OYO Fitness launched their first product, the DoubleFlex Black, on Kickstarter in 2017. While you’d probably expect a portable gym that incorporates technology used by NASA astronauts to do well on Kickstarter, the DoubleFlex Black was more successful than anyone could have anticipated. The project blew past its $30,000 funding goal, raising $659,175 with 4,206 backers. At the time, it was the second most-funded fitness product in Kickstarter history.

Three years later, OYO Fitness founder Paul Francis and his team were gearing up to launch their second product on Kickstarter — the OYO NOVA Gym. On the heels of their previous success, they approached their next campaign with confidence. But the big question was, how could they build on those past wins and have an even bigger campaign this time around? 

Second project internal goal: $1 million

Kickstarter was the natural choice for the OYO Fitness team. “It’s such a great platform to take a product and get it out in front of a community of early adopters to see how it resonates,” says OYO Fitness COO Graham Ripple. They used the platform for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign because they knew it could work for them. 

They set their funding goal at $30,000. This was the minimum amount they’d need to produce the product, and it was a number they felt they could hit, given their first campaign’s results. However, like many creators, they also had an informal, internal funding goal that they were shooting for — $1 million. 

Pre-launch considerations

Even before they launched, the OYO Fitness team benefited from having a strong community of supporters behind him. In fact, the OYO NOVA Gym was developed based on feedback from that fan base. But to hit that one-million-dollar goal, they were going to have to grow that already large audience. This can be a daunting task, even for the most successful Kickstarter creators and creators like OYO Fitness who know the ropes. 

And what if they managed to double or triple the number of backers they’d previously had? How would they deal with fulfillment on that scale in a timely manner? What kind of stress would it put on their team? To scale crowdfunding campaigns, you not only need to find ways to acquire more backers, but you also need to build the infrastructure or find support systems that will enable you to manage that success. 

Crowdfunding combo power

Preparing for that best-case scenario, in which they had tens of thousands of backers, meant reaching out to BackerKit. OYO Fitness had used the BackerKit Pledge Manager to streamline the fulfillment process during their first campaign in 2017. They were happy with the results and planned on using the Pledge Manager again for the new campaign. 

After speaking with BackerKit Account Executive Yung Choi, they learned about some of BackerKit’s new services. Because of their campaign goals, Choi believed that they’d be a good fit for BackerKit Marketing — a performance marketing service, designed explicitly for crowdfunding that drives prospective backers to a creator’s campaign page. 

The OYO Fitness team already had funds allocated to use on ads, so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that BackerKit had an ad service in addition to the Pledge Manager. The creators behind the most successful Kickstarter projects of all time know that in order to scale, they need to develop a strategy and seek out partners that would help them increase their marketing efforts and optimize post-campaign fulfillment. They decided to use Pledge Manager and Ads to help achieve these two intertwined goals. 

Toning up OYO Fitness’ marketing: choosing an experienced ad agency

Facebook Ads are a paid marketing tool that can give your organic — or unpaid — marketing techniques, like email marketing, a boost. Running Facebook Ads during your crowdfunding campaign brings more exposure to your project and can ultimately drive more pledges. 

OYO Fitness used Facebook Ads during their first campaign. However, when trying this technique out at that time, they partnered up with an agency that didn’t have experience working with Kickstarter projects. “We didn’t get the return on ad spend that we wanted,” says Ripple. “The first three days of a campaign tend to bring the most support. And I think that we really missed out on that. We did not come out strong out of the gate, and I think that affected how much we raised.” 

It wasn’t until they started using a Kickstarter ad agency that things turned around for them. Finding a partner who understood crowdfunding was a major contributor to their first project’s success, and it was something they knew they would need to repeat during their second campaign.

Collaborating with multiple ad agencies

Targeting is a critical part of running a successful ad campaign. If you aren’t targeting the right audience with your ads, you’re essentially throwing away your money. This is why it’s so important to work with an agency that understands how to optimize campaigns for crowdfunding campaigns. BackerKit uses custom audiences to reach over a million crowdfunding enthusiasts. This ensures that a project gets in front of people who are most likely to convert and become backers.

The second piece to OYO Fitness’s paid marketing strategy was working with multiple ad partners. This is something that BackerKit encouraged. Backers convert in different ways. One agency may have a piece of the puzzle that another one doesn’t — they may have access to different audiences or have different marketing techniques. 

For this reason, it’s best to stick with agencies that understand the benefits of this type of collaboration. An agency that genuinely wants you to have the most successful Kickstarter campaign possible isn’t going to force you to sign any kind of exclusivity agreements. 

Achieving peak ad performance: $561K raised with BackerKit

The OYO Fitness team ended up working with four ad partners, including BackerKit. To keep all of these ad campaigns on track and ensure they were making the most of their marketing budget, Ripple, who was the primary strategist and project manager on OYO Fitness’s side, closely monitored return on ad spend (ROAS) for each of the ad partners. “This allowed me to allocate resources to them based on their performance,” he says. “We wanted to reward the partners that had found our target market.”  

