Lessons Learned on My Kickstarter Journey (So Far!)
I’m writing this at the end of the first week of my Kickstarter campaign, but wanted to provide some lessons learned up to this point of the campaign while they’re still fresh in my mind! There are so many things that could be done differently, but I wanted to share my thoughts and lessons learned for anyone who is gearing up for a launch in the near future.
I’ve been working on my board game, Suit and Tie, actively for the past year and a half, but I actually came up with the game and have been playtesting it over the past 8 years. My wife finally convinced me that I needed to press “Go” and make Suit and Tie a reality, which kicked off this wonderful journey to where we are today!
I’ve spent a MASSIVE amount of time on this project, and I never would have guessed as a first time creator how time intensive it is to put something out that is actually a quality game. I’m going to focus primarily on lessons learned from around the Kickstarter launch campaign, but I’ll have to write another article for another day on the whole design, manufacturing and shipping and fulfillment lessons learned.
Lessons Learned from Kickstarter Launch
Understand Your Network: I quickly realized that many people in my network didn't understand what Kickstarter is or how crowdfunding works. This meant I had to spend extra time explaining the concept and why their support was crucial. Be prepared for this and have a quick explanation on how Crowdfunding works, otherwise you’ll lose backers to confusion.
Build Momentum Before Launch: Reaching out to your audience with a pre-launch page just a few days before the launch generated significant excitement and helped build momentum. Don’t do this day of launch, and don’t do it two weeks before, a few days beforehand is the sweet spot.
Share the Private Preview: Sharing the Kickstarter Preview page helps gather important feedback for updates to the page from your close supporters and helps build more excitement for launch day!
Coordinate with Your Tribe: Coordinate with your tribe on the exact time you’re launching and reach out to them right when you have launched and validated that all of your links are working correctly to get an early backer base.
Don't Underestimate the Power of Your Professional Network: Utilize your professional Network! My professional network ended up being incredible supporters and I’m glad I reached out about it. I was doing my best not to mix work and personal projects, but this is a mistake. Once I started talking about my Kickstarter campaign, news spread like wildfire and I had people reaching out to me for more details. And if you’re comfortable, use LinkedIn on launch day to do a personal story post on your project. This brought in an overwhelming amount of support I had not anticipated.
Using Ads to Build Your Audience Isn’t Effective: Should you use Ads? Maybe. Should you use Ads as your primary way of building an audience for your project? Probably not (some will disagree with me, check out LaunchBoom for a contrary position). Building an audience requires authenticity and building relationships. Building that base is important before utilizing advertising to build your audience. Why would random people clicking on your Ads want to support something that is coming in the future if you don’t already have some base audience support? I’ve seen some benefits from specially targeted advertising to your exact users (mainly working with Chad at Board Game Geek) during the campaign, but that is after an already solid backer base. Check out this article on Stonemaier Games where Chad talks about this.
As A First Time Publisher, Don’t Expect Retailers To Jump At The Opportunity: I spent a lot of time going to many local board game shops and retailers with copies of the prototype and information to get feedback and build those connections. While it was great making connections, this has only yielded in a very small number of backers, so far. Shout out to Elysium and Playforge for their support via playtesting feedback and backing the project.
The Value of a High-Quality Video: Based on the costs I was seeing from the major Kickstarter video makers ($15,000 For many!!) I ALMOST decided to forgo a video altogether due to budgetary constraints. I am EXTREMELY glad that I ended up putting a video together myself and used a video editor from Fiverr to make it professional quality. Check the video out here and see that this was low budget, but got the job done and I received a lot of positive feedback on it. Put the work in and make this happen even on a low budget. Good audio quality is paramount, so get a nice condenser microphone. I got one for around $100 on Amazon. Kickstarter also claims that 80% of funded projects have a project video and this definitely factors into a successful campaign.
Set up Tracking Before Launch: Kickstarter has this great feature where you can create something called referral links for your campaign, and I’m using around 30 of them. This allows you to name a specific link something like “Facebook Posts” and you can use that specific link for your facebook posts and it will tell you every single person that became a backer directed from that link. This is very helpful in understanding where to focus your efforts during a campaign! I’d also leverage the Google Analytics feature to understand the traffic you’re receiving from different resources so you can piece together your own conversion tracking (it's rough, but it helps).
Prepare, prepare, prepare: As I shared in the intro, we spent about a year and a half preparing for the launch of Suit and Tie. We designed the game, video, launch page, a pre-launch page, playtested many times, socialized with Retailers, etc. but there is always more to do… One thing we underestimated is creation of social posts and ad alternatives before launch. We wish we would have created a social calendar, and created content for that ahead of time so we could manage a little more easily each day. You could also utilize a social media scheduling product too if you so choose, although there is value in customizing the messages aligned with real-time success of the campaign e.g. messaging like “75% backed!” right as we hit that goal.
The Importance of Transparency and Honesty: Being open and honest about the project timeline, potential risks, and your overall vision is crucial. People appreciate transparency and are more likely to support projects that demonstrate authenticity.
Thank your backers and solicit them for feedback: You’ll be very busy during launch week, but remember to thank your backers! They are the reason you might be able to make this a reality in the end. I reached out to a larger number of backers personally and asked for feedback, and it was wonderful seeing the thoughtful feedback I received! It feels good to know that your backers are also counting on you having a successful campaign so they can get their hands on your new game. Thank you backers!
Check Out Extensive Resources From Stonemaier Games: Jamey Stegmaier has a VERY extensive list of crowdfunding lessons that are incredibly insightful. Some of them are a bit out of date so double check the relevance of older articles, but this is a wealth of knowledge that I’d recommend anyone considering a crowdfunding campaign should check out as early as possible.
I hope this helps and provides some insights you can learn for your campaign! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.
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