Crowdfunding - 10 Tips for Launching Your Kickstarter
Orland and Bayles co-wrote Art and Fear and published their book in 1993. They reference more than once that an artist excels at his or her craft by churning and learning from mistakes. The more trials the better the results. If you present yourself often, “sing your song” often, sooner or later the world will reward, as they state in their book:
“Sing the song of your heart and sooner or later the world will accept and reward the authentic voice.”
Trials are also strategically performed when marketing a business. Why not perform a trial before you launch? Did you ever consider testing your product design, package design, campaign design or all of the above? Test against a known audience, or a new audience.
“Prelytics allows you to conduct testing and analysis before and during your campaign against a relevant and targeted audience group - crowdfunding meets crowdsourcing.”
This is the core value of our service – providing “pre-analysis” hence our name “Prelytics.”
Below is a four step plan for approaching your crowdfunding project on Kickstarter.com - including 10 tips for preparing for a successful launch. These lessons are current - as we are actively working as a collaborator on a Kickstarter campaign.
Below you will learn how to launch your passion project while leveraging the power of collective intelligence.
STEP 1 - UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPETITION ON THE PLATFORM
Below is a screen shot from Kickstarter.com on June 1, 2020. It displays: 908 Upcoming projects on Earth. This is the visual potential backers would see when using a Desktop/Laptop. Kickstarter displays 3 projects per row. There is a CTA (Call to Action) button… “Notify me on launch” for each project in this “Upcoming” list. Potential backers can follow Projects, Creators or both.
Trying to find this “Coming Soon” list? Upcoming projects are not visible on the Kickstarter mobile App. However, they are visible if viewing on a mobile browser (e.g. Safari on your mobile) outside of the app or from a desktop browser.
TIP #01: View all Upcoming projects to understand the competition in your space. Filter by All Categories and then filter by a specific category(s).
June 01, 2020
TIP #02: Use Kickstarter’s Search feature to see more of your competition. Search relevant keywords. Also, click on the more filters link to view past “Successful Projects” and how much they raised. Review your competition often before and during your Launch.
TIP #03: Preview the competition on www.Kicktraq.com. Kicktraq provides daily sales data for current and past projects.
STEP 2 - OPTIMIZE YOUR PROJECT IMAGE, TITLE & DESCRIPTION
During the Pre Launch Phase and beyond, the project image is front and center. It shows on all feeds in Kickstarter and is the default image when a link is shared on social media. This will be your “visual” introduction to the world, the “first impression” audiences are about to react to. Your Project’s key elements (Image, Title, Description and Category) should be refined by testing your campaign’s design and assumptions against a relevant audience.
TIP #04: Send a mock up of your Pre-Launch (and/or Launch) campaign to family, friends, existing followers and/or potential followers and collect feedback for analysis. This step, leveraging the power of collective intelligence, is available and further described at How to Create a Pulse in Prelytics. To view a mock campaign by Prelytics CLICK HERE (link coming soon).
TIP #05: Kickstarter recommends that you use a project image that is 680px or higher. They accept most major image formats. The maximum image size is 200 MB. (Source: Kickstarter, How Do I Include Images) However, follow TIPS #06 -#09 when designing your Project Image.
TIP #06: Wording on Project Image should be legible. Plan ahead for mobile.
Above: Project feed showing “Live” projects on Kickstarter mobile app.
TIP #07: The first 6 words in Title are most important as the Description is sometimes hidden and Title is sometimes shortened to the first 6 words in the feeds.
TIP #08: There are cases in Kickstarter where the Project Image is cropped to a square, specifically on the Homepage Recommendation section of the mobile app. Many backers resonate from the Recommendations section which is based on other projects the backer “likes.”
TIP #09: Also, on the Kickstarter mobile app, on the search page, there is text labeled “xx days” that covers bottom left corner of the image.
STEP 3 - TEST SEARCH-ABILITY, NOTICE-ABILITY, READ-ABILITY & INTEREST
On June 2, 2020 there were 2974 live projects. With testing you can improve the likelihood that your project will get the attention it deserves – especially if you are one in a pool of 3000 during a fixed period of time.
“Get data. Test your assumptions. The sooner you can test your assumptions, and find out if they are working (or not working) the sooner you can learn from that.”
With Prelytics you can setup a mock campaign and send to a relevant audience for feedback.
TIP #10: Send a mock-up of your Launch (and/or Pre-Launch) campaign to family, friends, existing followers and/or potential followers and collect feedback. This step, leveraging the power of collective intelligence, is available and further described at How to Create a Pulse in Prelytics. NOTE: You can create a second Pulse or combine this step with TIP #04 and create one all-inclusive Pulse.
There are many areas of the campaign to test.
Your project’s “notice-ablity” in the various feeds (Image, first 6 words of your Title, Description)
Your project’s “search-ability” in various feeds (Title, Description, Category, Creator)
Readability of the Story (Styling and Order of Headings, Imagery, Gifs, Text and Video)
Readability / Like-ability of the Rewards/Pledges/Pricing
Creator Bio (Paragraph, Avatar, Facebook link, Websites, prior Kickstarter links, # Created, # Backed)
Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Ad imagery and text and audience “interests”
Media Kit design
Use of (emoji) symbols in text
Tone of voice
Use of numbers and lists
Use and styling of graphics and fonts
Video
Package Design
To view a mock campaign by Prelytics CLICK HERE (link coming soon).
STEP 4: REFINE YOUR CAMPAIGN BASED ON DATA
After the mock campaign analyze your results and assumptions. You are one step ahead and can pivot accordingly. If you have data, you can move a lot faster along the learning curve. You will be able to leverage knowledge “sooner NOT later” - before the window of opportunity (you fixed for your campaign) has come and gone.
If your approach and assumptions are working, keep doing them. Do more of it. If they are not working, try something else based on the feedback collected.
FINAL THOUGHTS - NEVER TOO LATE TO TEST
If you have launched your campaign, with days to go, it is not too late to run a test in parallel with your live campaign. You can learn about package design, stretch goals or attempt to improve results that are not going as expected. The test results are in hours or a few days, not weeks. If you would like to schedule a complimentary consultation to learn how Prelytics can help with your crowdfunding campaign, email info@prelytics.io today.