A creator’s target ROAS is determined by dividing the average pledge value by the average cost per pledge. With an accurate ROAS target, creators make money while spending. So while Ripple was tracking ROAS to determine how to divvy up funds, BackerKit Creator Marketing Account Manager Chris Rojas was also monitoring performance, making sure that they were adjusting the daily budget and ads to hit those ROAS targets. 

“We had a weekly call with Chris. We were regularly having a dialogue about how the ads were performing,” Ripple says. “We would see if there were tweaks that could be made to either assets that we were giving him or the campaign page itself. It was a very collaborative process, and we felt very supported by the BackerKit team.”

Top-performing ad assets

In the end, this collaboration with BackerKit yielded $561,000 for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign. 

Reaching more than 500K backers

The OYO team needed to connect with as many qualified leads — that’s is, prospects that could become actual backers — as possible. This would primarily be achieved through ads and more grassroots marketing efforts — they were sure to get their fan base excited for the OYO NOVA Gym campaign before their launch date to set the momentum for their campaign. But as BackerKit users, they had one more marketing tool at their disposal: The BackerKit Newsletter, which reaches over 500,00 opted-in backers. 

The BackerKit newsletter is a real boon for budget-conscious creators because fees are based on results. To track performance in real-time, the OYO team could monitor an online dashboard. The newsletter gave their project more exposure — which is always a good thing — and brought them even closer to their funding goal. They raised over $28,000 through their newsletter feature. 

“The mix of the Newsletter and the Ads that BackerKit provides is such a potent combination,” Ripple says. 

The journey to $1 million

The OYO NOVA Gym campaign launched during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the team was concerned about what effect that would have on their campaign and crowdfunding in general. But, as they saw the way the project was trending over the course of their fifty-one-day campaign, it was clear that this portable gym was particularly well suited for a time when people had to shelter in place and were working out from their homes.

Their marketing efforts allowed them to connect with thousands of people who needed a fitness product like the OYO NOVA Gym — both those who were likely to be interested in the product under any circumstances as well as this new audience of people who were dealing with the realities of quarantine. The project’s timing mixed with the preparation they’d done led to success far beyond what the team could have imagined. 

They surpassed their $30,000 goal on the first day of their campaign, raising over $175,000 from 1,200 backers. The OYO NOVA Gym was on its way to landing on the Kickstarter most-funded list. 

$4 million+ raised: Becoming the most successful fitness product on Kickstarter 

Like many of the other Kickstarter products that have raised the most money in their categories and campaigns that appear on the highest-funded crowdfunding projects list, the OYO NOVA Gym brought in a lot of early pledges. They hit their one-million-dollar internal goal in six days. But the team didn’t stop there. They made sure to keep the momentum going by utilizing stretch goals throughout the campaign, offering new color options for the OYO NOVA Gym and fitness accessories. By the time the campaign ended, they’d raised $4,411,495 and had 26,199 backers. They’d become the most successful fitness product in Kickstarter history.

“We expected to raise as much as we did in 2017, and were hoping to double it and raise past the one-million-dollar mark if we could. But we did not expect the level of support we received. It’s overwhelming and such a cool experience,” Ripple says. 

26K backers — now what?

The excitement of having just run one of the most successful Kickstarter projects hasn’t worn off. They had 26,199 backers — it’s a staggering number. And while OYO Fitness couldn’t be more pleased with their results, a larger backer count means order management flow during fulfillment can be cumbersome. Who wants to manually sort through spreadsheets with more than 26,000 backers’ information? From the get-go, the team knew they would need a survey and fulfillment solution that was more robust than what Kickstarter had to offer.

OYO Fitness is currently in the middle of the fulfillment process. The BackerKit Pledge Manager is making it possible for them to survey their backers to collect their information and then keep all of their backer data organized. They’re also charging for shipping in BackerKit, charging VAT for their EU backers, and raising additional funds through add-on sales.

“BackerKit is doing such a good job of helping a campaign get the exposure that it deserves and needs through Ads and the Newsletter,” Ripple says. “And then on the back end, they’re basically not only helping with fulfillment but also giving creators an opportunity for more sales, whether that’s using the pre-order store or using add-ons through the survey. It just makes so much sense to use BackerKit because of the holistic ecosystem that they’ve built.” 

When launching a crowdfunding project, it’s important to consider the entire road ahead. What can you do to set yourself up for success at each stage of your journey? Which tools or partners can help maximize your project’s potential along the way? Answering these questions becomes especially important when you’re launching a bigger project. With BackerKit’s help, OYO Fitness not only surpassed their funding goal but is also now able to manage the post-campaign logistics that come with being the most-funded fitness project on Kickstarter.

If you’d like to learn more about how BackerKit works with the most successful Kickstarter creators like OYO Fitness on Facebook Ads, check out our upcoming webinar, Performance Marketing Secrets of Million Dollar Kickstarter Projects.

