Social Networks ads for your crowdfunding campaign 101 (Part 1)

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(TL;DR)

This article presents the various steps involved in creating an advertising strategy on the Meta networks (Facebook and Instagram) and Reddit. It details tracking tools (Pixel, API, Google Analytics: when and how to use them) and how to choose your advertising campaign goal.

It will be followed by one or more articles describing other essential aspects to consider when working on an advertising strategy. Part 2 is already available.

🗒️ Author’s note: This article uses a number of technical words that are difficult to replace with more common ones. To help you with your understanding, a glossary is included at the end of the article, and each word used in the glossary is followed by an asterisk.*

As the name suggests, this article is the first part of a series in which I share my knowledge of advertising. Knowledge gleaned from several years’ practice in advertising for games related crowdfunding campaigns at The Crowdfunding Agency. To access Part 2, click here.

💸 If you’re reading this article, it’s because you’re (at least a little) convinced of the importance of paid communication, and more specifically of advertising on social networks, to the success of your crowdfunding campaign.

Indeed, as mentioned in this previous article on the importance of community in your crowdfunding campaign, advertising on social networks can help you reach a large and otherwise hard-to-reach audience, at every stage of your campaign:

🔵 Before the campaign

• to generate traffic to your pre-launch page with the aim of increasing its follower count (which, as we’ve seen here, is a key factor in determining whether or not it’s time to launch your campaign)
• to obtain new subscribers to your mailing list via a web page (or landing page) featuring a presentation of your project, a registration form… and perhaps a small gift in exchange for the email address, such as wallpapers for example? That’s exactly what we did for the Cyclades Legendary Edition Kickstarter campaign. The landing page is still available here.

Example of the landing page for the Cyclades Legendary Edition game, which was online right from the start of communication on the Kickstarter pre-launch page. The wording of the page has evolved according to the different stages of the campaign (pre-launch, campaign, post-campaign, late pledge), and the page is still available at this address: https://open-sesame.games/cyclades-legendary-edition/)

🟢 During the campaign

• To display your ads to people who are likely to back your project, and
• To ensure traffic to your campaign page, both for people who don’t know about your project, and for people who have already visited your campaign page,
• To reconnect with people who have visited your campaign page or interacted with your social network accounts, without having backed the project. This is known as retargeting.

🟣 After the campaign

• To drive traffic to your late pledge campaign.

As you can see from this non-exhaustive list, different strategies can be implemented to get the word out about your campaign and, ultimately, increase the number of backers.

🗝️ The goal of this article is to give you the keys to creating your own advertising strategy.

In particular, this article will cover advertising on the Meta network (Facebook and Instagram) as well as Reddit. Currently, The Crowdfunding Agency mainly uses these networks, but it’s possible that we’ll be experimenting with Google ads in the near future. In that case, an article will be published right here!

Summary

1. Our workflow for Meta and Reddit ads
2. Tracking: Pixels, API, Google Analytics, referral links
3. Focus on campaign goals
4. Glossary of technical terms used in this article

1. Our workflow for Meta and Reddit ads

🧮 Before explaining how to create an advertising strategy, I’m going to start by taking you through all the stages of our advertising creation process at The Crowdfunding Agency. This will give you an overview, so you can dive a little deeper into each part.

Here are the steps involved in creating an ad:

1️⃣ Creation of advertising accounts

First of all, we make sure that the customer’s company account and advertising account are created on Meta (here’s a guide to help you). We also make sure that we have the required rights to access the advertising account, create campaigns and access campaign statistics data.

This may seem basic at first, but I assure you that mastering the arcana of Meta’s Business Manager is a real challenge! On Reddit, creating an account and managing access rights is much simpler and more accessible (although fewer options are available).

2️⃣ Tracking tool configuration

No secret: Ads work with data. So it’s important to configure everything right from the start to give the algorithms enough data relating to your goals (that’s the next point), and to give you the information you need to make relevant decisions about your ads.

We check that *a Pixel Meta exists for each landing page ** (the crowdfunding campaign, and the website if we want to get sign-ups to our mailing list via advertising), and that the Meta API is also configured for the Kickstarter page and our website. Unfortunately, it’s not yet possible to configure the Meta API for Gamefound. Nor is it possible to configure the Reddit pixel on the Gamefound and Kickstarter campaigns.

