Board Game Crowdfunding: build a solid marketing strategy in 9 steps! (part 2)
This article is a direct follow-up to What a marketing strategy consists of — part 1, which dealt with the analytical part of creating a strategy (audit, objectives, target, messages…), with a focus on board game projects undergoing a crowdfunding campaign.
If you’re not familiar with the creation of a communication strategy, I strongly recommend that you take a look at it before starting this second part.
Once you know why, for who and what you want to communicate, it’s time to look at where you can communicate and what tools you can use to do it properly. Let’s get started!
🗨️ Communication channels: the place to be!
You now know why you want to communicate, who you want to communicate with and what you want to communicate. Now let’s focus on the “where”!
Social networks
For organic (free) communication on a board game project undergoing now or soon a crowdfunding campaign, you can go to:
➡️ Facebook; on your own page and on groups dedicated to the subject of board games and crowdfunding
➡️ Reddit; on subreddits dedicated to Kickstarter, board games and illustrations
➡️ Instagram; using relevant hashtags such as #bgg #boardgamesofinstagram #boardgameaddict #tabletopgame #tabletopgames #boardgamegeek
➡️ X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky or Threads: if you have the time to post quite frequently
➡️ Discord: to gather your community and communicate about your future projects, but animation requires additional resources in the long term.
For longer-term communication about your company and projects, you could consider building a community on Tik Tok and Discord. I advise you to create only one account on each network to build loyalty among your audience and avoid losing them as your projects progress.
Careful:
Each social network has its own algorithm and its own characteristics, which it is important to take advantage of. If you want to stay updated on the matter, I suggest you follow the newsletter of Social Media Today or check out their website regularly.
You don’t have to be everywhere at once! Depending on your resources, your objectives and your target audience, you can focus on just 2 or 3 networks, as long as they are relevant and communication is regular.
Social Media ads
Advertising campaigns on social networks are a highly recommended step for reaching a large proportion of your target audience.
At The Crowdfunding Agency, we systematically use Meta (Facebook and Instagram) because it allows us to create a variety of advertising campaigns that can meet all of our needs:
➡️traffic campaigns to redirect the community to another page
➡️retargeting to reach an audience that has already interacted with our content
➡️purchase campaigns to find out how many people who clicked on the link actually made a purchase
➡️boosts to promote a publication already published on your page to a wider audience
You can edit several parameters, such as location or areas of interest, and you can also import your Kickstarter audience so that you can reach a similar audience and that buyers no longer see your ads. If you have any questions, you can meet an expert to receive advice and explanations on how the platform works.
Reddit and other networks can be an interesting avenue for testing, but in my experience, I’d still advise you to place at least 70% of your social media advertising budget on Meta.
🔗 For everything you need to know about creating your advertising campaigns, I strongly advise you to read the very complete article Social Networks ads for your crowdfunding campaign 101 (Part 1) made by my colleague and ads expert Caroline Imbert.
Banner advertising and giveaways are also great ways to reach your board game community. You may be interested in banners from :
- Board Games Geek, who offer a wide range of banner types and prices — more info here
- Kicktraq: you can contact them via this form for more information
- Board Game Revolution, who offer to create and publish banners, giveaways and highlights in a Facebook group with over 80,000 members and in a newsletter. Different prices and packages are available.
Don’t forget to provide them, whenever possible, with a referral link for any advertising that takes place after the launch of your campaign, so that you can track the number of purchases generated per ad.
As a general rule, I advise you to use referral links for all your communications.
Newsletters
Newsletters are essential for gathering THE most important data: the email addresses of people interested in your project.
You can create a landing page (website with a single page, for example this one we created for Cyclades Legendary Edition’s Kickstarter campaign) including a very short form and encourage your audience to sign up to receive exclusive news and a few benefits such as wallpapers.
These emails can be used throughout your project to announce the campaign launch date, the launch and campaign news (stretch goals, community goals, competitions, etc.), and even after to promote your pledge manager or future projects.
Depending on the country in which you carry out this action, you will have to comply with user protection rules. In France, for example, we must comply with the RGPD rules.
Other websites
There are several other platforms that can help you with your communications:
➡️ Forums, such as those found on the Board Game Geek project pages, allow you to interact more directly with experienced players who can give you constructive and valuable feedback to improve your campaign and communication strategy.