Are you planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon, and want to get started with BackerKit Marketing? Click below to see if your project is a good fit for the service.

The post Launching the Most Successful Kickstarter Product in Fitness appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Pepe the Frog Diaries chronicles my experiences using BackerKit after the conclusion of the #SavePepe Kickstarter campaign. Keep in mind, this is not a “how to” series to be used for guidance, but rather a “how I did it” series to be used as an in-depth look from a creator’s perspective on how BackerKit can be implemented from beginning to end.

Among all the benefits and advantages BackerKit provides, the ability to offer add-ons to existing backers and a pre-order store to late adopters was a big draw for the #SavePepe campaign. Both are great ways to stay engaged with the community and maintain the momentum you’ve built during your campaign . And needless to say, it’s a great way to keep the funds coming in long after your initial campaign ends.

BackerKit offers the ability for backers who supported you during your campaign to add extra items during their exit survey (more on surveys in the next installment!). Did you want an extra Save Pepe zine or other campaign item for a friend? No problem. Do you want to add completely new items such as a cool new sticker or pin? Easy. The options you have are completely up to you and there is no limit to how many items and item variations you can offer.For #SavePepe, we wanted to both reward backers who were privy during the main Kickstarter campaign and allow newcomers to purchase a few of the main items if they missed out. The Kickstarter campaign had tons of super exclusive items such as t-shirts and original art. While it would have been completely possible for us to add any of the unsold items in our BackerKit add-on store, we decided to keep those items exclusive to the campaign. That said, we wanted to make sure latecomers had something special to choose from. We decided to offer the main zine as an add-on along with the sticker and enamel pin offered on Kickstarter. In addition, we added 2 brand new designs for additional stickers and pins as well as a new limited edition art print. But again, the options I had at my disposal were limitless, and each project has the flexibility to decide what works best for them. 

Creating add-on items was super easy during the BackerKit setup process. Assigning a name, description, image, and price was a breeze. I highly recommend creating your add-ons during the “Generate Items” step. This way each item gets assigned a unique SKU that will help keep things organized down the line. If you enter the “Add-Ons” section in the sidebar of your dashboard, you will have to manually add a SKU to each item. Backers also have the option to upgrade their pledge level (not downgrade), collect payments from backers who had failed credit card payments, and the ability to set inventory quantities. You can also manage shipping fees since extra items equal extra shipping weight. I decided against adding additional shipping fees to our initial Kickstarter backers as a way to say thanks, but there is an option to add shipping tables by weight for those with bulkier rewards that can add up.No matter how many backers support your project during the initial run, there are dozens, hundreds, dare I say thousands of other backers out there who are bummed they missed out! Most Kickstarter campaigns run for 30 days and then they’re done. BackerKit offers an opportunity for latecomers to get in on the action and lend their support after the campaign ends. Not everybody has an online store to post their items for sale post-campaign. BackerKit makes this simple and easy and even integrates with your original Kickstarter page pointing potential supporters to your new pre-order store. For #SavePepe, we decided to create a pre-order store with all the aforementioned add-on items. Many supporters thanked us for giving them a way to support us in this later stage and we raised an additional $3k helping offset some of the fulfillment costs. If you agree to use BackerKit before your campaign ends, you will be able to open up your pre-order store immediately after the campaign ends capturing all those that just missed the deadline.

Add-on items and pre-orders are a simple and flexible way get additional funds post-campaign. Setting it up was a breeze and my only real regret was not aligning with BackerKit sooner to take full advantage of all the options. In the next Pepe the Frog Diaries, I will detail the survey creation and delivery process, which in my opinion, made my whole crowdfunding experience a lot less stressful.

For a more detailed “How-to” experience, please check out BackerKit’s help and resource page. And if you’re interested in sealing the deal with BackerKit, you can sign up today on our homepage and embark on a journey of your own!

And be sure to read past Pepe Diary entries:
Pepe Diaries #1: Discovering BackerKit
Pepe Diaries #2: Getting Started
Pepe Diaries #3: Generating Items & SKUs

The post Pepe the Frog Diaries #4: Add-Ons and Pre-Orders appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Pepe the Frog Diaries chronicles my experiences with BackerKit after the conclusion of the #SavePepe Kickstarter campaign. Keep in mind, this is not a “how to” series to be used for guidance, but rather a “how I did it” series to be used as an in-depth look from a creator’s perspective on how BackerKit can be implemented from beginning to end.

Now that I’m set up with BackerKit, it’s time to get my hands dirty and start generating my items. BackerKit’s dashboard allows me to navigate all the features offered with ease. The “Quick Start Guide” tab on the sidebar is a good place to call home during these introductory steps. It lays out all the checklist items you need to cross off before sending out surveys to your backers. My first step is to generate all the items for my project.

