Off the top of my head: 9 Kickstarter tips

Over the last couple of months, I learned everything I could about crowdfunding. Great starting points are official best practice guides that you can find on kickstarter or indiegogo’s webpage.
But there are also other great studies available online that give your more insights and statistics. Medium, reddit and talks on GDC Vault (games developer conference) are super helpful as well.

So here is what I *think* I learned. Hopefully all these tips will be confirmed once our kickstarter for the cartoon series SMOSH MOSH is successful.

1. Pre-sell your perks ahead of launch day

According to this article, you are very likely to succeed if you manage to get 40% of your funds over the first 72h by just using your email list. There is no harm to share your preview page and ask for feedback ahead of launch to find out what people are likely to buy. So start writing emails and get everyone lined up for launch day. If you feel uncomfortable asking for money, let somebody else do it who doesn’t have the personal connection you have!

2. Don’t rely on social media or press

The press has grown weary of crowdfunding over the past couple of years. They simply get to many of these requests and they simply don’t want to sell stuff to their readers. Some of them even have a rule to not write about or mention kickstarter campaigns at all. They want to tell compelling stories and have something of interest to their readers. So make sure you have that story in place and kickstarter is not the only thing in your press release.

Don’t rely on your social media followers either. Facebook algorithms are constantly changing, you have to pay for user aquisition even if you have a huge number of fans. Only a tiny percentage will see it and if they do, they convert on an incredibly low rate. So don’t think all of your fans are engaged and willing to pay. Email is a much better communication tool to reach your biggest advocates.

3. Don’t offer too few or too many perks and be careful with physical goods

Shipping costs can make backers drop out if they realize they have to pay 10$ extra for shipping to europe or US. Make sure you can produce and ship your physical rewards in an easy and efficient way. Offer between 7–15 different perks and identify the one that will most likely be your best seller around 30$. Make it appear like the best deal ever by adding all sorts of additional stuff that is easy for you to produce and makes your fans happy.

4. Contact press way ahead of time and get your presskit ready

Send your press release well in advance so the news outlet has enough time to work with it. At least a month before you launch your campaign, you should start to reach out to everyone who can help you gain traction during your campaign. Add them to different categories, like day one articles, exclusives, advertisements planned for first day or last day, influencer posts, sponsoring and so on.
Most imporant: don’t be bitter or angry about the press or anyone who doesn’t want to share your story. Most emails you will get are rejections or simply no answer at all, so prepare for it and stay polite and positive.

5. Create a checklist for the day before launch, day 1 to 3 and your last days of the campaign.

It’s easy to forget all the different things you can do to get people excited before or during the campaign. Write every marketing idea down and assign different campaign days to them. Don’t forget that your campaign is not lost if you haven’t reached your goal in the first week. You might come up with a genius idea and it’s better to try anything than giving up to soon. Your campaign can still change and evolve once its launched.

6. Short and compelling video

Stay authentic and explain your idea or product in a very clear way. Don’t bore people with too much information. Only the most exciting and interesting facts about you, your team and your project should make it into your video. Aim for not more than 3 minutes. It’s highly recommended to create a little trailer or teaser so people are immediately hooked before they get to meet the team. You can get great music for example from www.audiocabin.com or other royalty-free stock music websites.

7. Do a facebook launch event with your collegues or any other social group.

Real life events will show your friends, family and co-workers that you are serious about this project. They will feel special if they receive an invite and are more likely to come after work if there is free beer. It’s also a great way to kick off your launch on social media by posting some live videos or photos from the event itself. Facebook will more likely surface posts that are live videos or that are created during an event and you tag everyone attending. Your friends will feel engaged and connected with the project so they will be more likely to share on launch day if they see you in person.

8. Create a spreadsheet to figure out your goals, reward costs and fees

(here is a very simple one we used)
Don’t forget that about 30% of the money you try to raise will be spend on producing and sending the rewards, kickstarter fees, taxes and so on. Out of 15.000$ you are left with about 10.000$ you can spend on your actual idea or product. Especially if your product is not one of your rewards, e.g. raising money for a cartoon show which is hard to “pre-sell”. You will have to come up with perks that don’t naturally come out of your product, like merchandize for a cartoon show. Raising money to produce and send out a table top game is more straightforward because more money can go into the actual product.

9. Be transparent and set realistic stretch goals

Don’t try to fool people. Make sure you clearly explain what you are trying to do. If you set your goal to a lower amount of money than you actually need, explain why you think your chances of success are better trying to raise part of the money than trying to raise all of it through kickstarter. Honesty and transparency on how you raise and spend the money gets you much further than obscuring your actual situation. Your fans will understand. Also, kickstarter is for kickstarting a project, no matter how big or small. It’s not a financing or marketing platform. Unfortunately some bigger companies think differently and kickstarter is promoting better known IP’s, brands and names. But this shouldn’t defeat the spirit of the crowdfunding community.

Follow our campaign!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/456501473/1372917355?ref=481281&token=5185b70e