We are also creating a Google Analytics account and setting up a property for each communication tool:

• The crowdfunding campaign page,
• The website if we’re using a landing page* to collect email addresses.

Each Google Analytics property will track data from each website, but also from the referral links* we’ll be using in our communication.

3️⃣ Advertising goals

To create an advertising campaign, it’s essential to be clear about its goal:

🚶Generate visits to the target page (traffic)?

💌 Get subscribers on our mailing list (conversion*)?

🖱️Generate clicks on the “Follow” button on our pre-launch page (conversion*)?

🤑 Generate sales on our target page (purchase)?

Why is it so important to think about this before we even start thinking of our advertising content? Mainly because it’s impossible to change the goal during the course of an advertising campaign, and this goal will influence how the algorithm will choose who to show our ads to*.

4️⃣ Advertising budget (amount and methods of spending)

The first question to ask is how much advertising budget is available for the pre-launch, and during the campaign. Bearing in mind that, during the campaign, and depending on the results of the advertising (the ROAS*), we can choose to increase or decrease the daily expenditure to adapt to the results.

Then, on Meta, you choose whether the budget is spent at the level of the ad campaign, or of the ad sets (I’ll explain everything in the part 2 of this article). On Reddit, spending is automatically done at the ad set level.

5️⃣ Audience

We ask the following questions to determine the type of advertising campaign and the communication channels used:

• What geographical areas are we targeting?
• In what languages are we going to write our ads?
• Do I know my audience’s interests (for example, games similar to the one I want to promote)?
• Is the audience I already have on Meta large enough to use similar audiences (people who follow my Facebook page / Instagram followers, people who have interacted with my publications)?
• Do I have a customer file or mailing list that I can import to create similar audiences (in compliance with RGPD rules, i.e. you have warned new subscribers that you will use their data for advertising purposes)

6️⃣ Content to be displayed

With all these elements in mind, we can start thinking about the content to be displayed in these ads:

• Images or videos? Or both?
• What messages do I want to get across? How do I translate this into catchy text?
• What will the call-to-action* be? (the text of the button people will click on to access the landing page*)

From there, I can start creating text or media elements, bearing in mind that it will be important to test different formats to see which work best.

7️⃣ Creation of referral links*

We create the referral links required for data tracking. Depending on the case, they can be created :

• On Google Analytics,
• On Kickstarter or Gamefound.

💡 The number of links required depends on the strategy. Personally, I like to create one for each ad, in order to have very fine-grained data and understand which ads work and which don’t. Some people will prefer to create one link per ad set to have a less fine granularity.

8️⃣ Implementing ads on the advertising platform

🐜 Implementation is a painstaking task, since it’s important to check that all parameters — texts, images, URL, budget, audience and countries — are correct. Indeed, once the ads have been launched, if you wish to modify them, it’s likely to disrupt the advertising algorithm for a short period.

Ad validation by the platform can take up to several days. It is important to send your ads for validation at least 48 hours before the scheduled display time.

9️⃣ Performance analysis and adjustments

📈 Once the ads have been launched, we regularly analyze the results (bearing in mind that the advertising algorithm* can take several days to settle in and find its feet) to apply modifications, cut out certain ads, launch new ones…

2. Tracking: Pixels, API, Google Analytics, referral links

Several tools enable you to obtain data on the actions taken by people who click on your ads.

👾 Pixel and Conversions API

The pixel is a code that you place on your landing page* or campaign page, and which allows Meta (or Reddit) to know what actions have been performed by the people who click on your ads. For example, did the person view the page after clicking? Did they click a button on the landing page? Did they make a purchase?

The Conversions API is a tool developed by Meta that works with the Pixel to obtain information that the Pixel doesn’t provide. Like the Pixel, the Conversions API should be placed on your landing page* and/or campaign page (where possible).

🖥️ Technically speaking: the Pixel lets you share web events from a web browser, while the Conversions API lets you share web events directly from your server.

The iOS 14 update, which occurred in 2020, severely restricted the use of cookies for tracking on Apple mobile devices. This means that the pixel alone will give you much less information about how iOS users interact with your business. That’s why, when you have the opportunity, I recommend pairing the Meta pixel with the Meta API.

