If you set a goal too high, you won’t get enough backers resulting in a failed campaign. 

If you set a goal too low, you won’t be able to raise the amount you need to bring your project to life. 

So how do you set a Kickstarter funding goal that is achievable & effective?

Here’s a step-by-step Kickstarter funding guide that will help you decide on what you need to take into consideration when setting the final goal.

Let’s dig in.

Understanding How Kickstarter Funding Works 

Kickstarter uses an All or Nothing funding model – which simply means you either meet your funding goals and get the money or you don’t and get nothing in return.

For example, if your funding goal is $10,000, you will need to meet that goal within 30 days of launch to receive the cash. If you make $8K instead of $10K, you have failed to meet your goal and therefore you will not be receiving any money.

Kickstarter’s funding model is less flexible than Indiegogo’s where even if you fail to meet your goal, you will receive the money you’ve raised already.

Hence, it’s important to set a realistic goal on Kickstarter that can be achieved.

For instance, if you’re a project creator selling wallets, asking for $100K may be impossible to achieve. On the contrary, an amount like $20K for a small product like a wallet is far more believable and achievable.

What to Consider When Setting Goal Amount

A common mistake project creators make is setting a funding goal randomly – without taking into consideration taxes, platform fees & other logistic costs. The result? The amount raised fails to cover project costs, which leads to delayed dealines and poor production outcomes. This is one reason why so many projects on Kickstarter fail even though they had potential. 

When you’re setting the goal amount, make sure you have a strategy in place and take care of basic costs like:

• The cost of production
• Kickstarter’s 5% fee
• Transaction fees of up to 3%
• Marketing fees for writers, photographers, video editors
• Shipment fees

Generally, the rule of thumb is to pledge 5 to 10X times the production amount to cover for unexpected costs like marketing or shipment.

Here’s how you can calculate your costs:

Define your pricing for a crowdfunding audience

Your pricing strategy must resonate with the needs of your crowdfunding audience.

Remember, your crowdfunding audience are not buyers. They won’t go to a website and buy a product. They will be ‘backing’ a project and take on the risk of pre-booking your product, so if the pricing is out of their range & is not justified, they simply won’t back you.

For example, if you’re launching a $30 eco-friendly toothbrush that needs to be renewed every month, while there are other cheaper alternatives in the market, you’ll fail to drive the audience into action.

It’s rare for any project to be original or unique. There are always other variations of the product available in the market, which is why the pricing must be defined by product features.

Again, the instance of the toothbrush, the $30 can be justified if the product is proven to be better than other alternatives in terms of recyclable or sustainability features.

Make sure the following factors are considered when setting the price for your crowdfunding audience.

• How are you different from other competitors in the market?
• How is your price point justified compared to them (this will also be your USP).
• What are the shipping costs of your product?
• What are the manufacturing costs of your product?
• How much of a discount can you really offer and if you do, how does that affect your overall pricing strategy.
  
  

So before setting your crowdfunding goal, you need to have a very strong pricing strategy. Remember when you’re open to the public, you’ll have to defend your price point and justify why your product costs this much if there are already other products of a similar nature available in the market.

CALCULATING MARKETING + PROMOTION COSTS

Your crowdfunding campaign cannot succeed without marketing and promotion.

Marketing and promotion costs that you should keep in mind are:

• Cost of creating a landing page:$27/month
• Cost of FB ads: $5000 – $7,000
• Cost of email marketing: $500
• Cost of retargeting/remarketing ads: $5000
• Cost of hiring an agency: $5,000

So, a total of around: $20,000 if you want to go big.  

If you’re short on budget, then you could spend time prepping at least 6 months in advance before starting the campaign. Build relationships, build your email lists and keep at least $7,000 for paid marketing.

SHIPPING COSTS

Kickstarter funding goals usually include shipping costs.

Before setting your goal, factor in the shipping costs as well so you don’t have to deal with any bad surprises later.

If the shipping costs is too high, you can limit your reach to select countries instead of worldwide.

Lastly, consider logistic costs as well. If it’s a product that requires parts, then it must be added to your overall cost.

CROWDFUNDING PLATFORM FEES

Both Indiegogo and Kickstarter change a 5% service fee from the total funding amount.

That is if you make $50,000 in crowdfunding goals, then Kickstarter and Indiegogo will charge $2,500 as a service fee.

So when you’re setting up crowdfunding goals, make sure you’re also calculating the crowdfunding platform fee cost.

Additionally, Stripe, the payment processing partner will also be charging a transaction fee of between 3 – 5% per transaction.

Keep in all these factors when you’re creating your crowdfunding campaign goal.

CROWDFUNDING TAXES

There’s always a lot of speculation about this but crowdfunding earning is tax-deductible.

The money you earn from crowdfunding is considered as income, so you’ll have to pay taxes as per your country’s rules and regulations.

Again, do consider this when setting your goal.

You want to have enough leftover with all the deductions, taxes, fees, and costs to be able to create or manufacture your product.

How Does Kickstarter Make Money?

Kickstarter makes money by charging 5% of your total funding goal.

So for instance, if your funding goal is 100K, you’ll be charged $5,000 on completion of the goal.

You will not be charged any money if you don’t complete your funding goal.

What can you do to increase chances of goal fulfillment

Kickstarter has a success ratio of 39%. Of 543,344 projects, 212,467 projects were fully funded (as of July 2021). Your chances of failing at a Kickstarter campaign is higher, but, if you focus on three essential aspects of a crowdfunding project, you can increase your chances of goal fulfillment. Most projects fail because creators do not take the time to validate their product, build an audience, and decide on the funding goal that they need to succeed. 

You May Also Like to Read:

What is The Most Funded Kickstarter Project? You’ve Probably Heard of this One!

