CrowdFunding, Social Media Marketing and How Not to be an EEeeediot! — Part 1
Insights from the Happy Happy, Joy Joy Kickstarter Social Media Campaign
Our indie doc, Happy Happy, Joy Joy — The Ren & Stimpy Story was slowly becoming a reality. We had been shooting for a year plus; we were finally starting to edit and we knew we had a lot of really funny and insightful stories.
But, despite how much captivating interview footage we had, we were keenly aware audiences’ expectations for how documentaries tell stories have grown exponentially — especially when you’re telling the story of a groundbreaking animated series to a group of very passionate fans. We had to finish big.
Sadly, our exsiting self funding was not going to get us there. Enter the go-to solution for budget shortfalls: Kickstarter (or Indiegogo…but that’s a story left for Part 2.)
FUNDING 24/7….BUT HOW?
Crowd funding campaigns are part death march, part start up lab. You are launched on the world’s stage and very much on its schedule. It’s a 24/7 mission: answering emails, pushing out content and spreadding the word. On Kickstarter, you have a fixed goal and a preordained amount of time to hit it. As soon as you click the Launch button you’re all in. Building momentum throughout the campaign is critical.
We did a ton of research prior to launching our campaign. We made some key assumptions based on what had worked before, and formulated a plan based on our particular project. The upside when you have a limited time frame for success is you’ll quickly see how accurate your market assumptions are. In our case, that was also the downside. Hopefully the article below will help you skip some of that pain.
We’ll start with our crowdfunding strategy prior to launch, then dive into our marketing tactics and end with results. I’ll throw in some definitions, assuming that your knowledge of social media marketing is fairly limited. Feel free to skip those parts if you’re already versed in ad buying lingo.
KICKSTARTER VS INDIEGOGO
We chose Kickstarter because of the exponentially higher site traffic. It also tends to have a higher trust factor with Backers.
The downside? An all-or-nothing fixed goal and, even though Kickstarter.com may get more traffic as a whole, only about 10–15% of pledges come from the platform itself. We had a solid plan so we felt we could overcome the downsides. Kickstarter it was. Time to set our goal.
GOAL SETTING AND TRUST
On the surface, setting a goal should be fairly easy: you’ve got X, you need Y, the resulting negative number is Your Goal, right? Well, no.
What adds complexity on Kickstarter is that all or nothing clause. Your Goal may reflect your needs, but is it really achievable? It must be. When that last day of your campaign arrives, there is no gray area: the money pledged by your Backers either deposits to your account or dissolves into the digital ether.
Naturally you’d think ,“Well, if it’s all or nothing, why not just low ball Your Goal?” Logical, but…Take a random sampling of Kickstarter’s “Most Funded” Film & Video campaigns that have delivered in the past 2 years. Even with celebrities involved, goals rarely exceeded 125% of their goal, on average. AlleyWatch.com, pulling from a larger sampling, noted half of Kickstarter projects that funded only exceed their goal by 11% — or less. And that was in 2012 when the campaign success rates were almost 10% higher.
The campaigns that have hit multiples of their goals — and are touted heavily by the platforms — are most likely products, a few years old, or both. And this leads to a critical take-away: For Film & Video Creators, past results do NOT predict future performance.
Most crowdfunding platforms have evolved into more of an Amazon for early adopters. Whereas Film & Video used to be a leading funding category at Kickstarter, the amount raised in this silo has taken a backseat to product driven categories like Games, Technology and Design.
As you’ll see from the chart, Film & Video is now only 4th in terms of dollar volume. Worse, the raise in Total Dollars for Film & Video is half as much as the next category up, Technology. That’s a huge drop off. In other words, Backers are doing more shopping and less altruistic crowd funding which = less of a chance your Film project is landing 300% of what you said you needed.