📊 Google Analytics

It’s very useful to create a Google Analytics account to track your visitors’ activities on your campaign page as well as on your landing page*. This allows you to obtain information on where your visitors are coming from and what they’re doing on your site.

It has recently become possible to retrieve Google Analytics data from the moment your project is pre-launched at Kickstarter and Gamefound (previously, data was only available from the moment the project was launched).

So remember to create a Google Analytics property for your campaign page, and another one for your landing page*, and parameter them properly so that they can record data as soon as you start communicating about your projects!

🏠 In-house analytics tools (crowdfunding platforms)

Kickstarter and Gamefound offer analytics tools that enable you to find out more about the number of visitors to your page, day by day, the number of backers, daily pledges, the number of pledges per referral link, where your pledges come from… They’ve grown over the years and are very useful.

However, they are only available once the campaign has been launched. So it’s a good idea to install Google Analytics as soon as you publish your pre-launch page.

🔗 Referral links*

In your dashboard on the campaign platform, you can create, before and during the campaign, URLs that point to your campaign page and are “monitored” by the platforms.

In concrete terms, if someone clicks on one of your referral* links and back your project, you’ll be able to see that this link has earned 1 pledge, as well as its monetary value.

It’s very interesting to create referral links to check the effectiveness of your communication actions. For example:

• If you want to measure the effectiveness of your ads, you can create a different referral link for each ad. This way, you’ll know exactly which ad has earned you the most money.
• If you want to measure the effectiveness of a launch publication on a social network, you can create a referral link dedicated to this publication.
• If you pay for an appearance in a newsletter, you can also create a referral link for the occasion to measure the impact of this action.

These referral links* created on crowdfunding platforms will only be useful to you once the campaign has been launched (and also at the time of the Late Pledge).

How to use referral links* BEFORE your crowdfunding campaign?

If you want to obtain data on your communication actions prior to the campaign, I advise you to look at UTM links, which you can track in Google Analytics.

A UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) link is made up of the URL of your destination site, completed with parameters that will enable Google to track the actions taken by people who click on that particular link (it looks like http://example.com/?utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=codeUTM).

Here’s a tool, created by Google, that will enable you to easily create UTM links, as well as a tutorial to help you use them: https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-using-utm-parameters/

Personally, I like to create a lot of referral links*, which allow me to have a fairly fine granularity when it comes to measuring the financial impact of my marketing actions. This helps me make marketing decisions before, during and after the crowdfunding campaign.

Summary table of tracking tools by platform

Here’s a summary of the tracking tools and their usability according to the platforms used (April 2024):

*Only if you have the possibility to add code in the header of your website pages, or if you can install extensions that manage this.

3. Focus on campaign goals

As explained above, depending on your goal, the algorithm* of the advertising platform you’re using won’t behave in the same way. It won’t show your ads to the same people. It won’t be “satisfied” with the same results.

Let’s take an example

My crowdfunding campaign is running on Kickstarter. I’m launching Meta ads with the “Traffic ” goal (which maximizes either the number of clicks on your ad, or the display of the landing page, depending on your configuration). The idea being that as many people as possible click on my ad and visit my target page (in this case, my Kickstarter campaign).

I created a referral* (or “custom link”) in my Kickstarter campaign that I use in my ads for this particular campaign. The result is that, on my Kickstarter dashboard, I can see the number of pledges generated by each referral link.

Here’s what the Kickstarter dashboard looks like. The “Personnalisé” mention in the “Type” column is for a referral link. Here, for example, we can see that the newsletters in which I used this particular referral URL generated 78 pledges.

Let’s get back to my ad. Meta will show it primarily to people who click on it. But it won’t take into account whether these people buy from the campaign or not, since its goal is to get them to click on the ad. It’s therefore quite possible that your results are incredible on Meta (with a very low cost per click), but that your ads don’t generate a single euro, or very few. Which is a real shame, I’m sure you’ll agree.

To overcome this, I’m going to choose a “buy” goal for my Meta campaign. This way, the algorithm will choose to display ads to people who are likely to complete the purchasing process on Kickstarter.

🎯 In fact, your goal depends on the elements that will influence the way you manage your ads:

• You don’t value purchases, but want as many people as possible to visit your Kickstarter page (very rare, but not impossible)? Choose a traffic goal!
• You want to calculate the ROAS* of your advertising campaign to increase or decrease the advertising budget during the campaign? Choose a purchase goal!