• Product validation: Will your product succeed on Kickstarter? Are you creating something exciting that people are willing to back? Product validation can be ascertained through surveys, speaking to your target audience, and running facebook ads to test validity & acceptance. You have to be 100% sure your product has a market and that market is present on Kickstarter. 

• Advanced planning: Most project creators hurry through a crowdfunding campaign and fail to plan ahead of time. You must plan at least 3 months and at most 6 months in advance of launch. During these months you will be putting maximum effort in building email lists, inviting people to your private community, generate interest in the product, and create launch momentum. 

• Full funnel marketing: Without aggressive marketing and promotion, there is very limited chances of success. The more people are in your list, the higher your chances of meeting your Kickstarter funding goal. For this, you’ll need to develop full-funnel marketing plans, spend on paid social media marketing, email marketing and PR campaigns to drive audience to backing the project on the launch day. 

Your Kickstarter funding goal can make or break your campaign. It’s the most important component of a Kickstarter campaign, yet, the most underestimated. It’s important then to determine your funding goal and ensure it covers the cost of building, shipping, & promoting your product. 

To know more about how Kickstarter funding works, check out this video!

The post How Does Kickstarter Funding Works? A Quick Guide. appeared first on samitpatel.

It has reportedly generated $5.95 B in pledges from over 19 million backers to fund 529,591 projects such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video game, technology, and food-related projects.

Entrepreneurs who want to use crowdfunding to launch their projects use Kickstarter to raise money.

In this quick guide, you’ll find a collection of blog articles and resources we’ve created to guide you through each step of your Kickstarter crowdfunding journey.

We’ll keep updating this guide so you get all the information you need in one place.

Chapter 1: Is Crowdfunding Right For You?

Not sure if crowdfunding is the right choice for you? Everything you need to know about launching a crowdfunding campaign is given in the articles below.

1. 5 Questions to Help You Decide if Crowdfunding is the Right Choice to Launch
2. What are the Different Types of Crowdfunding Models
3. Here are 5 Reasons Why Crowdfunding IS the Best Way to Raise Money
4. Key Benefits of Crowdfunding
5. What are the Top Crowdfunding Sites to Launch Your Campaign
6. How Crowdfunding is Changing the Way Companies Raise Money
7. 5 Key Challenges of Crowdfunding Campaigns to Know Before Starting

Chapter 2: Kickstarter vs Indiegogo – Choosing Between Two Platforms

Two of the world’s most popular crowdfunding platforms are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008.

Indiegogo has supposedly generated $1.6 B in pledges from 9 million backers to fund 800,000 campaigns from 235 countries.

Despite its impressive metrics, Indiegogo has an 18% success rate as compared to Kickstarter’s 34%.

So which of the two is best for you? Everything you need to know is given here:

1. Kickstarter vs Indiegogo – Which Platform Should You Choose for Campaign Launch
2. Kickstarter vs Indiegogo 2020 – Which Platform Did the Best?
3. Five Important Differences Between Kickstarter and Indiegogo
4. Kickstarter vs Indiegogo 2019 – Which Platform Did the Best
5. Indiegogo or Kickstarter for Games – Which is the Best?
6. How Much Does it Cost to Run a Crowdfunding Campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo?

Chapter 3: Getting Started on Kickstarter

So, you’ve chosen Kickstarter to launch your crowdfunding campaign. How do you go about it and what do you need to do to get ready?

Here’s everything you need to know.

1. How Does Kickstarter Funding Work? A Quick Guide
2. How to Start and Launch a Kickstarter Campaign?
3. Can Kickstarter Be Used to Start a Business? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.
4. How Does Kickstarter Work?
5. Kickstarter Fees and Additional Costs You Need to Know When Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign
6. Will my Kickstarter Succeed? 5 Things that Will Determine Your Success
7. What Happens When Kickstarter Campaign Fails?
8. What is the Most Funded Kickstarter Project?
9. What are Kickstarter Stretch Goals?
10. Can Kickstarter be Used to Start a Business?

Chapter 4: How to Start with Kickstarter Campaign Marketing & Promotion?

Now that you’ve got started on Kickstarter, what’s the best way to market and advertising your campaign to get a successful launch?

Here’s everything you need to know

1. How to Promote a Kickstarter Campaign. A Quick Guide
2. How to Use Influencer Marketing for Your Kickstarter Campaign
3. How to Get Engagement for Your Kickstarter Campaign
4. Guide to Build Your Landing Page for Your Kickstarter Campaign
5. How to Write an Attention-Grabbing Press Release for Kickstarter
6. How to Use Digital Marketing to Succeed with Kickstarter Campaign
7. Ultimate Marketing Strategies to Smash Your Kickstarter Campaign Goals

Chapter 5: Facebook Marketing for Your Kickstarter Campaign

Still the world’s most popular social media software, Facebook is an integral part of your Kickstarter marketing strategy. In fact, dare we say, you can’t have a successful Kickstarter campaign without a strong Facebook marketing campaign.

1. Facebook Ads for Crowdfunding
2. How to Build Up Facebook Likes for Your Crowdfunding Campaign
3. A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Custom & Lookalike Audience Set
4. How Much Should I Spend on Facebook Ads? A Budget Guide.
5. Facebook VIP Group Advertising Strategy

Crowdfunding is a long journey that involves deep planning, crucial decisions to make, and very strategic marketing.

This page is your go-to guide for all things related to Kickstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding. Bookmark it and visit it for any information you need to be successful with Kickstarter.

The post Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign – A Complete Step by Step Guide appeared first on samitpatel.

In this quick blog post, I’ll give you an overview of the things you need to tick off for your project to even qualify for Kickstarter.

Ready?

Let’s dig in.

1. Is Your Product a Right Fit for the Market?

Let me break this down without the jargon.

