It’s no secret that 56.34% of Kickstarter projects fail. Considering that most 30-60 day campaigns require months of preparation and long nights/weekends throughout the fundraising duration, it can be a terrifying thought that despite all your hard work and no matter how many pledges you are able to attract, if you don’t reach your fundraising goal before the time runs out, you will lose all those funds!
This may be a scary thought, but it is a reality. The majority of Kickstarter projects fail to raise enough money to meet their fundraising goal.
I know that sounds depressing, but don’t fret! Having interacted with thousands of creators on my blog, KickstarterForum, and CrowdfundingPR, I’ve come to view “failure” in a different light.
I believe that failure to meet your fundraising goal and the failure of your creative project are two completely different things.
I have seen many creators that have experienced failure on Kickstarer and then gone to relaunch their campaign and be wildly successful after thoughtful analysis and retooling. I have also seen creators who had to give a hard look at their project, which only received 10% of their fundraising goal, and then figure out how to go about promoting and marketing it more effectively the second time around. The creator that I had in mind then went on to meet her fundraising goal in the final few days.
The crux of it is that there is no failure, only cause and effect. If you’re not receiving the anticipated effect from your efforts, you need to go back and examine what different actions you can take over an extended period of time to get a different result.
Sometimes, you may need to abandon the roadmap you initially put together to make your dream project happen. You may even need to scrap the project you were thinking of. However, you should never quit your overall dream or desire, whether that’s to be a full-time author, an original fashion designer, or a well-known musician. You should adapt, learn from failure, and figure out how to make it happen.
That being said, check out some of the tips below for successfully relaunching a Kickstarter campaign.
1. Optimize your project pre-launch.
Get feedback from other creators and your target audience
There are four groups of people that you can get feedback from: Friends/Family, other creators, crowdfunding experts, and your target audience.
Friends and family will naturally be willing to lend a hand in providing feedback, however, their advice must be taken with a grain of salt, as they are supporters and likely not your intended audience. They also may not have seen many successful Kickstarter projects or understand the concept of crowdfunding.
Other Kickstarter creators can be extremely helpful in providing feedback on your project. For one, they have information on what has/has not worked in their project. If they’ve done thorough preparation leading up to their Kickstarter, they can also provide insights on successful techniques that other projects used in their category.
The main barrier here is how do you get other creators to provide feedback on your campaign? Although you could directly message creators on the Kickstarter platform, this kind of activity could get you banned as a spammer. I would recommend doing the following:
1. Back other creator’s projects that you like. You then have the opportunity in the comments section to ask them to provide feedback on your campaign, or you can message them and they may be more willing to take a look.
2. Provide feedback on other creators’ projects first on the Kickstarter Forum. Make sure that it is insightful and thorough. You can then ask them in return to provide feedback on your campaign. Since you’ve gone out of the way to help them, they will be more willing to to reciprocate than if you simply asked in general for feedback.
3. Create a thread on the Kickstarter Forum. There are a few threads going on right now where creators are offering to cross-promote or pledge $1 to a project if another creator will pledge $1 to theirs (along with a twitter mention). Although this does rely on transparency, so far, these kinds of promotions have done well. You could start a thread offering to provide feedback on someone’s project in exchange for feedback on yours.
Getting feedback from your target audience may be more difficult. You could use a preview URL and direct past backers to the link or you could use a website like PitchFuse to get feedback on your prelaunch Kickstarter campaign. I would always recommend trying to provide a tangible benefit for potential backers that provide feedback, whether that is thanking them publicly on your website or tweeting them out.
2. Create PR and marketing buzz while preparing for your Kickstarter prelaunch
This is easier said than done. I always recommend researching the blogs that similar projects were able to get on and taking a good hard look at their social media marketing strategy and engagement efforts.
A few other ways that you can create some initial buzz are:
Sharing your story and lessons learned
I always read pitches from creators that would like to share the lessons they learned from a Kickstarter campaign. I also like doing follow-ups once they finished their relaunch. The key here is they have to be good lessons and the creator has to provide a well-thought-out analysis. Here is an example.
You could also share your experience on Kickstarter in social media groups and with other bloggers.
Do a giveaway prior to the campaign launch
This a new feature that we’ve recently built into PitchFuse. By going to the front page and clicking “create contest” you can submit an inquiry to create a giveaway for your Kickstarter campaign that we will help promote through CrowdfundingPR and our newsletter. Here is an example of a giveaway that a user is doing.
You could also do a contest or giveaway on your own using a wordpress landing page or a free website builder like Wix.
Generate a media list
Research the blogs and publications that similar campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo have managed to get on (example). Spend a good 4 hours generating a big list of these websites. You may need to do some hunting to find the contact information for the journalists or bloggers that wrote the individual articles.
Once you have a media list of 100+ bloggers and journalists that may be willing to hear your pitch, plug each of their names into your LinkedIn to see if you have any second degree connections. If you do have a second degree connection, you can ask for an introduction to that individual from one of your existing connections.
Before you ask for that introduction, be sure that you’ve tailored your story for that writer and the publication that they write for. It’s your job to sell the story and convince the blogger/journalist to write about your upcoming launch or mention you in a future article. I’d recommend checking out some of the techniques that Tim Ferriss uses to get high-profile individuals to respond to his emails.
Guest post on blogs and publications that write for your target audience
If you’ve put in the time generating a list of bloggers and journalists that you can reach out to, worked hard on creating a tailored media story, have approached emailing them using the Tim Ferriss method, and still haven’t gotten any results, then it may be time to consider guest posting.
