This is a guest post by Tom Eilon.
Kickstarter releases rather a lot of data. We know how many projects are launched (140k so far) and what percentage succeed (44%) but what Kickstarter doesn’t release is what it really takes for a project to be successful.
I interviewed 6 Kickstarter experts, whose projects have raised over $1m, to understand the data behind their success and to work out how to replicate it.
Here’s what the data tells us:
1.Video completion rates should be over 45%
The video is most important marketing message. The better your video is, the more people will watch it the whole way through, making them more likely to back your project. All the experts I interviewed had video completion rates over 45%. Adam, who raised $400k for his Manuka Precision Gyroscope campaign topped out at a video completion rate of 52%.
Get a professional to put your video together. Sure, any amateur can cut a video together these days, but the professionals will be able to capture the emotion needed to engage people into the project and get them pledging. It will pay off! Paul realised his first video wouldn’t cut the mustard, before reshooting to get his video spot on for The Vamp, which raised £100k.
2.Press can drive up to 35% of your campaign
5 out of the 6 Kickstarter Experts I interviewed courted the press heavily, which drove a lot of traffic their way. The Glowing Plant Project pulled in 35% of pledges directly driven by press, by stimulating a highly engaging discussion on whether genetically modified products should become part of the Kickstarter ecosystem.
Courting the press is not a necessity though. 85% of pledges for the Manuka Gyroscope came from within Kickstarter, which shows that if you get the product just right for the typical Kickstarter backer, it will spread under its own steam through the community.
3.Early momentum is key
The first two days of your campaign should be your biggest day. Of the experts I interviewed, 15% of their final funding total arrived on the first two days of the campaign. The more you raise right at the start, the more likely you will make it into the popular categories on Kickstarter which will continue to drive a lot of traffic your way.
So try as many things as possible to drive as pledges on day 1. Line up press articles, beg your friends to pledge early, discount rewards for early backers, pull out all the stops. Benjamin Redford created Projecteo and lined up so much early marketing activity that 29% of his funding total was collected on the first two days of his campaign.
4.Avoid launching on weekends
Kickstarter takes in fewer pledges on the weekends. Of the 6 projects analysed an average day on the weekend raised only 75% of an average weekday. As your biggest pledge days will be at the beginning and the end of the campaign, it’s important that these days don’t fall over the weekend and lose you valuable pledges. To give the campaign as many week days as possible, launch on a Monday and plan to finish your campaign on a Friday.
5.Check your conversion rate
Your conversion rate shows you how desirable your rewards are to potential backers checking out your campaign page. The conversion rate can be calculated as the number of backers divided by total video plays.
Our experts achieved conversion rates from 1.5 – 5%. Typically getting a lot of press traffic will reduce your conversion rate, as blog readers are less likely to be in a purchasing mode than traffic already browsing other Kickstarter projects. However if your conversion rate is below 1% you need to rethink your proposition. Consider the rewards you are offering and ask potential backers what they would like from your campaign to give you ideas for how you can change it up.
Tom Eilon created Thinkubator, an advice network for entrepreneurs and crowdfunding specialists. Tom has run his own successful Kickstarter campaign and is the instructor of the Udemy course: “Hack Kickstarter: Experts reveal how they raised $1m on Kickstarter and how you could do the same”. You can follow him on Twitter