For a campaign to be successful on Kickstarter, the product must be of value to the audience. For instance, no one would be willing to support a game you’ve developed unless it’s so unique that people are sure they won’t get a better game elsewhere. Similarly, they won’t pay and wait for a wearable gadget unless it offers an extraordinary feature that even brands can’t offer.

This is why, before you even think of launching on Kickstarter, you must conduct an in-depth market research to see how other products in your niche have performed. Additionally, it would also help to conduct a survey and validate your product fit before beginning to invest in Kickstarter.

2. Building Your Digital Reputation

Kickstarter campaign success depends on your online reputation. Crowdfunding is rife with risks, yet it thrives because of the space it gives to innovative ideas and projects. It’s extremely important then for project creators to start by building their online reputation and garner as much support as they can.

The more socially outstanding you are, the higher your chances of success. The more active you are, the more trust you can build. No one will support an artist, a developer, a project founder they don’t know of.

It’s therefore crucial to create and build your online reputation before you proceed to build your campaign on Kickstarter. This process alone takes 6 months to a year of aggressive social media activity and promotions.

3. Creating Your Digital Assets

It’s not enough to have a Kickstarter page to succeed. You need to create digital assets such as your website, landing page, and online platforms to get support from across the spectrum.

For instance, you will need to create your own landing page to build an email list – the gold of your campaign. You will have to continue to grow this list with paid promotions, freebies, lead gen activities, and much more to even meet your funding goals.

Most people make the mistake of promoting only their Kickstarter campaign page, but do little to work on other digital assets, which limits the success of the campaign.

4. Building Your Email List

The email list is the most crucial factor to crowdfunding success. Without a strong email list, forget you can even reach your goal target – let alone exceed it.

Your email list should ideally consist of people other than your immediate network – which means you need to attract the audience of your niche.

This means you got to do a lot of work. You will need to build a lead gen funnel that converts, meaning people should be willing to give you their email address in return for something. Next, you will need to cover the audience on social media, so you have a broader reach with the campaign.

You can use Facebook to run a lead gen campaign where you can acquire their email addresses without having to take them to another page or platform. Facebook’s Audience Insights is a perfect place to start with finding your audience if you’re not sure who you should be targeting.

5. Spending on Social Media Ads

Let’s be honest. Without social media, your campaign’s chances for success is dim – really, really dim.

Social media and crowdfunding go hand in hand. Without investing in social media ads and amplification, you’ll never be able to generate hype and buzz.

As a starting point, I urge you to familiarize yourself with Facebook Ads. Understanding this platform and mastering it will ensure your campaign succeeds with a minimum dollar spent.

You May Also Like to Read:

What are Kickstarter Stretch Goals? 5 Key Factors to Consider Before Stretching Your Funding Goal.
How to Get Engagement for Your Kickstarter Campaign – Samit Patel
Detailed Tips to Promote Your Kickstarter Campaign (in 2019)

If you’d like to know how to make Facebook work for your Kickstarter campaign, feel free to download the Crowdfunding Launch Playbook. You’ll learn everything you need to know about Facebook marketing and advertising for Kickstarter campaign success.

To Conclude – Your Kickstarter Campaign Can Succeed If…. 

You know your product is going to rock. You have a solid social media reputation. You are awesome at social media advertising! Anyone who tells you crowdfunding is easy is fooling you.

Want to know more?

Check out this video on Crowdfunding Marketing.

The post Will My Kickstarter Succeed? Things You need to Know appeared first on samitpatel.

Quick Overview Video

When we say advertise Kickstarter though, it means more than just posting updates on Facebook or boosting a few posts. You need to have a Kickstarter promotion strategy that should include key components as:

• A social media calendar with pre-planned campaigns and editorial posts
• A PR strategy to reach out to journalists and influencers
• A personal branding strategy for the world to know and connect with the founder
• A content marketing calendar that should include video marketing & thought-leadership content
• A content dissemination plan
• An email list-building and marketing plan

Notice how promoting a campaign is not just about running ads or randomly emailing people. You’ll need to invest in months of prep work before the actual campaign for the promotion to work.

Here’s a list of prep work you need to do before you start promoting your Kickstarter campaign. It’s important to note that without this initial prep-work, your promotions will fail. With only 30 days to meet a campaign goal (assuming your goal is in six figures)

1. Start Building an Email List

The primary driver of your kickstarter campaign will be your email list. You’ll need to announce the launch of your project, prompt people into funding the campaign, send them reminders, give them updates and so on.

Building your email list is the most difficult challenge in the whole process. You’ll have to create a strategy around getting people to subscribe to your campaign to receive updates.

You can do this by creating a landing page for the campaign or a website with all the relevant details of your product. Use this site or page on PPC campaigns, give product updates, add downloadable incentives or even run a blog to get subscribers.

You’ll need at least 500 to a 1000 sign-ups to kickstart your goal. As you move towards the campaign, you’ll have to keep aiming for more.

2. Planning Your Social Media Campaigns

The biggest mistake most crowdfunding founders do is randomly boost posts or run ads during the Kickstarter promotion campaign. This is burning money without any significant results.

Your social media campaigns must be planned six months in advance and must reflect the different stages of your campaigns.

For instance, in the first step, you can plan three campaigns to introduce your project to the world. The goal of this campaign would be to get subscribers.

As reach nearer to the final campaign launch, you can run ads on early bird discounts for those who fund the project first.

The better you have these planned beforehand, the easier it will be to run and measure the success of these campaigns. Ad-hoc or ill-planned campaigns will prevent you from measure the effectiveness of the campaign.

3. Reaching Out to Journalists & Sending Press Releases

No matter what agencies promise you, know that there is no shortcut or easy way to get journalists to write about you – unless your marketing agency has some deep ties to top-notch journalists (for which they’ll charge you a hefty amount!), you cannot get journalists to write about with just a simple pitch email.