When you write a ridiculously good article for a publication, assuming your article is accepted, you are usually given the opportunity to include a short bio or author link. You can use this opportunity to let readers know about your upcoming Kickstarter campaign and link to the preview or PitchFuse link. For more information about guest blogging, see: What is guest posting?
Engage your existing backers.
Don’t be afraid to engage your existing backers. Although the Kickstarted Documentary was not a re-launch, I thought they did a great job of using their existing backers to increase pledges. They consistently communicated through updates that if X number of backers increased their pledges, it would have Y effect on the campaign.
Make it clear cut how backers can help with your relaunch, whether that is sharing it on facebook when you go live or leaving a comment on the project the day you go live.
Get involved in your local community.
I recently wrote about a couple of high school guys without a dime of capital that were able to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter.
“After we did our research, we spent a week discussing and typing up our story on a word document. At this stage, we had not filmed our video nor created the project page yet.
I cannot over-emphasize the importance of spending time thoroughly developing your story. Having a good story helps make the project more than just about taking money from other people’s wallets. Stories make potential investors feel connected to you and your project, thus increasing the chances that they will contribute.
We were proactive with contacting media; the day after we launched there was an in-depth article published in our local newspaper and two blog posts published online.”
This is really a continuous effort. I treat it like a job, working on it every day. The idea is to create a marketing platform for your new initiative.
In my opinion, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ are the easiest places to get started. If you are relaunching your kickstarter campaign in a food or design related category, Pinterest and Tumblr may also be a good spot for you. I have issues with Facebook because I don’t like their edgerank feature. Basically, although you may have 200 people that like your page or have agreed to subscribe to your content, only 50 of those may see a latest update because Facebook deems it’s not relevant to the others. I think Facebook works particularly well for appealing image-based posts and updates. These tend to get good clicks for me and likes.
I’ve found that LinkedIn and Google+ groups are a great way to meet people online. Like forums, you must be willing to give to the community before you can expect anything in return. Twitter is good for pushing out high quality stories, finding potential customers (advanced search feature), and keeping up to date on your industry. I wouldn’t treat Twitter as a medium to sell a product. It’s at the top of the sales funnel (engaging potential backers and later directing them to a promotion).
3. Analyze your failure to raise funds
This can be one of the hardest things to do. The important thing to keep in mind is that the majority of new products that are launched are not successful, but that there are countless examples of creators and entrepreneurs that needed to experience failure in order to learn what was necessary to be successful.
First, I would recommend comparing your project to other successful and failed projects in your category. Ask yourself: does the quality of your pitch (video, copywriting, rewards) match up? BEFORE you do this, I urge you to install the KickTraq chrome app. It gives you KickTraq analytics every time you view a Kickstarter project and is extremely helpful when conducting research. Some of these analytics include: pledge progression over time, number of comments each day, number of backers acquired each day, and more.
If there aren’t any successful projects in your category on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Rockethub, it may be an indication that your idea is not a good fit for crowdfunding. This is a tough one to predict, so always feel free to email me: sbriggman@crowdcrux.com or leave a post on the KickstarterForum or IndiegogoForum. I check them once a day.
Second, I would recommend reviewing a checklist of common mistakes that creators make on Kickstarter. I’ve included two articles here: Crowdfunding Campaign Checklist. Mistakes you should avoid. The #2 mistakes that I’ve seen most in campaigns are: creators set their fundraising goal too high (more than they need) and creators don’t line up enough pledges to meet at least 30% of their goal in the first few days.
Third, I would form a breakdown of your stats. If you were using Bitly to track link clicks, how much traffic did you manage to drive to your campaign? What reward tiers were most popular? How many video plays did you get? What percentage of people were strangers vs. friends? When did the strangers begin to pledge to the campaign and from where?
Fourth, I would share these stats! Other creators may also be struggling with their campaigns and comparing information can be extremely helpful. I always like to publish stats like this on the blog. As an example, check out some video stats that creators have shared.
Fifth, you need to put on your analytics hat. How much relevant traffic must you drive to your campaign to get a pledge? What marketing medium was most effective the first time around? Do you have the ability to drive this traffic or do you need to wait a little and build up your contacts/following. There is nothing wrong with taking a few months off and then coming back better prepared.
4. Make a decision – Should you relaunch?
No one can answer this question for you. The great thing about crowdfunding is that it’s a very low barrier to entry activity. You can always launch another project and see what happens. The biggest cost is time and potential embarrassment. No matter what you decide, I would keep your backers and potential backers at the forefront of your mind. Can you make this an awesome experience for them or not?
Personally, I’ve noticed that software projects (websites) tend to struggle on Kickstarter, unless they are open source or game-related. I’ve also noticed that some projects fit better on Indiegogo because they are more of a donation kind of opportunity. In addition, some creators need a lot of hand-holding and can’t afford a consultant, so going with a smaller platform like RocketHub or Pubslush (books) could be beneficial. Finally, if you don’t want to deal with the all-or-nothing aspect of Kickstarter and don’t like the idea of giving a platform a cut of your funds, you could always do a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign with crowdhoster or other websites.
If you are unsure after reading this article, feel free to email me at: sbriggman@crowdcrux.com. I will do my best to get back to you. I tend to reply to posts on the KickstarterForum more though and comments that are left on my blog.
