Build A Pre-Launch Audience
Step 1 (maybe even step 0–before you even have a specific idea) to a successful crowdfunding campaign (such as Kickstarter) is to build an audience! You can’t just post your project to Kickstarter and expect flocks of backers to find you–the only thing you’ll be inundated with will be dubious ad agencies & “backer clubs” offering to advertise your project–almost always these unsolicited messages should be ignored.
When we launched our first Kickstarter in 2011, you could stand out with a semi-unique idea and rely on the Kickstarter algorithms and maybe a couple of people on social media randomly finding it and spreading it. Now crowdfunding campaigns are so prevalent that you have to build an audience before you launch your campaign.
How to Build an Pre-Launch Audience?
There are a few good ways to “get yourself out there”:
Give Something Away
If you have an idea of what you’ll be crowdfunding, make a simple version of it. Maybe it is just the art-less rules for the early scenarios of a game. Maybe it is a short story that leads into a book. Maybe you can make a 3D shape file related to a product you’re making. But giving something away is a tried-and-true way to spread the word. And most social media & on-line forums will welcome links to something free as long as it is on topic.
Be a Helpful Regular in Communities
Add value to the communities you want to use later to spread the word. Many have explicit rules allowing regulars to make a once-in-a-while promotional post. Identify several such communities (facebook groups, reddit’s subreddits, etc.) and start answering questions and sharing interesting observations that have nothing specific to do with your planned project for a month. Add a signature to your posts (if that’s possible) mentioning your project or freebie (see above). Once you’re a regular, then feel free to answer questions that might relate to your project.
Build a Social Media Presence
Social media is very hit or miss, at least for us. Twitter (even pre-Elon) never drove many sales. Facebook pushes down any organic posts that it detects are trying to make sales unless you pay to promote them. Youtube is the only social media-type venue that we’ve seen drive sales/backers. Talking to other folks in our industry, anecdotally they see the same for these three sites.
Paid Web/Social Media Ads
The only paid ads that we can definitively say did well were on Facebook. Maybe our other ads on twitter & google were for a lesser product or the ad wasn’t as good. But as with social media, this is what others have anecdotally seen as well so I’d only test these others with a small amount of time and money, if at all.
One big caveat to this point is that if you’re paying for the ads, are you better off waiting until the actual start of the campaign where people can back it? If you’re paying to advertise before launch, you’re paying to get folks to follow your project of download your freebie or whatever, then you have to later hope many of them decide to back the project later.
Paid Ads in Other’s Email Newsletters & YouTube Channels
I lump these two together because at least for us they had essentially the same result: break even. When running campaigns we’ve paid for ads in other closely related companies’ newsletters as well as YouTube channels that are directly related to our products. In each case for each ad dollar spent, we go back $1 or $2. Even if it is closer to $2, when you factor in the various fees and the cost to make the product it isn’t worth it.
That said, we’ll likely consider doing it again because we like to support these other companies and reviewers. And who knows, maybe one of the ads will “hit”. But this is something we’ll likely only do during a crowdfunding campaign. To pay for an ad and hope for some pre-launch followers and then have to hope again that they will back the project is less direct an opportunity.
Where Should You Get Your Audience to Follow?
Get them to an email newsletter! Create one now if you haven’t done so yet. Opt-in email newsletters have the best conversion–better than social media or web ads or just about anything else. Make your freebie something that folks can only get if they sign up. Or offer a second freebie if they sign up.
Or you could drive them to your crowdfunding site’s project preview page… But this will only let you contact your potential backers when you launch the project–which you’ll send an email announcement anyway. (Kickstarter and likely the others will automatically email your backers a couple more times–for example when there are 2 days left and then again when there are 6 hours left. But again, you can do this via your newsletter as well.) To be sure, in each issue of your newsletter you should mention the project preview/pre-launch page and ask interested backers to sign up there too. But having folks on your email list lets you contact them for the next project, for non-crowdfunding sales, and many more.
What Not To Do
Do not buy other people’s mailing or phone lists:
- These could be fake/not of people interested in your niche.
- Many of these are based on old, hacked crowdfunding databases.
- You’ll get your messages rightfully flagged as spam if you personally didn’t collect the info. (Even the emails to addresses you got following the rules will be lumped in the same bucket by email software.)
You could put an ad in someone else’s newsletter (see above) but that’s different than buying addresses/phone numbers.