Journalists are super busy and picky. They get hundreds of product pitches every day. There is zero chance they are going to read about your product & start writing about it. Not unless the product is super unique.

So how do you get the attention of journalists?

Well, there’s a reason why people say you must prepare months in advance of your campaign.

The answer – through sheer engagement.

Yep, you read that right. You got to build a journalist list, find channels where they are most active, create an engagement strategy, and start engaging with them.

Twitter is a great place to start. By engaging, I mean, adding value, talking, communicating to the person, not bombarding their inbox with requests & pitches. That’s a surefire way to lose support.

You can also use targeted ads here to get their attention and drive them to your landing page (make sure you have amazing content up here).

4. Using Video Ads to Promote Your Kickstarter Campaign

Everyone’s doing Facebook ads, but few are actually investing in video ads. Kickstarter projects have a unique advantage – they do exceptionally well with video content.

Video ads, especially those for YouTube should be the top priority. YouTube has now made it mandatory for ads to play for 6 seconds, so if you can get your product messaging done well within 6 seconds, you’ll be able to get more traction for your campaign.

While you’re making videos ads, you can also invest in animated videos to be used on multiple social media platforms. Customer testimonials and beta user experiences are all examples of effective video marketing.

5. Running One Campaign Across Several Platforms and Networks

Ensure your PPC, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads are all consistent across platforms. Never run random campaigns. Everything you do must fall under a funnel, main goal or objective.

For instance, don’t run a discount offer today, and an awareness post tomorrow just because…

More importantly, the same campaign must run across all platforms. The same discount offer for example, must run on PPC, FB ads, YouTube ads and Twitter/Linkedin ads, unless you have a specific objective to run different ads on different platforms. For instance, discount ads might not run well on Linkedin, so you might want to run an ebook guide instead.

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Get Engagement for Your Kickstarter Campaign – Samit Patel
Detailed Tips to Promote Your Kickstarter Campaign (in 2019)

Dissmeniate your campaigns equally as you do your content & you’ll be creating a consistent messaging across platforms.

Conclusion: 

Where to advertise and promote your Kickstarter campaign depends entirely on how much prep work you’ve done & the channels you’re adding to your funnel.

It’s important to note that without a strong promotion strategy, it will be hard for your campaign to be successful. The trick to succeeding on Kickstarter is a great Kickstarter promotion + content strategy to get your project out there topping hundreds of thousands of other projects.

Get in touch to see how we can help you promote your campaign! 

The post How to Promote Kickstarter Campaign? A Quick Promotion Guide. appeared first on samitpatel.

With a success rate of 38.2%, it’s right for creators to be afraid of failure. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not easy to succeed on Kickstarter – especially if you don’t have a product that is market validated.

So what happens when Kickstarter campaign fails?

To answer that, you need to know what failure means.

Kickstarter operates on a All or Nothing Model, which means if you meet your funding goal, you get all your money. If you don’t meet your funding goal, you get nothing.

For instance, your funding goal is $100,000. If you manage to raise $80,000 but are still $20K short, you won’t get that amount. Pains doesn’t it?

You will have to start your campaign from scratch and raise the money all over again!

During the duration of the goal, no money is deducted from backers, so no one loses money.

It’s only after the campaign goal is met that money is deducted from backers.

What Happens if the Goal is Met but the Project Fails to Deliver

Well, this is where things get complicated. If the project meets its goals and backers’ money is deducted, Kickstarter is no longer involved. If the project creator fails to deliver, it is bad press for them. They will also be reported as a scam, but generally, there’s nothing that can be done once the money is donated.

This is one reason why backers are extremely cautious of funding projects that do not already have a prototype or some sort of legitimacy proving its validity.

A situation like this is troublesome for everyone involved. We highly discourage project creators to misuse the platform for personal gains. In doing so, you not only ruin the market for others but are also robbing genuine backers of their hard-earned money.

Where Do Kickstarter Backers Come From?

Kickstarter backers are not VC investors or tech big wigs. They are ordinary people like you and me, who either believe in supporting new talent or who are daring enough to bet their money on innovation and technology.

These backers are usually industry experts such as gamers, game journalists or tech enthusiasts who are always on the hunt for new and innovative products for which they can be first buyers.

People love getting the latest smart gadget, the cool game that is available nowhere else, the gadget that they can boast about to their friends. Crowdfunding is a world of coolness and creators that have an interesting, functional product is bound to find success on the platform.

Do not be discouraged by the low success rate. It is indicative of the number of serious projects that are actually legitimate and are interesting enough for the market to gobble up. If you’re producing yet another smartwatch that does exactly what other smartwatches are already doing, you’re not doing anything new.

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Start and Launch a Kickstarter Campaign?
Can Kickstarter Be Used to Start a Business? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.

For crowdfunding to succeed, you need to have a novel product, a working prototype, a fantastic marketing plan, and great PR! With all these elements combined, your Kickstarter campaign is bound to succeed.

The post What Happens When Kickstarter Campaign Fails? appeared first on samitpatel.

In the context of goal setting and project management, a stretch goal is an ambitious and challenging objective that goes beyond what is considered a realistic or achievable target. It is called a “stretch” goal because it requires individuals or teams to extend their efforts and capabilities to reach it. Stretch goals are designed to push people beyond their comfort zones and encourage them to strive for exceptional performance.

By setting stretch goals, organizations aim to motivate their employees or team members to reach higher levels of productivity, creativity, and innovation. While stretch goals can be highly motivating, they can also be difficult to achieve and may carry a higher risk of failure. However, the idea behind them is to foster continuous improvement and growth, even if the goal is not fully met, as the effort to reach it often leads to significant progress and valuable insights.

Stretch goals are commonly used in various contexts, such as business performance targets, personal development plans, and project milestones. They help challenge the status quo and inspire individuals and teams to exceed their perceived limits, ultimately driving success and advancement.