When my brother Matt and I planned the #SavePepe Kickstarter campaign, we thought it would be best to keep everything as simple as possible. One of our main goals was to limit the number of items offered to avoid getting overwhelmed. Neither of us had ever managed a crowdfunding campaign before. There were too many horror stories surrounding disappointed backers, delays in production, and even a lack of delivery. One of the main reasons we decided to team up with BackerKit was to finish our campaign on a high note honoring all the support we gained. Backers will undoubtedly shape their opinion of you based on how well you handle fulfillment. In short, we kept things simple to help keep our backers happy.

Generating items via BackerKit is a breeze. You can enter through the Quick Start Guide, or through the handy “Generate Items” tab. Once you’re in, all you need to do is answer a few simple questions. Name the item, add any options (such as size and color), assign to a pledge level if it was a part of your campaign, and decide if you want the item included as an “add-on” (more on those in a later diary entry).

The item generator is the best way to set up all the items you will be providing your backers whether they were part of your initial campaign or not. Using the Item Generator automatically creates SKUs for all your items. A cool robot would tell you a SKU is a “Stock Keeping Unit” used as a short unique identifier assigned to each individual item. Each unique item in your project must have it’s own SKU. This means your medium-sized Save Pepe shirt has a separate SKU from the large-sized Save Pepe Shirt. Luckily, t-shirts were the only item in my campaign that needed to add “options”. It’s important to note, if you create an item outside of the Item Generator, you must manually assign it a SKU. Properly setting up your SKU’s is a key part of your campaign with BackerKit.

The #SavePepe campaign ended up having 23 unique items (SKUs) including all the main Kickstarter items, a handful of BackerKit exclusives, and a digital copy of our comic. Don’t forget to give digital items SKUs too! It’s important to take your time during the item generating process as it has a big impact on the rest of the steps moving forward. Once all your items are generated, it will be time to review your add-ons and set up your survey questions. We will be covering that in the next Pepe the Frog Diaries entry. Stay tuned.

For a more detailed “How-to” experience, please check out BackerKit’s help and resource page. And if you’re interested in sealing the deal with BackerKit, you can sign up today on our homepage and embark on a journey of your own!

The post Pepe the Frog Diaries #03: Generating Items and SKU’s appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Pepe Diaries chronicles my experiences with BackerKit after the conclusion of the #SavePepe Kickstarter campaign. Keep in mind, this is not a “how to” series to be used for guidance, but rather a “how I did it” series to be used as an in-depth look from a creator’s perspective on how BackerKit can be implemented from beginning to end.

So I’ve already discovered BackerKit and have realized it’s a great fit for the #SavePepe campaign. It’s a common misconception to think “smaller” projects (under 500 backers) don’t need any extra help when it comes to fulfilling campaign promises. Sure we only had a little over 300 backers total by the end of our campaign, but our team basically consists of just 2 people. It made a lot of sense for us to seek out some support to deal with the business end of things allowing us to focus on the frog.

Normally, during these beginning stages, I would have been partnered with a BackerKit team member for support. But since I work here now, I have the advantage of just bugging people that sit near me to help when the need arises. So that’s cool. My first step is to initiate the BackerKit Tour and begin my adventure.

I highly recommend taking the time to explore this tour. It’s a great snapshot of your overall campaign allowing you to get a grasp on all the steps ahead. There are brief rundowns covering some crucial steps in the process including setting up your surveys, sending out your surveys, managing your backers, and shipping like a pro. BackerKit users have the option to “skip ahead”, but newcomers should most definitely choose “Get Started” to…ya know…get started.

The next step shows you how to set up an item. BackerKit suggests starting with the most popular pledge level to begin this process. In my case, the $20 pledge level was the most popular which included a digital and physical copy of the #SavePepe zine. From here, it’s basically plug and play. You can name the item, add any relevant options, and decide if you want this item to be included in the “Add-On” store. It’s important to keep in mind that you should add one item at a time. This means the “digital copy of the zine” and the “physical copy of the zine” are two separate items.

Another common misconception is that backers are required to create a separate BackerKit account. Creating an account is definitely the recommended option. No bias, I promise!  The benefit of creating an account is to save your information for the next time you interact with a project using BackerKit. It’s also a great way to see an overview of all the projects you’ve supported that have partnered with BackerKit all in one clean dashboard.

Details concerning add-ons, payments, shipping options, and collecting address information is made clear and backers are shown a nice clean confirmation page showcasing all of their shipping, pledge, and add-on information followed by some options to share and rate the project with your social networks.

Overall, it’s a pretty clear representation of the backer experience giving creators some good perspective. Now that I have a good sense of the big picture, I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and begin generating my items in BackerKit. Until next time, #SavePepe.

For a more detailed “How-to” experience, please check out BackerKit’s help and resource page. And if you’re interested in sealing the deal with BackerKit, you can sign up today on our homepage and embark on a journey of your own!