If low balling and making it up with goal overages isn’t the solution, how do you set Your Goal? Let’s run through how we approached it. (Changes will be address in Part 2):
Our initial film completion budget plus Kickstarter costs broke down as follows:
- $200k for original animation,
- $100k for all other finishing costs including music and festival clip licensing, plus
- 30% of the total for Kickstarter rewards, including shipping and marketing
ORIGINAL Funding Goal: $390k.
Mmm…A lot of money for finishing an independent doc. It was time to reconsider. We knew we could cut back on some original animation and swap out the really expensive music choices.
REVISED Goal: $286k. Again, a lot.
But, when you consider the millions of Ren & Stimpy fans, most who are at an age where they could realisticallly contribute, getting less than 12,000 fans to spend $25 (the most popular Kickstarter pledge), $286k didn’t seem unreasonable.
We also factored in the ground work we had laid thus far:
- We had almost 7,000 fans on the film’s Facebook Page;
- A combined social media reach of 3 to 5 million through artists from the show and celebrity supporters;
- An email list of roughly 1,900;
- A $3,500 budget for Facebook & Twitter ads and onsite marketing, including the San Diego ComicCon, which had 150k+ attendees in our core demo.
So to recap: Our new X - Y = $289,000 and given our potential target size, this seemed achievable. Except…we forgot to factor in “T.” Also known as Trust. What is a Backer’s level of trust?
Do they trust you can hit your goal? Do they believe you need what you’re asking for? AND, will you deliver the project as promised? As we found out, getting 12,000 people you’ve never met to trust you is no easy feat.
This has become more acute in the last couple of years after crowdfunding platforms have been plagued by high profile stories of creators not delivering — or worse, taking pledges and heading outta town. It may also be why Kickstarter success rates have not increased in proportion to the number of projects listed.
Looking back, we should have given this much greater consideration. We also didn’t factor in how progress is communicated on mobile — the way most people will view a campaign — and how that affects a Backer’s trust in your ability to reach your goal.
WHY 80% OF $25K > $95K
Backers want some kind of reassurance a project will get funded. During our campaign, we were close to, or at the top of the dollar amount raised amongst current film projects. This should have offered reassurance to prospective Backers we were a safe bet. “Look! We’ve attracted the most money! People love us!!”
But that’s now how success is measured when it’s an all or nothing goal. If you saw the project on Kickstarter mobile — where most people do — we looked less successful than the other projects. Here’s why:
Unless a Backer clicked through, she’d have no idea of the dollar amount raised. A project is judged only in relation to how close it is to it’s goal. So even though you may have rasied more money than any other project — there is clear social proof you are more worthy of a Backer’s attention and pledge — that will not be apparent at first glance. And sometimes a first glance is all you’ll get. An ad’s conversion rate — the percentage of how many see vs how many actually buy — is often in the single digits, so it truly is a game of inches.
Percentages have a direct effect on Kickstarter’s support of the campaign, too. Despite collecting over $100k in pledges — a benchmark only 1% of campaigns see — it wasn’t until we hit 38% of our goal that Happy Happy Joy Joy was given real estate on Kickstarter’s Home page. It was frustrating to see projects that had raised a lot less in dollars enjoying a perk that greatly increases success rates. And by greatly I mean the difference between making Your Goal 89% of the time versus only 30% of the time. (See Mollick, Ethan “The Dynamics of Crowdfunding: Determinants of Success and Failure” (July 15, 2012)).
So what are the Goal Setting takeaways?
- Crowdfunding has matured and Backers are more skeptical so be as conservative as possible with your goal;
- On Kickstarter, you will be rewarded with home page real estate or “Projects We love” status — important indicators of success — based on percentages of goals reached — not dollar amounts;
- Strongly consider breaking up your estimated needs into smaller Goals and run multiple campaigns
- Strategize on how to reach 40% of your goal as quickly as possible in order to land on the home page sooner than later.
