It's only fair that after reading numerous articles on what makes a great kickstarter campaign and what not to do - [many of which we discovered before our project began] that 10 days away from either an epic come back or the slow slide to failure and a big rethink... we regale you with experiences as they happen. Hence this blog.
Here are what most articles on running successful campaigns say and we have added our own points too;
- Personality. Introduce yourself. Stumbling upon a campaign is not good enough. you also need to convert a few visitors to sharers and backers. Include yourself in the first paragraph and or the video. Probably both. Use the naturally infectious enthusiasm for your idea to convince people that you are worth a few quid pledge. We decided to use the main video to introduce the product as best as we could. Comments have been really favourable so far. It has been described as clean, professional and happy :) and we have had over 250 video views! Conversion to pledges has not been so impressive though. The general view though.. is that my personality has not shone through. Which is a shame because I am delightful.
- The Angle. Choose your pitch wisely. You are not on Kickstarter to peddle t-shirts. Unless of course you are on kickstarter to peddle t-shirts. Then please - peddle away. No, for example if your product will resolve a problem that we all face on a day to day basis, then highlight that. The rest is just smoke and mirrors. Be specific on why your project simply must. Not. Fail. Or the world will implode etc. Our project has been designed to help people feel more grateful and happier as a result. A major hurdle for us is that we as humans never really think about happiness until we don't have it. Then - we as people will not naturally resort to anything technological to help out. It's a hard sell. So how did we solve that problem? Wellll.... to be honest I don't think we have. Our angle has always been SURPRISE!! Really? Yes, an app can help you do this - look how cute it is and why hasn't this been funded already. You can tell that our angle needs adjustment.
- Network. It goes without saying that meeting people face to face is far more powerful. That's why everybody recommend that you introduce yourself in person on the video. Going out to your local community and impressing yourself upon people as an enthusiastic entrepreneur who can't but help save you from [insert angle/pitch/problem] is very powerful. It builds an awareness for the product that might have otherwise been lost on a Kickstarter page. Many people you meet on the street will never have heard of Kickstarter. How did we resolve this? I am very good at taking my business on the road. I love to meet new people and chat. Which is kinda rare for an introverted engineer like me. What I found was that I could win people over, but I struggled to get them to provide me with feedback or backing. Lots of colleagues have backed, but not in the numbers we need so far. A lot of time and effort goes into meeting face to face - the return on investment is not quite as compelling though.
- Family. It is fast becoming a well known fact that you bring your crowd with you to Kickstarter. Your friends, family, close acquaintances, your pets. Anyone. The harsh reality is that convincing your friends to part with the minimum donation is one thing, but getting them to spread the word can be slightly trickier. EVEN if you are good at your job at promoting your 'idea', this might not transfer as well through others mouths. You must consider pre-writing tweets and status updates for your buddies so they don't have to remember all your enthusiastic rantings. Give them a fighting chance to spread the word on your behalf. We have done this and seen lots of like and shares as a result. Not enough though. What we noticed was that when it comes to asking for help - most of us are scared to do it. Therefore we don't expect it of others either. Human nature. There is also a fine line between badgering people and asking your mates to 'do a good thing' for you. I found myself 'pledge swapping' [that's promising to pledge on friends charitable endeavours in return for a pledge on mine], phoning friends individually, emailing them and explaining what it was I wanted them to do...
- Tell Me I'm Great. Reviews and articles written on your behalf by magazines, newspapers, businesses and personal blogs are apparently a large source of potential backers. I have yet to see this. The problem I faced was, I teed up a number of articles to be written ahead of launch day, but they could not help until they saw the page on Kickstarter. It was then I realised that having a landing page would have been a great asset. The projects bare essentials and a link to send interested writers to. As it turns out, many of the websites I wrote to never came through with their promises, or just didn't return my website messages, emails or phone calls. It is then you realise that raising funding to make people happy isn't enough today. You have to be a story! A real bit of news for people to read.
Writing this guide and experience log has been quite useful for me. I will be changing my Kickstarter page slightly to display my personality more [which is that I am delightful] and describe my angle with more focus [which is gratitude needs to be practiced. What better tool than a mobile phone].
Thanks again for reading.