And be sure to read past Pepe Diary entries:

Pepe Diaries #1: Discovering BackerKit

The post Pepe Diaries #02: Getting Started appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Welcome to the first installment of Pepe Diaries, a new blog series chronicling my experiences with BackerKit after the conclusion of the #SavePepe Kickstarter campaign I managed with my brother Matt. This series aims to highlight all the key steps I take during this process as well as explain how I use all the features and services included with BackerKit. Keep in mind, this is not a “how to” series to be used for guidance, but rather a “how I did it” series to be used as an in-depth look from a creator’s perspective on how BackerKit can be implemented from beginning to end.

A common misconception is that creating and successfully funding a crowdfunding project is the “hard part”. While it definitely does take a lot of work and patience, I consider it half the battle (Go Joe!). When the #SavePepe campaign concluded, I felt a great swell of pride since we were supported by 300+ people and tripled our funding goal. Sure there are projects out there that make boatloads more, but to me, Kickstarter helped us discover our somewhat small yet completely dedicated fanbase. But when the dust had settled, I realized there was still a lot of work to be done.

Some crowdfunding projects have huge teams with a clear view of how to start and how to finish their campaigns. The #SavePepe team is basically just two people, my brother and I. So when it comes to customer experience and service, two people just won’t cut it. My main goal once the project concluded on Kickstarter was to find a way to positively “bookend” our customer’s experience. The last thing I wanted was to have a fun and positive campaign sullied by a negative exit survey and shipping experience. Basically, as a small team we needed some major help. That’s where BackerKit comes in.

I had previously heard about BackerKit through friends that used the service and had a positive experience. I was told that it was the necessary next step in any campaign to ensure the best customer experience possible. Near the end of the #SavePepe campaign, BackerKit reached out to me and invited me to their San Francisco Headquarters. During my visit they pitched me their service, showed me how it all worked through a detailed demo page setup, and detailed all the benefits BackerKit could provide our project. Needless to say, I was convinced that this was the next step for my project.

I have a bit of an unorthodox journey from here. After my pleasant and productive visit (Thanks Alex!), I felt compelled to get involved even more so I decided to look into actually joining the BackerKit team. Making a somewhat long story short; I applied for a position, I interviewed with co-founders Maxwell and Rosanna, I talked to the team in more detail about how I could help and get involved, and ended up joining the team as a Content Creator. A romance story for the ages!  I’m now in a great position to dive in head first and give you a detailed account of my experience with a unique perspective.

So what’s next? From here, you should stay tuned to the BackerKit blog where new installments will be posted. I’ll detail my overall experience, dive into all the features that make sense for my project, and hopefully discover more uses that I haven’t discovered yet. It should be an exciting adventure, thanks for joining me.

For a more detailed “How-to” experience, please check out BackerKit’s help and resource page. And if you’re interested in sealing the deal with BackerKit, you can sign up today on our homepage and embark on a journey of your own!

The post Pepe the Frog Diaries #01: Discovering BackerKit appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Backer management is taxing. Just ask A-CASE creator Aleksander Pawlinski. For his first Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, Pawlinski attempted to wrangle the spreadsheets himself, using Excel to manage hordes of backer pledges and contact information. “I made many mistakes and miscalculations,” he says. When it came to calculating production counts, he found himself in a world of pain.

Pawlinski’s subsequent crowdfunding campaign for the A-CASE garnered almost 2,000 backers. With much more at stake, he was determined not to make the same mistakes the second time around.

“To manage everything would be arduous,” Pawlinski said. “I needed something to let me manage all this information, payments, contact details, in one place.”

Learn how he used BackerKit to streamline his operations here.

The post How A-CASE Managed a Mountain of Data appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

The mifold, a portable booster seat for children, has enjoyed astounding success since its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign ended in September 2015. The project, which had a funding goal of $40,000, amassed a total of $2.6 million from backers around the world.  

“It sounds a bit quaint now,” founder and inventor Jon Sumroy says, “but we didn’t actually set out to raise money”. He says the main reason why the startup turned to crowdfunding was to get a better sense of how many products to manufacture.

“We realised that if we did presales on Indiegogo, we’d get the pre-orders and know exactly how many to manufacture. That was the first reason we did it.” Publicity, he says, was another: a trending crowdfunding campaign could gain serious traction with the media.

What came next was unexpected. “When the crowdfunding round was completed, we continued to only sell the product directly to customers by ourselves online,” Sumroy says. ”We didn’t approach any retailers.” Yet the mifold generated so much interest that Sumroy was soon fielding inquiries from some of the biggest retailers in his product category: Buy Buy Baby, Babies R Us, Target, Amazon, and Walmart.com.

A Crucial Launchpad

An important first step was getting the mifold listed on Amazon Launchpad, a marketing platform run by Amazon that features cutting-edge products and hardware from start-ups, many of which were spawned from successful crowdfunding campaigns. It has partnerships with crowdfunding platforms, venture capital firms, and accelerator programs such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Y Combinator, Techstars, and more.

If you’ve been funded on one of these platforms, getting set up on Amazon Launchpad is fairly straightforward. Project creators sign up as a vendor, register their product information, upload creative assets (videos, brand story, images etc), and launch their product on the Amazon Launchpad storefront. If you’ve been funded by a company that isn’t listed in Amazon’s network of partners, the retailer will assess your product on a case-by-case basis.