Kickstarter stretch goals

Kickstarter stretch goals are funding goals creators set after meeting the original goal.

For instance, if you meet your initial goal of $20K, a stretch goal is another $10K that you pledge. With stretch goals, creators promise additional features or functions to their products if the original goal is met.

To give an example, here’s Dungeon Monsters, a miniature project that received $17, 840 over the initial goal of $1,000.

The creator created several rounds of funding, with each round including a stretch goal backed by a pledge of $40. If the funding goal is achieved, the creator promises new sets of miniatures for each round.

Stretch goals, therefore, are an extension of your current goal for adding a new feature, function to your product. 

Why Do Creators Need Stretch Goals? Why Can’t They Pledge All at Once?

Mostly, the original goal is enough to cover the production costs of the product. They don’t include the additional amount to cover enhancements or new features. To include these in the original funding would mean to increase the amount significantly. Worse, it could also mean failing to deliver the complete product in time and disappointing pledgers.

Hence, stretch goals are ideal for creators who are successful with the first round of pledges (and have successfully delivered on the product) and are now looking to enhance their products.

How Do You Create Stretch Goals?

There is no separate mechanism or page to create stretch goals. Instead, you can advertise it as perks or enhancements that will be unlocked if a project achieves a certain milestone.

For instance, you can set a milestone of 200 backers, each contributing $50. If that milestone is achieved, your product will get a new feature which these backers can get exclusively as part of a reward or perk.

Stretch goals don’t necessarily need to be monetary milestones. You can offer stretch goals for social media likes and shares or for getting new backers. The milestones and perks are entirely up to you.  The catch? You have to deliver on your promise(s).

Should You Announce Stretch Goals at the Start of a Campaign?

Nope.

Stretch goals announced at the start of a campaign deviates backer focus from the real goal. Why would a backer back your stretch milestones if they haven’t even seen or experienced your product?

For instance, using the Dungeon Master project, would people want additional miniatures if they get their hands on the first collection?

Probably not.

On the other hand, if backers have already purchased the first set of miniatures, they would know if the artist’s skills. If the artist offers a unique collection against a certain milestone, backers will be more than ready to get it.

Ideally, stretch goals should be announced after you’ve reached your original funding goal.

Remember, you must make the actual project amazing to call on for more support and funding.

What Should You Consider When Thinking About Kickstarter Stretch Goals?

In a blog post Kickstarter encourages creators to consider the following for stretch goals:

• Project Complexity: Stretch goals are for project enhancements and so if an enhancement is taking you more time, more resources, more things to ship, it can get complicated real fast. Many project creators get excited when their project is overfunded, and they tend to create stretch goals to add in a bunch of features that were not originally planned.

• Communication: Creators should think carefully about how to announce stretch goals to the community. Kickstarter encourages creators to explain their intentions, motivations and plans. Simply stating, ‘New goal!” will not help you reach your stretch goals.

• Add-On Rewards: As an alternative to stretch goals, Kickstarter recommends and encourages the use of add-on rewards instead. These are optional rewards that allows backers to easily select items that were not included as part of the reward tier they selected.

Some further things you can consider would be:

• Build Followers: If you really want to be successful with stretch goals, build your network. The more followers you have, the better and easier it will be to reach your goals. In fact, some crowdfunding experts even believe that if you build enough followers at the start of your campaign, you can go ahead and announce stretch goals.

• Make a Plan: Like everything else, crowdfunding success all depends on how well you plan. Before announcing a goal, plan the costs, timeframe, and resources required to add new features. Be 100% sure you can deliver on these goals before you announce the stretch goals. You don’t want to lose support just because you failed on delivering a promise.

• Use Stretch Goals with Care: At the end of the day, your goal must add value to the backer’s pledge. If you’re forcing it and aren’t really offering anything of value, backers won’t be excited enough to pledge – they’d rather have what you’re offering at a good price.

So – Should You Stretch?

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Make 6 Figure Kickstarter Video
What is The Most Funded Kickstarter Project? You’ve Probably Heard of this One!
Kickstarter Fees and Additional Costs You Need to Know When Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign

That entirely depends on three things:

1. Value: Is what you’re offering good enough to warrant another round of funding?
2. Delivery: Can you deliver on your stretch goals on time?
3. Complexity: Will the new feature/enhancement take as long or as costly to produce & ship?

Once you get the answers to these points, you can decide whether you want to stretch or not.

Experts don’t recommend stretch goals unless you’re able to add value & can meet expectations.

 Want to know how we can help you with stretch goals and campaign goals? Get in touch. 

In the meanwhile, check out this video on how you can build your social media followers to achieve your campaign goals!

The post What are Kickstarter Stretch Goals? 5 Key Factors to Consider Before Stretching Your Funding Goal. appeared first on samitpatel.

What is Google Analytics & How Does it Work for Kickstarter Campaigns? 

Google Analytics is the most powerful weapon you have in your marketing arsenal for your Kickstarter campaign. It’s an analysis and insights dashboard that gives you key insights about your campaign performance, audience behavior, traffic sources, conversion rates, and much more. 

Without these abilities to understand your data, you’ll have a hard time directing your marketing efforts. Worse, your campaign may fail if you don’t know where your traffic is coming from, what’s making them convert, and how you can improvise your strategies based on this data. 

So if you’re launching a Kickstarter campaign, the first thing you need is a Google Analytics integration. This guide will cover everything you need to know about this.

How to Integrate Google Analytics into Your Kickstarter Campaign? 

1.       Set up a free Google Analytics account using the Google Marketing Platform (https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/#?modal_active=none) if you don’t own an analytics account.
2.       If you already have an analytics account, sign in, and create a new Google Analytics Property.

