. A lot more crowdfunding campaigns are also using Facebook to get backers and pledges.
The great thing about Facebook is that the company has created an extremely powerful advertising platform with settings that you can use to target the very people who are most likely to become backers of your crowdfunding campaign.
I put together a blog post sharing some different ways to get the most of your advertising efforts on Facebook. I hope you find it to be helpful.
2. Re-think Your Reward Tiers and Messaging
Quite frankly, one of the quickest ways to boost the amount of funding to your Kickstarter campaign is to engage current backers and get them to invest in your campaign at a higher tier. If you don’t have that many backers, you can also consider re-investing your campaign page.
In this podcast interview, the creator of The Modern Day Briefcase explained how he needed to rework his campaign because he wasn’t seeing the results he wanted.
After that change, he ended up raising $242,014 on Kickstarter. I have to admit that it’s not easy to do this while you’re in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign, but it can make a huge different, particularly if the wording on your campaign page doesn’t resonate with backers.
3. Invest in PR Outreach
Failing to do any kind of PR outreach is the hallmark of many crowdfunding failures. I’m not saying that PR is guaranteed to get you backers and pledges. But, a positive PR hit can do wonders to enhance the credibility of your campaign. It can also send you traffic and potential customers.
By reaching out to journalists and reporters, you’ll be improving the chance that you reach new online audiences that follow the various publications. You’ll also be building up your overall media story, so that you can “trade up the chain” and get a bigger publication to write about you, simply because a smaller publication has.
Whether it’s sending out a press release or directly emailing journalists, PR outreach is always one strategy to boost your Kickstarter campaign.
4. Consider Paid Promotional Services
If you’re struggling to get Kickstarter backers, you could also consider hiring a promotional company that specializes in crowdfunding campaigns. To be quite honest, it’s best to approach these companies well before you actually need their services. This way, you’re not in a rush and can throughly research your decision.
Unfortunately, some business owners have put a bad name on crowdfunding promotional services, but there are some websites out there that want to genuinely help campaigners. I’d recommend doing a thorough google search and searching on KickstarterForum.org before doing any large transactions.
Off the top of my head, you could look into services like TheGadgetFlow, GreenInbox, BackersHub, and Funded.Today.
5. Create Add-ons and Stretch Goals
Add-ons are a great way to increase the overall revenue per backer. Stretch goals are one way to get backers excited about sharing the campaign with their friends.
Depending on the success of your campaign, you could even consider releasing an entirely new reward tier. I would only recommend this if you’ve seen strong demand for your limited quantity and general reward tiers.
I think that many novice Kickstarter campaigners get bogged down with worrying and panicking. They think, “how can I get NEW backers to my campaign?” While new backers will certainly boost your funding meter, this is a lot to be said for working with your existing backers to increase your total dollars pledged.
6. Hire Instagram Influencers
On the Crowdfunding Demystified podcast, the team behind the Koala Hoodie explained how they used Instagram to raise £56,579 on Kickstarter. To make a long story short, they hired Instagram influencers to post about the product to their followers.
This accomplished two things. First, it generated interest. When someone with a large Instagram following posts a photo of your product, members of their following take notice and might decide to check out your product or campaign.
Second, it enhanced the credibility of the product. When people came to the campaign page and saw that this product was worn by so many influencers, it make them more likely to take a sec to watch the video and become a backer.
Even if you don’t have a very large following on Instagram, you can leverage the reach of an influencer’s following to get more backers and pledges.
Where should you go from here?
There are a few different ways to boost your Kickstarter campaign. There are many other tools that you can use to market your campaign, which I’ll link to here.
Remember that marketing is only one part of the equation. Ultimately, you need a product that customers actually want and a product that’s high quality. Hope these tips help!