Next step is figuring out your marketing plan.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEAK — A QUICK PRIMER
Facebook provides an enormous amount of data categories in your Ad Manager account. I found the metrics defined below to be the most useful / relevant to our campaign:
- Results — This can be anything from a click to a video view to number of people who see the video (meaured in CPM or Cost Per Thousand.)
- Impressions — How many times your ad is shown.
- Result Rate — The percentage of Results out of number of Impressions. 10 Results out of 100 Impressions, your result rate is 10%.
- Unique Link Clicks — Where the rubber meets the road. How many people clicked on your ad’s link for the first time.
- Reach — How many people in total have been exposed to your ad.
- Frequency — How many times your Ad is shown to the same people.
FACEBOOK FANS: IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?
As entertaining as Facebook can be, never forget it’s business is selling advertising. This became abundantly clear when looking at the value of having 7,000 Fans on our film’s Facebook page.
Let’s start by looking at the number of people reached by organic posts prior to the campaign launch:
On average, only 287 Facebook fans were served non-paid posts on our page. Even as we grew the number of Fans, the number of organic posts served did not grow substantially. And note, too, this average includes two anomalies that saw several thousand serves. Take these away and the picture gets worse.
Also, this is the amount of people that were served the posts — not who “paid attention to.” If you look at one of the spikes — a video featuring Bill Wray — only 15% of those who were served interacted with the post — the only proof we have it actually made an impression.
The takeaway is don’t expect a significant percentage of your Fans on a page to even be aware of any one post, let alone donate, through organic posting. So what are some solutions?
- You need to post a lot and over as long a time as possible — preferably videos, images and GIF’s which saw substantially more interactions and organic re-posting.
- Don’t worry about over-posting. For everyone who opted out of our posts, we saw a much greater percentage of folks opting in.
- We started to reach out directly to Fans of our page via FB Messenger. It was slow, and Facebook will definitely throttle the number of notes you can send out in a day. But of those contacted we saw a pledge rate of almost 6.5%. This is a windfall when you consider the average percentage of people who click on an ad can be as low as 1–2%.
- Finally, we started to pay for those posts. Welcome to Facebook advertising….
THE FACEBOOK AD MACHINE
When it comes to Facebook marketing, the free lunches may be few and far between, but if you pay a little, you can get a full buffet. Just about any interest you’ve seen posted about on Facebook is available as a targeting option. This is in addition to standard demographics like age, sex and location. This is one big reason why Facebook is killing Twitter in the ad game, which has a much more general set of targeting options.
The catch is you need to implement some best practices, otherwise you’ll be throwing money away. First, is drilling down on your audience. Here’s a quick chart that shows two different groups we thought might be interested in HHJJ:
Comparing the Result percentage, you can see a significant jump in clicks with just a minor adjustment to our targeting criteria. True, the audience highlighted in blue was served more ads, but we can also assume once Facebook determined one Ad Set was garnering significantly more Clicks (and therefore more FB revenue), the algorithm was set up to push that Ad Set over the other.
A/B Testing of Audiences can NOT be overstated. Since the Happy Happ Joy Joy campaign, we’ve launched other Facebook marketing efforts and seen costs cut in half or more through testing. A recent call to Facebook confirmed the same: testing, testing and more testing, for your particular campaign, is the only way to find efficiencies.
CRAFTING FACEBOOK ADS
After fine tuning who might be interested in your campaign, A-B testing of ads is also critical — and an eye opener. You’ll be amazed at how, once again, little differences can mean a lot. The chart below shows the result of testing (6) different ads: all with the same picture, but with two different headlines and different Call to Action buttons (ie “Shop” or “Learn More”, etc.)
A few immediate take aways:
- The most expensive is not always the most effective. Ad “A” costs 25% less than Ad “B” on a Cost per Click basis, yet it’s almost twice as effective, based on both Result Rate and the difference in Unique Link Clicks.
- Call to Action Buttons like “Shop” or “Learn More” can actually hurt more than they help.
- Context is important: The “Donate” button was twice as effective depending upon what copy it was paired with.