3. Once you set up a page, you’ll be getting a tracking ID. Copy that tracking ID. 

4.   In the About You section of your Kickstarter page, paste the tracking ID. 

5.  In case you are adding Google Analytics after launching your project, you can add your tracking code by going to the Dashboard of the KS campaign and scroll down to the Google Analytics Tracking ID to enter the tracking ID. It may take up to 24 hours for the data to show up in your GA account.

6. Under the ‘View Settings’ select, ‘E-commerce Settings’ and Toggle to ON. This will enable you to track your campaign’s conversion rate.

7. After 24 hours, your Ecommerce data will appear here. It will include important metrics as Product Performance, Sales Performance, Transactions etc. You can also get a real-time overview of your campaign -meaning- you can see the activity on your campaign in real-time. You can follow Realtime -> Overview to see this data.

Now go to your Google Analytics and check Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. You will see all your tracking link stats.

Measuring Individual Posts

Google Analytics gives you an overview of your landing pages and overall website. If you want to measure specific posts – such as a post on Medium, on your own blog or on social media, you can create custom UTM parameters to measure performance. 

To do that, follow the steps given below: 

1. Go to Google’s link builder tool:

Fill the fields with relevant information. The website URL is the link of the content you want to measure.

The campaign source is the platform where the content originates, which could be your blog or a third-party platform.

The campaign medium such as a CPC, an email, or an ad.

The campaign name could be the overarching campaign under which this post is being tracked. It will be shown in your analytics results. Once you fill all this up, you’ll have something that looks like the image below:

Now go to your Google Analytics and check Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. You will see all your tracking link stats.

Pro Tip: It’s important to keep your URL clean and your UTM name easy. You’ll probably end up having dozens of UTMs if you want to measure each post so it’s best to ensure they are easily identifiable and don’t get mixed up. 

Remember it can take up to 24 hours for this campaign to be visible in Analytics. 

Analyzing the Data 

Now that you’ve got it all set up, you’ll need to start analyzing the data. It’ll take some time to get used to all the information, but Google has made it really easy for just about anyone to analyze their data and get the necessary insights. 

Some key metrics to look out for are: 

Conversion rates from the E=commerce and Overview section: This is where you get to know your conversion rates, average order value, sales value and much more. 

Real-time Traffic: This comes in handy if you want to measure how many people are checking your campaign page in real-time. Meaning, how many people are on your campaign page right now. The report will also show where they were referred from, their geographical location, and conversions. At the time of the campaign launch, real-time traffic will help you measure impact. 

Acquisitions – All Traffic -Referrals: You can see which of your social media channels are sending the most traffic to your campaign. 

I highly recommend going through Analytics and learning more about the insights you can receive from this powerful platform to prepare for your campaign launch. 

You will need to know the total number of users that visit your page, the number of unique or repeat visitors, the time they spend on your page, their most active hours and days etc. 

Over the years, we’ve helped dozens of clients tap into insights like user behavior on mobile and desktop and referral traffic to optimize and tweak campaigns on the go. 

Without Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics, you’ll be shooting a dart in the dark, causing your campaign to fail. It’s a really simple, free tool (both Google and Facebook Analytics) and with the data it provides, you can really capitalize on your marketing campaigns.

You May Also Like to Read:

The Framework of a Successful Kickstarter Marketing Campaign
How to Start and Launch a Kickstarter Campaign? | Samit Max Patel

These metrics and insights will help you take advantage of in-depth data that when combined with your social media data will deliver the information you need to succeed. 

Need help with your crowdfunding campaign? Reach out to our experts and get free consultation!

The post Using Google Analytics for Kickstarter Campaign – A Quick Guide appeared first on samitpatel.

Quick Post Overview 👇

Nearly a year spent preparing for the final Kickstarter launch and if you don’t get the time or day right, you could end up missing your funding goal by miles. That’s not a good place to be in.

So what’s the secret sauce?

What makes the first hour or first day of a campaign successful?

What can you do to hit $10K or $100K on the first day?

Here’s everything you need to know.

Advanced Planning is a Critical Component to Crowdfunding Success

There’s a reason experts recommend a nine to six months preparation time in Kickstarter launching a campaign. This advanced preparation time gives you the necessary insights into understanding your target audience and their online behaviors.

When planning your campaign, you need to create a chart for all the times and days you can use to send promotional emails and reminders to your target audience.

As you integrate Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel in your landing pages to study target audience activities and behaviors, you’ll have a concrete idea of the best time and day to launch the actual Kickstarter campaign.

For instance, Google Analytics ’ Audience tool will show you, visitors, by week, hour, and month. Based on this data, you can decide on the best month, time, and day to launch your campaign.

Additionally, if you’ve been running Facebook Ads for your campaign, you can also use Facebook analytics to decipher the hours your target audience is the most active to engage with your posts.

These statistics will not only help you identify the best time and day to launch a Kickstarter campaign but will also help you launch all other promotional campaigns at a time your audience is active.

Deciding on the Best Month

The month is often overlooked, but it’s actually the most important factor to consider. For instance, people begin prepping for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and CyberMonday (all in November) so if you plan to maximize sales during these events, your campaign should be launched at least two months prior in order for production and delivery to take place.

Next, is Christmas, which makes it more necessary to prepare in advance. Generally, September, October, and November are the most popular months on Kickstarter where there is a rise in supporters mainly for those campaigns that promise to deliver by November or Christmas.

January is not a good time to launch a Kickstarter campaign because people are recovering from Christmas spending and are probably taking a break from things. February and March are just right, way before Easter in April. 

May, June, July, and August are usually vacation months and with kids staying home, your audience may not be as active online. 

To summarize, your best months for launching a successful campaign are February, March, April, and then September, October. 

Deciding on the Best Day

So now that you have the best month, what’s the best day!  Well, it differs based on the region and target audience. Although Google Analytics can give a good indicator of the best day, you can also choose to launch on a Tuesday, which, according to Kickstarter reports is the most popular day.

