This article is sponsored by PitchFuse. Create a pre-launch page for your crowdfunding campaign and get feedback, gather a following, or do a giveaway!
Research and thorough preparation can make the difference between a running successful Kickstarter campaign and working hard to raise a bunch of funds, only to fall short of your fundraising goal.
One of the best ways to prepare for your Kickstarter campaign is to look up and analyze similar campaigns. These campaigns can feature a similar product or be in the same category as your Kicstarter campaign.
KickTraq, a free analytics tool, is a great website for digging deeper into these campaigns you turn up. Before reading the example below, I recommend downloading the free KickTraq chrome app.
Let’s say that you have created an RPG gaming campaign and are looking to raise $900,000. First, you might begin by researching through the Kickstarter search tool.
This search would show that in the games category, there are only 6 campaigns in the history of Kickstarter that have raised $900,000-$1,000,000.
It would also give you an idea of the range of fundraising goals each of these projects had.
Ironically, it seems like many of these campaigns had a goal that was lower than $900,000.
You could then use KickTraq analytics to get a sense of how these similar campaigns progressed and which news stories corresponded with an increase in pledges (will need to google their campaign title to view different news stories and track the dates).
Taking the WARMACHINE: TACTICS for example, if you looked at the daily data section of their campaign, you would see that most of their pledges were collected in the first and last week of the fundraising process. In addition, there was a small spike on 7/24 on the “backers per day” chart.
These analytics will help give you an idea of the amount of pledges you need to generate each day throughout the duration of your campaign and the importance of the first and last week of crowdfunding.
I would then further research WHY there was a spike ok 7/24 and how you could re-create this with your own campaign. Also, I would dig deeper into the first and last week of their campaign to see what blogs they managed to get on and how they went about spreading the word (forums, updates, incentives, etc).
You could also look at the frequency of comments on the WARMACHINE campaign and compare the engagement of the community surrounding the projects to updates made by the creators. What updates really engaged the community? Did this lead to greater social shares on forums and new pledges?
In conclusion, KickTraq is a great free tool to use as part of your research, but by no means the only tool! For more information about preparing for a Kickstarter campaign, see 4 Things to do before you launch a Kickstarter campaign.