- A-B testing is a must. The swing between the most (Ad A) and least (Ad D) effective was a 240% difference!
FACEBOOK POSTS: TO BOOST OR NOT TO BOOST
If you’ve spent anytime on Facebook, I’m sure you’ve seen one of these:
It’s an opportunity to expand your audience for an organic post that seems to be getting a lot of attention — usually videos and GIF’s. Why wouldn’t you want to build on this success?? Here’s why:
The screen shots above are from two different Post Boosts. Looking at the Cost per Unique Link Click alone should make you want to hit the history erase button. You’re seeing costs that are 55 to 1400% more than an ad built through A/B testing and using specific audiences!
Boosting a campaign also cedes control of the posts intended purpose and how you are charged. Were you looking to gain awareness through reach — and paying per 1,000 people served? Or lookng to drive traffic to your crowdfunding site — and paying per link click? Boosting posts may seem like a quick fix, but you can spend your money better elsewhere.
FACEBOOK AD RESULTS: DO THEY WORK?
Clicks are great, but what about real results, aka pledged money? The chart below shows where our Kickstarter Backers came from online, and what percentage of pledged dollars came from that referring source.
Facebook was the third biggest referral source of pledges. Not just traffic, but of people who actually pledged. The average amount pledged was also 4 times higher than the most popular Kickstarter pledge amount. This is in contrast to Twitter, which had a much, much larger audience for both organic and paid posts (aka tweets) but was #7 on the referral list.
The Conclusion:
- Yes, Facebook Ads work with proper targeting and ad refinement;
- The number of Fans on a Facebook page, and organic posts, won’t lead to success without follow up and paid posts.
THE VALUE OF TWEETS
No question Twitter has revolutionized social discourse and is a great way to interact with a fanbase. But it has limits. With paid advertising, where Facebook can give you close to pin point accuracy, Twitter offers more of a shot gun approach via Keywords. Like Facebook, it’s also surprising how few people actually see any one organic post / Tweet.
Looking to advertise, here were some of the most relevant choices available for audience targeting:
“Nickelodeon” is a relevant keyword for a documentary on Ren & Stimpy. Unfortunately, that’s still very general when you consider anybody who mentions “Nickelodeon” became a target, regardless if they had any interest in Ren & Stimpy or were even of a credit card bearing age. Worse, the Cost per Link Click was in the Facebook Post Boost realm — and not in a good way.
Our original assumption was we’d be able to capitalize on the fan bases of the artists from the show as well as some celebrity admirers. We were incredibly grateful for their support and owed all major thank you’s. That said, much like any social media post, no matter how big the audience, the chances of any one tweet being seen and acted upon are shockingly low. Out of a potential audience of 5.3MM Followers — an audience that presumably had some level of interest in Ren & Stimpy — the number of Backers that came from Twitter was 25 — a .00047% conversion rate!
In Twitter’s defense, we didn’t have 5 to 10 tweets a day going out from an influencer who is a principle in the project. That said, it was a great lesson in the realities of the social media lottery: Volume and constantly testing the effectiveness of Tweets is paramount.
THE VALUE OF TWEETING
One area where we did find Twitter to be very effective was through direct outreach. In other words, finding users via their tweet hashtags and tweeting to them directly. Much like reaching out to FB Fans via Messenger, it’s slow going but the pledge rate jumps significantly — this time almost 20%.
RESULTS
Twenty Three days into the campaign, we had raised over $125,000. Only 1% of campaigns reach the Six Figure mark. And for Film & Video Projects that number might be even lower. A big achievement. Three days later, we pulled the plug. It all went away.
It was hearbreaking. But we knew, even with a mad dash at the end, we were not going to hit our goal. The lessons learned were learned too late….this time. The good news? We relaunched in a month; exceeded our new and improved goal and kept it all! And that brings us to Part 2.
Coming soon….
©2018 Ladies & Gentlemen, Inc