Creators often think weekends are great for launching a campaign, but it’s the weekdays such as Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that are the most popular.

Generally, creators start their campaigns on a Tuesday and end it on a Thursday night.

Deciding on the Best Time

Ah! Which is the best hour? Well, if you’re following the US market, 7 am to 9 am that is before the beginning of a workday, and 12 pm to 1 pm which is lunchtime is the most popular and successful launch time.

If the US is not your target audience, you will have to rely on your Google and Facebook analytics to determine your audience’s most active hours. If needed, you can even launch an online survey to study your audience’s most preferred times to browse Kickstarter.

To summarize then, the best time and day to launch a Kickstarter campaign is Tuesday, in the month of August at 1 pm.

This is the sweet spot of a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Again, it’s important to corroborate this time with your data. Remember, this is not a one-size, fit-all routine. You will need to rely on your own data and observations to decide the best launch time and day.

Deciding on Campaign Duration

How long should a campaign run for?

Creators usually think the longer they run, the more funding they can get. It’s quite the opposite actually.

If your campaign runs longer than 30 days, you will lose traction. You’ll have to spend double the amount and effort in promotions and ads to keep your project on the front page.

If you run your campaign too short, that is in five or ten days, you risk not meeting your intended goal.

In our experience, 30 days is just the right time to keep the campaign running.

The focus however is to get maximum funding at the beginning and at the end of a campaign.

During the second and third weeks, you can use your promotional activities to push the audience towards the “finale” of the campaign.

Make sure all your promotional content is created in advance and follows a publication calendar.

During the campaign days, you must focus on building a relationship with the audience, providing support, and answering queries as needed.

To Conclude

The best day(s): Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

The best month(s): April, May, August

The best hour(s): Before work, Lunchtime

Campaign days: 30

Create a publication calendar and have all your promotional materials ready and meet all the conditions of the crowdfunding platform before the actual launch. Keep a checklist and stay engaged with your audience during the campaign launch time.

Lastly, don’t forget to learn from other similar campaigns. The stronger your research, the better your plan, and the higher your chances of succeeding with your campaign goals.

You May Also Like to Read:

How Does a Kickstarter Work? – Rules & Key Terms
How to Make 6 Figure Kickstarter Video

 Need help in deciding what works best for your campaign? 

Reach out to us and let us help you run a successful campaign!

The post HOW TO START AND LAUNCH A KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN? appeared first on samitpatel.

So what exactly is influencer marketing and should you use it for your Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign? Let’s find out.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Over the past few years, social media has helped many people to become, ‘influencers,’ meaning these are people who have millions of followers, but it’s not just the followers that makes anyone an influencer – it’s the power an influencer holds in affecting purchase decisions of their followers. For example, if a tech influencer encourages the purchase of a certain smartphone brand, their followers will believe in their recommendation because of their authority or knowledge.

More importantly, it’s the connection of trust that these influencers have with their audience that gives them this power of influence – hence making them influencers.

Recently, there has been a significant buzz on the rise of influencers and the power they hold when it comes to influencing the purchase decisions of their audience. Brands, businesses large and small therefore have been actively pursuing influencers to create a buzz around their products. For influencers, this translates into a lot of money.

Simply put, influencer marketing refers to approaching influencers and getting them to talk or share your product with their target audience. For crowdfunding campaigns, influencer marketing may mean getting influencers to support your brand. In other words, this is as equal to a local brand looking for celebrity endorsements.

Influencer Marketing and Crowdfunding

While influencer marketing works great for established brands and businesses (they got the money!), for crowdfunding campaigns, it may be a significant challenge. Your goal in influencer marketing is a tad bit subtle – you don’t get them to back your project, rather you get them to encourage their audience to support your brand. We all know this doesn’t come easy.

Therefore, as appealing and popular influencer marketing may be, they aren’t effective for every product or crowdfunding campaign. Before you invest time or energy into making influencer marketing a part of your overall marketing strategy, it is important to understand how it works and what you need to do in order to properly execute the campaign.

Who Do I Target?

This is a common dilemma when it comes to influencer marketing. Do you directly go for celebrity influencers who may be famous, household names, but who are impossible to reach and are represented by agents? Or do you opt for subject matter experts who may not be Insta famous, but who have a serious standing in the industry? These may be journalists, business leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, writers, authors or reviewers.

Then there are micro-influencers who have less than 25,000 followers on average, however, they have a highly engaged community which is often also very niche-focused.

While it may be tempting to aim for the big fish, in our experience, you should always start influencer marketing by going after the micro-influencers – meaning the local influencers with highly active, niche communities.

These micro-communities thrive with valuable content and communication. They are the most beneficial for small businesses and are more easily approachable than others.

How Should I Go About with Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing for crowdfunding campaigns is tricky. Unlike established brands, crowdfunding dependent businesses do not have a complete product, either a known reputation. Therefore, influencer marketing will have to be done with a strong story and a giveaway. Why story? Because crowdfunding caters to the audiences’ emotions about a certain product. They need to feel some sort of connection with the product or the founder in order to donate an amount.

Once you have your story in order, reach out to influencers with a clear goal – ask them to create a buzz about your campaign in return for a product. This essentially means influencer marketing may work well post-campaign when you have the money to buy the product (assuming the product is dependent on the crowdfunding money to be developed).

On the other hand, if you have both money and product, you can start early and spend a small amount on each influencer you want to work with.

Whichever influencer group you target or whichever stage you want to use influencer marketing, one thing is important – your communication with the influencers must be organic, authentic and valuable. The more genuine and authentic you are, the stronger they will promote your product.

