Kickstarter can be an incredible resource for creators. Take Fidget Cube for example who used Kickstarter as a stepping stool to becoming a multi-million dollar company[1]. However, successfully engaging backers for a Kickstarter campaign requires more than simply asking around or reaching out to friends and family.
1. Marketing
Marketing is an integral component of any startup’s growth strategy, helping you reach new audiences, expand brand recognition and drive sales. Marketing activities may include advertising, PR campaigns, social media promotions and more.
To be successful with your marketing efforts, it is crucial that you gain a deep understanding of your target audience – this means understanding their needs, wants and motivations as well as that of competitors – identifying their unique value proposition (UVP).
Your product or service should communicate the benefits to customers clearly and concisely – particularly online marketing where people often have limited attention spans and time available to them. Furthermore, remember that marketing isn’t simply about attracting new customers – rather, its goal should be converting these initial leads into repeat buyers who continue purchasing your goods or services over time.
Once your marketing plan is in place, the next step should be implementing it. This might mean advertising your campaign across popular crowdfunding platforms and social media channels or creating a website for your startup business. When executing these strategies, be sure to monitor their results so you can assess and refine them over time.
Veteran Kickstarter creators have become accustomed to seeing an unexpectedly large end-of-campaign bump with backers fluttering into projects during the final hours. But recently they’ve noticed that the “dead zone” seems to come earlier and last longer than in previous campaigns. Here, ComixLaunch shares advice on overcoming this challenge and keeping backers excited throughout your project.
2. Fundraising
One of the greatest challenges faced by entrepreneurs is raising the funds necessary for their startup. Access to venture capital or angel investors may not always be available, and many turn to crowdfunding in order to launch their business.
Kickstarter is an innovative crowdfunding website that allows individuals to post projects and seek funding from those who support them. Project creators set a fundraising goal and deadline, and backers pledge cash in order to bring it all together.
An effective crowdfunding campaign requires careful preparation, from setting realistic goals to crafting an engaging narrative that resonates with supporters. Determining your target audience and how best to reach them are also integral parts of success, along with creating an effective marketing plan and determining its length. Research shows that campaigns that last no more than 30 days typically see greater success.
Backer rewards should also be carefully considered; one effective strategy involves offering tiered rewards corresponding to the amount donated, to encourage smaller donations while increasing your fundraising efforts. Kickstarter prohibits offering financial returns or equity in return for donations; however, creative rewards such as exclusive merchandise, early access or personalized experiences may still be provided as compensation.
Maintaining relationships with all those who backed your campaign requires careful organization and communication. Make sure any promised rewards arrive as promised on time, and maintain an accurate record of contributions so you can fulfill any promises made to backers.
3. Product Development
Just having an incredible idea isn’t enough for your startup to succeed. You require an experienced product team that will bring it all to fruition as an actionable solution. Your team determines whether your startup sails smoothly through a competitive market or crashes into rocks along the way.
This step involves an innovative process centered on front end innovation that involves identifying market needs and opportunities; conducting market research to discover useful features and functions, prototyping them for testing purposes, creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), assessing feasibility of design/development plans and creating long-term product plans to launch them successfully.
Prototypes enable experimentation and user feedback, leading to iterations based on what users find most positive or negative, with iterations returned back to users for testing and prototyping within short cycles of testing and prototyping. Often this iterative approach results in both profitable and scalable product/market fits.
Pricing is also a critical aspect of business success and should include profit margins, supply and demand trends, competitor prices, customer survey responses and any customer research data available. Furthermore, promotion involves presenting your product or service in such a way as to show its true worth and encourage potential buyers. This may involve traditional media ads as well as social media promotions and live events being employed for this purpose.
4. Distribution
After your Kickstarter campaign concludes, it’s essential that you expand your audience in order to grow your business. Digital marketing and PR investments can help reach new target markets while building trust among current backers – creating brand advocates in the process!
To successfully attract and convert new customers, you need a well-thought out marketing plan with specific goals and KPIs. To begin the process of reaching out to prospective buyers, the first step should be defining your product/service and target market before setting realistic financial projections that can help ensure long-term success.
Reaching out to your audience requires both social media and email marketing tools. With these strategies in mind, you can craft engaging content that resonates with audiences while drawing them back to your website or campaign landing page. Social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer allow you to schedule posts and monitor performance so as to gauge campaign effectiveness while MailChimp or Constant Contact offer email blast software which creates, tests and sends emails that convert leads into customers.
As you expand your distribution channels, remember that each presents unique challenges and requirements. As you plan for success in each channel, take into account factors like shipping costs, fulfillment timeframes and customer support services to ensure maximum efficiency.
Many projects that reach their funding goal may end up surpassing them, leaving extra funds unallocated. When this occurs, creators often decide to use that extra money towards improving the project itself (such as adding songs or elements to it). Doing this shows your dedication towards making the project a success, while building trust among your audience.
5. Operations
Successful Kickstarter campaigns are only the starting point to creating a thriving and sustainable business venture. To do this effectively, creators need to go beyond their campaign’s success to focus on operations.
Before embarking on any Kickstarter campaign, it’s essential that you fully comprehend your target market and its needs and desires. Conduct market research in order to better understand this demographic’s expectations of you product compared to those offered by competitors and determine how yours stands out as being different than its rivals. Doing this research will enable you to create product messages that resonate with target customers while creating marketing campaigns designed to bring in new ones.
As soon as your campaign goes live, you must regularly monitor metrics in order to track progress towards your goals and adjust based on what you learn. Furthermore, backer inquiries must be managed and updates provided promptly – being open and honest will build trust and loyalty from backers and ensure fulfillment timelines remain on schedule with quality control measures in place.
By following these strategies, you’ll be able to leverage Kickstarter effectively and launch your product into the market. After your campaign ends, marketing your product and expanding customer bases through various channels such as social media, content marketing, SEO optimization will become essential in expanding customer bases while building authority within an industry and increasing revenue numbers.
[1] https://inventionland.com/blog/the-top-ten-most-successful-kickstarter-campaigns/