Marketing and promoting your Kickstarter campaign is an important part of getting more backers outside of the Kickstarter platform, which can also influence your rankings within the actual marketplace and the category you are listed in.
No doubt, if you’ve already launched a project, you’ve been inundated with marketing and promotional service providers, promising you to deliver the funding you need, all for a small price. Although there are legitimate marketing professionals out there, I think each creator should also have a basic understanding of how to market their own project, even if that is only to oversee someone on their team who is helping them out.
1. Build Up Your Social Media Following
Ideally, you should begin building up your social media following 3-6 months before the actual launch of your campaign. However, I also think that social media is an important tool to join new discussions and form new connections.
Whether you are talking about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Instagram, each social media network is it’s own animal and has it’s own particular demographic. For example, Pinterest is more geared towards DIY, fashion, crafts, inspirational fitness images, and more.
Not every network is for everyone. However, when you are engaging in discussions in a social network or you are working to build up a following, it makes sense to tailor your communication strategy to the individual network.
By joining, interacting, and experimenting, you’ll get a quick idea of what works and what doesn’t. I use a social media scheduling and analytics tool called Buffer to track which social media marketing messages do best. You can also use Hootsuite. I show you how I use Buffer to gauge my marketing success in my new course on Kickstarter with 19 lessons, and I also explain how to build up a twitter following.
2. Craft your PR Story and Begin Outreach
There are two types PR outreach: direct outreach and more of a shotgun scattershot approach.
When you are directly reaching out to a journalist, blogger, or online publication, keep mind the type of news they cover or articles they write. Similar to a job application, you should tailor your pitch (or cover letter) to the individual you are reaching out to.
I’d recommend building a media list using excel or google docs to segment the different media publications so that you can more easily tailor your pitch to each one. There is nothing worse than a journalist receiving a pitch about a topic that they don’t cover or write about. While we’re on the topic, it’s best to pitch during these times.
When conducting broader outreaching using a press release service (like these), be sure to make your story clear, relatively succinct, and include links where journalists can learn more about your product/project. In addition, don’t forget to include quotes from the founder or customer testimonials to give a reporter a clearer idea about what a story might look like.
Finally, don’t forget that the story behind your product or venture is everything. In a world cluttered by new products and campaign launches, it’s harder to stand out than ever before. Your story is one way to highlight how you are different and why you matter. We talk a bit about crafting your story in our online Kickstarter course with over 6 hours worth of video/audio content, and we’re going to be having Rose of The CrowdFundamentals on our podcast shortly on this very topic.
3. Don’t Forget Your Personal Network
When informally surveyed, the majority of creators who I’ve spoken with who were successful on Kickstarter needed to educate their own social network about what crowdfunding was and how/why to support their project. We detailed this common experience in this article.
It’s unlikely that everyone in your social network is familiar with the benefits of pledging to a Kickstarter campaign and how they can receive rewards. Should you encounter objections, I’ve also lined out a few ways to overcome those criticisms here.
Your social network and existing supporters are a great way to hit that initial 30% needed to begin jumpstarting the fundraising process. Remember that most internet surfers have difficulty spending more than a few seconds on a particular page or website. Seeing that other people are pledging to your project will give them more of an incentive to stay around longer, watch your video, look through the campaign text/comments, and eventually pledge.
5. Build Relationships, Don’t Spam
Of all the posts that I’ve seen on our Kickstarter-related forum and our crowdfunding forum, the ones I’ve tended to pay attention to are those that seem like they were written by humans, not sales bots or someone trying to make a quick buck.
I’m not saying that you are either of these, but when you just leave the link to your Kickstarter, write a one-word message to someone, or hope that others click through to your campaign without having in some way interacted with them first, I think it’s a recipe for disaster. You are competing against so many others for attention or in the case of PR, for someone to write about you. The people that take the time to go the extra mile tend to stand out.
Ultimately, it is not sustainable to do this for the entirety of your business, but I do think that coming off as being personal, even for the communications that you engage in through the comments section of your campaign, is necessary. Isn’t that something we all love to see big companies doing?
Personally, I think that resorting to spamming your crowdfunding link around the web is mainly done because the particular creator may have not prepared or thought out their marketing strategy enough up front. Yes, it’s hard work to do this. Yes, it’s hard to build up a following or an email subscriber list of people interested in your company or product. However, it’s the best way to stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Conclusion
I hope this post was helpful! If you’d like to learn about more ways to market your crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out our new course on Kickstarter while the early bird lasts. It’s the cumulative experience of 2+ years spend in the crowdfunding industry.
