How to Successfully Relaunch a Kickstarter Campaign
Thousands of Kickstarter campaigns are unsuccessful. If you consider the vast amount of projects that are continuously being released, it’s easy to see why it’d be hard to stand out from the competition. It’s not easy to make your mark in an industry that’s so competitive. However, you cannot let your hard work and dedication go to waste just because you didn’t reach your initial fundraising goal.
You can always give it another shot. After all, you only fail when you stop trying. Here is some advice that you can use when it comes to relaunching your Kickstarter campaign to make sure you do it right this time around.
Find out what went wrong
Evaluating your mistakes is essential for any unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign. Before relaunching, you have to take some time to reflect and examine every metric to track your growth. If you happened to use analytics, you could analyze them by looking at your traffic, where they originated, which social media platforms were useful, how many backers you got on a daily basis, and more. Write down your results in detail and make a note of what worked.
Pre-launch Campaign
Don’t do the same mistake twice, before you relaunch your campaign make sure you have at least 500–1000 email addresses from potential backers. Check my pre-launch checklist on Forbes.
Get feedback from your backers
Your backers are a valuable source of motivation and information. They can offer you valuable feedback and, hopefully, become your first backers when you relaunch. Take the time to talk to backers individually and reflect on their feedback.
Revise your funding goal if necessary
Lower your funding goal if you can. It’s best to keep it at an average level by making the reward tiers generally affordable. It can be risky to ask for a high pledge for a product that hasn’t even been released yet.
Shorten your campaign timeline
Based on statistics, the best Kickstarter campaigns should run within a 30-day timeline. While you don’t necessarily have to follow the same timeframe, it’s still a good idea to avoid stretching it for too long and making your backers wait for a long time.
Support other Kickstarter campaigns
As a campaign creator, it’s good practice to back a minimum of ten other campaigns for feedback. Backing other campaigns gives you credibility and also offers valuable input from people in the same field through a private conversation.
Create a media contacts list
Before your campaign relaunch, it’s vital to come up with a list of media contacts. You should draw an appropriate timeline for this and make a practical list of contacts you need to get in touch with beforehand. Write them persuasive personal emails using a proper press release that discusses your project in detail.
Use social media to get people talking
Come up with a pre-launch social media marketing plan and use your most popular social media channels to get the word out. Inform people that you’re returning with even better features and let them know why they ought to back your project this time around.
Organize a giveaway before you relaunch
If your product is ready and you have a minimum budget available, create a giveaway right before your relaunch is scheduled to generate more buzz. It’ll also give you the initial backers you need to reach the first half of your goal. Once that happens, you’ll be featured under Kickstarter’s Popular category, which will bring in more visitors than a general listing.
Generate buzz through KickstarterForum and other platforms
You can use KickstarterForum or Kickstarter Campus to pitch your project or comment on other threads to get people talking about your project. Gaining valuable contacts is always a possibility, especially the more you put yourself out there.
Relaunching isn’t easy, but it sure beats wasting time and feeling bad about your failed campaign. Instead of waiting for another product idea to form, why not use what you already have and improve it?
What do you think about relaunching? Is it something you’ve done or would do?