Sumroy says being online suited mifold. “Initially we were only available online, and that was in our interests,” he says. “We felt it was a quite complicated product.” Being stocked online made it easier for people to understand the product, he says, because consumers could easily “read more information and watch videos” about the mifold.

What to Expect

Sumroy says that being approached by retailers has many clear advantages. “Negotiations were a lot easier than if we had approached them,” he says. This meant he could bypass the arduous process involved in wooing a brick-and-mortar retailer.

Typically, project creators need to approach the retailer, attract the attention of the buyer, arrange a meeting with the buyer, and then convince them that they should stock your product.

“Where it was easy that they understood the product, they liked it, they saw it different, they saw it was creating a new market.” Nevertheless, the negotiation process was challenging. “We’re a small start-up, and they are very powerful. They all want to pay the lowest possible price for your product,” Sumroy says.

Sometimes, retailers will want to push you to have a brick-and-mortar presence as well. “We are now in bricks and mortar because two retailers were much more interested in having the product in store than online,” he says. “Once they were comfortable that this was a product that did well online, they pushed us to go in store much quicker than we probably would have done if it was up to us.”

Prepare for Logistical Challenges

Being stocked in brick-and-mortar stores can present project creators with more logistical concerns, Sumroy says. For example, being stocked online typically requires project creators to deliver to a single distribution center for e-commerce delivery. But if you’re in a physical store, you “have to deliver to all of their stores and regional hubs”, Sumroy says.

Getting the product ready for the retail market requires some work, too. Even small things, like a product’s packaging, are crucial to get right. “It’s very different to when someone is buying it online,” Sumroy says. Products that are stocked in stores typically need more padding in their packaging.

“In order to succeed in store, we’ve had to design point-of-sale materials so that they would have impact, so that people can see us. We’ve also had in-store videos so people stand at the shelves and watch the videos there,” Sumroy says. ”That’s all very easy to do online, but obviously much more complicated and expensive to do offline.”

Marketing for Success

Once you’ve made the shift into the retail space, don’t rely on retailers to do the advertising and marketing for you. “The only way anybody know about us is if we just keep shouting about ourselves,” Sumroy says.

“We do a lot of Google Adwords, Facebook advertising. We do a lot of promoted posts on Facebook, and do a lot of work with a PR agency that we have for the US market.”

Sumroy estimates the start-up’s expenditure on marketing expenses is somewhere near tens of thousands per month.

For those with retail aspirations, marketing will prove an important investment. Sumroy says retailers expect creators to undertake ‘marketing support’ – this includes initiatives like promotions, which creators are expected to pay for. It’s similar on Amazon. “It’s like a search engine,” Sumroy says. “You have to make sure you’re investing in Amazon marketing services to make sure that when people search for car seats, they find mifold”.

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Today BackerKit had the pleasure of attending an enlivening talk delivered by Alexandra Daly, a mover-and-shaker in the crowdfunding space, at WeWork in San Francisco’s Civic Center.

New York-based Daly is the founder of Vann Alexandra, a creative services and PR agency that specializes in launching and promoting crowdfunding campaigns for creatives. She’s also the author of The Crowdsourceress: Get Smart, Get Funded, and Kickstart Your Next Big Idea, recently released through Public Affairs and available for purchase on Amazon.

Daly has presided over some of Kickstarter’s biggest projects: Neil Young’s PonoMusic audio player, TLC’s final album, and documentaries chronicling the lives of Maya Angelou and Joan Didion, to name a few. Two of her campaigns are currently live: a reissue of the Graphics Standards Manual and a social enterprise that empowers and employs Syrian refugees through the creation of traditional crafts.

Daly has launched and promoted 50 campaigns and raised over $20 million and counting. To say she’s an expert is an understatement. She gave the audience a teaser of her just-launched book, spoke about the trajectory that led her to crowdfunding, and shared her insights on the secrets to a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Alex Daly

Here are some of the key takeaways from her talk.

The Most Crucial Marketing Strategies

For Daly, press mentions are integral to driving publicity and interest in a crowdfunding campaign. She advises against a scattershot approach and suggests targeting publications that suit your product’s niche.

“The press packs a powerful punch,” she says. “If you have a design product, you think of Wired, Fast Company, Design Milk, design blogs, that kind of thing. If you’re doing a tech product, you think of Techcrunch, Wired, Venture Beat. You have to pitch the press with the audience of people that will be interested in your product.”

Developing a social media presence is also essential, but there are limitations to each platform. ‘When you’re dealing with Twitter, it’s much more contained in 140 characters, and then the tweet disappears very quickly,” she says. On the other hand, she strongly recommends Facebook advertisements to give stagnant campaigns a nudge.

“There’s the valley-of-death plateau in those middle two weeks where nobody is buying the product. Facebook advertising gives it a big bump.”