Be Consistent. Be Well Informed. Be Genuine

Identifying influencers is not a simple matter of getting a list off of Google. You will need to research the type of influencers you want to work with, check their social profiles out to see if they share the same values as you or if they have the audience that you need.

Once you are done with the research, you have to find a way to reach out to them. Do note that you are unlikely to get initial responses, but that’s OK. If you get 10 responses out of 100 influencers, you can focus on securing the 10 instead of worrying about the other 90.

You May Also Like to Read:

Press Release For Kickstarter | Pitch Press Release Without Being Ignored
How to Promote Kickstarter Campaign? A Quick Promotion Guide.
How to Get Engagement for Your Kickstarter Campaign – Samit Patel

Establish a one-on-one relationship with these influencers via phone calls or local meetings. Engage with them regularly on social media. Email them updates. Collaborate with them. Offer a free service or product in exchange for promotions.

Still Need Help? Reach Out to Us.

If all this feels overwhelming, don’t worry. Reach out to us and let us help you with a comprehensive influencer marketing strategy from pre-launch to post-launch and beyond. We help spread the word about your campaign, help you exceed your goal and eventually ensuring your post-crowdfunding business is successful.

Check out the videos below for more.

The post Using Influencer Marketing for Your Kickstarter Campaign? Here’s Everything You Need to Know appeared first on samitpatel.

Attracting backers, convincing them to donate and getting media attention is NOT easy work. With Kickstarter crowdfunding becoming so popular, there are thousands of projects out there all competing to get maximum funding.

Here are some key strategies you can use to get engagement for your Kickstarter campaign.

Always Have a Landing Page Ready

This goes without saying – before you start your campaign, you must have all your web and marketing collaterals ready. One of the most important components is a landing page that you must have ready the day you decide to opt for crowdfunding.

You will be driving traffic to your landing page during the campaign’s lifespan so ideally, your page should be up and running at least three months before launching the campaign. That way as you promote your campaign, you can lead your visitors to your web page.

We do not recommend using DIY tools for making landing pages. Always hire a professional to create a robust and user-friendly landing page for your campaign. Your landing page will be the main tool in your engagement strategy, therefore it’s always advisable to hire a professional web designer and developer to create your most important asset. 

Capture Email Addresses

Email will be one of the best tools for Kickstarter campaign engagement – and your landing page will be instrumental in capturing emails. Incentivize visitors through free product offers, early-bird discounts or insider access and collect their emails. The more emails you collect, the higher your engagement and outreach on the day you launch the campaign.

Tapping into Communities

Communities are one of the most powerful platforms to bolster support – financial or promotional. Tap into communities relevant to your niche and start promoting or talking about your product. Here too, incentivize people into joining by sending their email addresses. Make them invested in your product and continue to remain engaged with them.

Moreover, tap into your Kickstarter community and get to know popular backers in the community. Create an active community presence in and outside of Kickstarter and make sure to engage people with regular updates.

You can also join popular forums like Reddit and Quora where you can provide people with answers about products or services relevant to your industry. While this may seem like a lot of extra work, in the long run, it helps significantly with brand activation and reputation building.

Social Media Power

Crowdfunding and social media go hand in hand. You can’t achieve success without working on your social media plan for a Kickstarter project. That said, you need to have a very specific social media strategy that is aligned with your target audience, your industry, and your product.

While Facebook is the most popular platform for targeting Kickstarter backers, Twitter and Instagram are equally important. If you’re running a campaign for a tech product, Twitter might prove to be more useful to your target audience as compared to Facebook.

Your social media strategy should include paid advertising, organic reach, community building, clever advertising all rolled into one.

Engage with influencers, tech editors, writers, product reviewers, Kickstarter backers on Twitter. Tweet, retweet, respond and build momentum with your target audience. Remember the fundamental engagement rule though – do not blatantly sell. Solve a problem, discuss a cause, show a solution, and connect all of this to your product. Do not attempt to bombard them with your page or campaign.

Media and Press

Part of your Kickstarter engagement plan must include media and press. Most campaigners make the mistake of sending out press releases in droves to multiple editors and publishers, only to end up disappointed.

An average media editor receives dozens of pitch emails a day, most of which they don’t even have the time to go through. If you’re going to wait until you launch your campaign and then send them a press release, it’s never going to work.

You need to invest time in finding media outlets, establishing a connection via LinkedIn or Twitter and then leverage on that connection for press coverage. Even to establish that connection though, you will have to create genuine interaction. If possible, also set up coffee meetings with journalists in your city to establish a real connection that does not just rely on digital communication.

Use Video Marketing

Videos are great digital tools to create engagement. With social media channels now promoting videos through Stories, you can use videos as a tool to generate interest. Hire a videographer to create compelling video content that hooks viewers. Your primary purpose is to tell and sell a great story.

Give yourself at least 6 months of dedicated efforts to marketing and engagement before launching the campaign. It takes a long time for any engagement strategy to show results, so it’s essential that you prepare in advance.

By the time you launch your campaign, you have your backers, your press, your social media everything ready. You will find it much easier to meet your campaign goal when your engagement is strong and value-oriented. Projects with the highest backers share a similar strategy – they all start with the buzz way before the actual launch. During this time, they also partner with key influencers, relevant brands and have established connections with media editors from several outlets.

You May Also Like to Read:

Using Influencer Marketing for Your Kickstarter Campaign? Here’s Everything You Need to Know
Press Release For Kickstarter | Pitch Press Release Without Being Ignored
How to Promote Kickstarter Campaign? A Quick Promotion Guide.

Remember, crowdfunding on Kickstarter is not a piece of cake. It requires hard work to convince someone to donate money! Don’t let all this intimidate you. Reach out to us and let us help you manage a successful crowdfunding campaign from pre-launch to post-launch and beyond.

Check out the videos below for more.

The post How to Get Engagement for Your Kickstarter Campaign appeared first on samitpatel.