I should point out, however, that if your budget is large enough, it’s perfectly possible to launch several campaigns with different goals on Meta at the same time. For example, one campaign that will generate clicks on the “Follow” button on your pre-launch page, and another, in parallel, that will generate subscriptions to your newsletter.

🗒️ If these two goals are included in your communication strategy (Victoria talks more specifically about communication strategy in this article), and if the budget is sufficient (remember: at the very least, you need to spend €5 per day per advertising campaign), this is entirely possible.

4. Glossary of technical terms used in this article

In this article, all words followed by a star are listed and defined in this glossary. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, these terms are widely used, and it’s complicated to talk about advertising using more accessible, but less precise terms. If you want to delve into the world of advertising, you’ll need to be familiar with them.

🟣 Advertising algorithm: Computer program used by advertising platforms to determine which ads to display to a particular user. The algorithm takes into account many factors such as the user’s interests, online behavior, geographic location and demographics to display relevant, targeted ads. The algorithm’s goal is to maximize the chances that the user will click on the ad and perform a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

🟣 Conversion: This is when a person performs a specific action. In the pre-campaign period, this might be clicking on your project’s “follow” button. Or subscribing to your mailing list. During the campaign, it could be backing your project. Once someone performs the action defined in your strategy, it’s called a conversion.

🟣 CTA (Call to Action): When communicating (e.g. via a publication on social networks, a newsletter, on your website, etc.), it’s advisable to use a CTA which, as its name suggests, invites the reader to take an action. This could be subscribing to a mailing list, following a Kickstarter project, sharing a publication, going to read a blog post, adding a video game to your wishlist… Your marketing and advertising strategies will help you define the most relevant CTAs to achieve your goals. In the context of a crowdfunding campaign, CTAs are generally :

• Subscribe to the publisher’s / studio’s mailing list (in the pre-campaign period)
• Follow the Kickstarter / Gamefound / other platform page (in pre-campaign period)
• Visit the project page to back the project (during the campaign)
• Make a purchase (during the campaign)

To avoid losing your audience, it’s recommended to have just one CTA per communication action.

🟣 Landing page: A web page designed specifically to welcome visitors who arrive on a website by clicking on a link from an external source, such as an advertisement, e-mail or search engine result. The landing page is generally optimized to encourage visitors to perform a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter, purchasing a product or filling in a contact form.

🟣 Referral link: A web link that tracks the origin of visitors to a website. When a visitor clicks on a referral link, they are redirected to the target website, and the website owner can know that this visitor has been redirected from a specific website or advertising campaign. Referral links are often used in advertising campaigns to track the effectiveness of different traffic sources and optimize advertising spend.

🟣 Retargeting: This technique enables you to target a person who has already visited your website (or taken an action on one of your social network publications). This makes it possible to display ads to this target group who is interested in your project, but who has not yet made a purchase on your campaign, for example.

🟣 ROAS (Return on Ads Spends): This is the return on investment for advertising. To calculate your ROAS on a particular advertising campaign, here’s the formula: (amount of pledges obtained thanks to advertising) / (amount spent on advertising).

It generally varies between 1 and 6 for the games-related crowdfunding campaigns.

I’ve got a lot more to tell you about advertising and how to set up your advertising strategy, but I think the volume of information is far too high for a single blog post! So I’ll leave you to digest this (big) first part, ask me questions if there’s anything you’d like to clarify, and most importantly, start thinking about your advertising strategy for your next crowdfunding campaign!

⏭️ In the next parts (part 2 is already available), I’ll explore how to structure an ad campaign on Meta and Reddit, how to choose your audience, we’ll talk about budgeting in more detail, I’ll give you a few tips for your creations, for your strategies regarding your games-related crowdfunding project, and of course we’ll talk about analyzing all this data.

Quite a program!

🌳 If you’d like me to accompany you on your journey into advertising land, at The Crowdfunding Agency, we can advise you, train you and even handle your ads on social networks (to do this, you can fill in our form).

And in the meantime, you can contact me in the comments, or by e-mail if you have any questions! See you soon for part 2!

💌 caroline@crowdfunding-agency.com

🖥️ https://crowdfunding-agency.com/

Or join us on our Discord server!