Then, of course, there’s the project page itself, which requires “a lot of marketing thought”. Daly reiterates the importance of  “a stellar video, a beautiful campaign, and rewards that people want to get”.

Daly offers some general rules to engage your backers: keep the copy short and succinct, and make sure the video runs for a few minutes. Unless, of course, you’re Neil Young: then you can have an 11-minute promotional campaign video featuring the likes of Patti Smith, Arcade Fire, and Anthony Kiedis.

How Crowdfunding has Changed

Crowdfunding has been around for less than 10 years, but it has undergone a rapid evolution in that time. In the early days, Kickstarter was a platform for indie artists and creatives. But today, as the crowdfunding economy has grown and become more mainstream, the ambitions of creators have shifted.

“Fortune 500 companies are using the platform; celebrities are using the platform,” she says. “Entrepreneurs and companies that are very well-funded by venture capital use it as a marketing platform and to launch their product in a cool and unconventional way and lock in pre-orders.” It’s a way for many start-ups to find early adopters.

Every Campaign Needs a Story – and a Crowd

Some of Daly’s campaigns have harnessed star power to gain press attention. But how do projects without a celebrity figurehead nab the attention of time-poor journalists?

“The press is very fatigued and tired when it comes to writing about Kickstarter campaigns because sometimes, they fail,” she says. So rather than focus on the campaign or the product, she suggests shifting the emphasis on the story behind it.  “What we do is sell the story behind the product. When you give journalists a good story on a silver platter, then they write about it,” she says.

“It doesn’t have to be a celebrity for it to be special. It’s the story of why this product is so relevant right now and why it’s so awesome.”

That said, a campaign is nothing without a crowd. To Daly, this is the “most important thing”. And while it’s true that celebrities or popular institutions have an easy-to-access fanbase, she says even the most niche products can build a following, or an “in-built audience” – the trick is to find them.

“A built-in audience is a group of people that are inherently in love with the subject matter of your product – it can be your mailing list, your social media followers, your fanbase,” she says. What’s more, finding this audience takes time and effort – you’re unlikely to find your niche overnight. But, as Daly says, it’s worth it.

“When clients come to me and say, ‘We have a great idea’, I say: ‘Have you built a mailing list? Have you built a social media following? Have you gotten people excited about this? If not, go do that for six months and then we can talk. If you launch something without an audience ready to go, it’s going to fall flat’.”

The post An Afternoon with Alex Daly, the Crowdsourceress appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Established artists or media personalities have a head-start over other project creators when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns. Successful projects like Reading Rainbow with LeVar Burton and Lightsail from Bill Nye and the Planetary Society had a huge advantage with an existing fanbase, but it takes careful work to convince existing fans to back your crowdfunding campaign.

Robust personal and professional networks make it easier to tap potential backers and passionate brand advocates; being media-savvy helps to generate publicity; a profile provides an instant credibility and publicity boost. But having all of these advantages doesn’t guarantee crowdfunding success, especially if you’re a repeat project creator.

Expanding your base of backers takes time and effort. Zane Lamprey, TV travel show host and founder of ADV3NTURE Gear, says campaigns are labor-intensive efforts. “You can’t dabble in crowdfunding,” he says. “You need to either jump in with both feet or not at all.”

Project creators must do more than simply market a product. “Most Kickstarters are a pre-sell of a product,” Lamprey advises. “But besides selling the product, you’re also selling yourself. “You need to make sure you say: ‘Here’s the project. Here’s why you need it. Here’s who I am’.”

Boost Your Brand Power

Lamprey’s professional experience as a TV and travel show host on the Food Network and the Travel Channel made him a visible public figure and allowed him to accumulate a growing fanbase over time.

His Kickstarter campaign for Chug — a six-episode drinking and travel show — was the first attempt to successfully crowdfund a TV series, raising $591,804 from over 8,000 backers. He managed to hit his funding goal of $500,000 in the nick of the time, as backers flooded the campaign with contributions in the final days. Nevertheless the experience was “extremely stressful”. “With four days to go, I thought there was no chance in hell I was going to make it,” he says. “Then in the last two days it just skyrocketed — it trended, people cared about it.”

In some ways, the campaign for Chug was Lamprey’s most ambitious. He says $500,000 was a “dangerously high goal” for a crowdfunding target, even though it’s small change relative to the cost of filming and producing a six-episode TV show for a mainstream broadcaster. He also says his reward tiers made fulfillment needlessly complex and distracting. “I was sending T-shirts, hats, posters, and sweatshirts,” he says. “If I were to do it again, I would have eliminated all that stuff and focused on exactly what my campaign was and not have offered anything tangible.”

Lamprey followed up on Chug with two more successful crowdfunding campaigns that featured tangible products:  the Drinking Jacket and the ADV3NTURE Hoodie. The transition from media to product design may seem unusual, but Lamprey says his move into adventure apparel was a natural evolution of his professional interests.