➡️Websites where players meet, such as Kicktraq and its hotlist of board game trends.
🫶 The editorial line: your project’s identity
The editorial line is ‘the set of rules that enable you to ensure harmony between the different content you publish’. It guides the writer in creating content and reflects your industry and your brand (source).
At this stage, you have already started to work on your editorial line by defining your audience and your messages. Now it’s a question of making the right editorial choices:
➡️ Storytelling (or narrative communication) involves telling the story of your company and/or your project. You can use this technique to :
- immerse your audience in the lore of your project, if it contains a rich and complex story.
- humanise your company/brand by telling its story and documenting your day-to-day life to attract sympathy and convey a sense of authenticity to your audience
This technique, combined with constant interaction with your community, will enable you to create empathy and make your audience want to continue following your adventures.
➡️ The tone you choose should match the identity of your project, your company and the storytelling you have chosen. In the case of a fun project, you should avoid being too formal or too informative, and instead use a friendly, slightly technical and relaxed tone. At The Crowdfunding Agency, we also recommend using emojis to convey emotions and catch the eye. 👁️
➡️ Make a list of keywords to include in your publications to improve your natural referencing and reach your audience!
➡️ Your content formats is also an important parameter: Do you have the resources to create visuals, videos, articles, podcasts or all at once? Boost your communication and generate more engagement by diversifying your formats, but don’t spread yourself too thin. The most important thing is to be regular and consistent with the formats you choose and your graphic charter.
🗓️ The editorial calendar: a collaborative tool
This is it: you can now create and plan your content in an editorial calendar! This precious tool brings together :
➡️ your publications (social networks, newsletters, etc.), including information specific to each publication: text, visual or video, communication channels, date and time of publication.
➡️ the events you want to organise: competitions, Q&A, etc. as these are essential for generating excitement before the launch of the campaign, and for animating your campaign during slack periods.
➡️ the key dates associated with your project: Coming Soon page creation, launch date announcement, trailer release, launch of the campaign…
➡️ External events and news you can use to promote your project. They can be in real life (like for SPIEL) or online.
You also have to define the frequency of your publications by creating a standard schedule by month and byweek, which you can use as a basis for the coming months.
🔗 There are many examples of editorial calendars on the web, such as this one from Notion.
You can use any collaborative tool to make sure you get all the necessary comments and validations from your team! Personally, I recommend Trello, Notion or simply Google Sheets. If these are not for you, feel free to explore the wide variety of tools out there!
📈Data analytics: a long-term process
Every two to four weeks, I advise you to review the results of your communications.
Define KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for each of the objectives defined above so that you know which data to analyse.
A KPI is a quantified performance indicator used to monitor the effectiveness of an action in relation to defined objectives. (source)
Example: if your primary objective is to increase the number of followers on your Coming Soon page, you will measure clicks on the link to your publications and the number of followers on the Coming Soon page.
You can go further by trying to understand why your community is acting in a particular way, and by measuring other KPIs. Here, it might be useful to measure the number of shares per publication to find out whether they are adding value, and whether your community is starting to develop enough loyalty to become ambassadors.
With each new analysis, you can refine your theories, better understand your audience and adapt your strategy for more effective long-term communication.
Now, if you have done everything advised in this two-part article, you are more than ready to start communicating ! All that remains is… practice. 😃
I hope this article has made you aware of the importance of developing a communications strategy to increase the chances of success of your crowdfunding campaign, and has given you the information and tools you need to put it into practice!
🌳 At The Crowdfunding Agency, we can create your communication strategy or support you in its creation so that it is solid and quickly applicable.
💡 Depending on your needs and budget, we can also offer consulting-type support to give you feedback on your strategy, answer your questions when you have them, and help you move in the right direction.
📃 The various aspects of the communication strategy will be detailed in future articles, along with lists of social network publications to exploit if you’re short of inspiration.
If you have any specific questions that you would like to see answered here, please contact us!
💌 victoria@crowdfunding-agency.com
🖥️ https://crowdfunding-agency.com/
Victoria Cribier
Social Media Manager at The Crowdfunding Agency