The Drinking Jacket campaign fit into Lamprey’s brand. His two television shows, Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy, focused on imbibing alcoholic beverages in exotic locales. Shifting the emphasis to apparel allowed him to launch with a lower funding goal  — a reflection of lower production costs — and simpler reward tiers. Setting a $50,000 funding goal for a jacket is much easier than asking for $500,000 to make a show.

The success of the Drinking Jacket project allowed Zane to move into the wider apparel market with the ADV3NTURE Hoodie which raised over $1.8m from backers, far exceeding its funding goal of $25,000. “Angling the product towards adventure rather than drinking made it more useful in everyday life,” he says. “It reached people that were outside of the fan base.”

Project creator and co-founder of acclaimed travel photography magazine Tiny Atlas Quarterly Emily Nathan followed a similar audience evolution trajectory. She leveraged her professional networks and experience in commercial and editorial photography to meet her $22,000 funding goal for Tiny Atlas Quarterly. She framed the magazine as a “different way to tell stories” — a way for photographers to showcase their artistic vision — as well as spark of inspiration for adventurers.

Her next crowdfunding effort was a foray into product design, partnering up with Alite Designs to produce the Tiny Atlas SOLAS camera bag. Like Lamprey’s product offerings, Nathan’s camera bag is geared towards a broader demographic than the magazine, appealing to all kinds of adventurers and outdoor enthusiasts. It ended up raising $30,506 — nearly double its initial funding goal.

Interact with Your Audience

For Nathan, a creative marketing campaign on Instagram help to vastly broaden the appeal of her projects. The magazine’s distribution network helped with visibility — museums, boutiques, and retailers like Urban Outfitters stocked it on their shelves — but the demographic remained fairly narrow. “Tiny Atlas Quarterly is pretty niche when int comes to readership, although we were getting good press,” she says. Nathan’s background in editorial and commercial photography and her existing networks in those fields gave her a solid community of backers from the beginning. “The magazine has a community of my friends and people who know about me in the broader context of my career,” she says.

But word of mouth proved an increasingly important weapon, especially when it was time to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the camera bag. Many passionate advocates and backers of Tiny Atlas Quarterly were people who “found out about it because they were connected to another photographer in a professional sense”.

It took a unique Instagram campaign for the project to truly resonate with the broader public. The #mytinyatlas project heightened the social media footprint of the magazine and widened the potential readership and backer base beyond career photographers. What’s more, its reach is growing by the day, which is likely to prove useful for future crowdfunding efforts.

“With #mytinyatlas, we exploded in terms of who our audience was. Then we decided to shift focus to growing that audience and making the magazine,” Nathan says. She says the magazine’s Instagram account has netted around 115,000 followers; the tag itself has been appended to over 2.5 million posts so far. (The hashtag is also popular on Twitter.) “The brand is even larger than we can control — people are tagging #mytinyatlas without necessarily realizing that they’re attaching themselves to the magazine,” she says.  Curating and engaging with this audience is time-consuming and challenging — a full-time job in itself, Nathan says. “We need to reach out to all of those people and say, ‘Thanks for tagging. Will you follow us?’”

Build an Engaged Community

Instagram has allowed Nathan to build a robust community around Tiny Atlas Quarterly, which has helped to feed interest in her campaign for the Tiny Atlas SOLAS bag. Having limited resources can have its downsides — she believes the account could net an extra 200,000 followers if TAQ had the manpower to do more marketing outreach — but a flipside is that the community she has built is “extremely authentic”. “People feel connected to the brand that they often don’t with other types of publications or travel brands,” she says. As a result, engagement levels are high, which can help raise awareness and visibility of future campaigns.

Prior to the launch of the Solas, Nathan issued a call-out to the magazine’s Instagram community, asking them to contribute and tag their photos to accompany the Kickstarter launch. It was immensely successful: she received 10,000 submissions in two weeks. “We have one of the best photo-led influencer networks that you could ask for in the world,” she says.

A #mytinyatlas submission from @rob.macinnis

Lamprey also emphasizes the importance of a shareable campaign to engage backers. “If you’re doing a campaign for 30 days, you can make four clever, funny, and shareable videos about your product, that’s a huge way to get people to go to your page,” he says. However, he advises against being too “funny or cute” unless it’s an accurate reflection of the product. “People are handing over their hard-earned money based on your promises,” he says. “If you have an expensive product, you shouldn’t make jokes. You should convey to people that you will seriously deliver on time.”

Lamprey believes videos are a “really great place to be putting your energy” during a campaign. He took a more lighthearted approach in his promotional videos for the ADV3NTURE Hoodie. While the main campaign video served a functional purpose, highlighting the product’s features, he also filmed a “cute video with kittens” that was more shareable. “You need a newsletter, Facebook, social media, and your traditional media and press outlets. But you should also be figuring out creative ways to get your message out there.”

Consider Digital Ads

Lamprey and Nathan were able to garner press coverage for their respective projects, but both emphasize the importance of investing money in paid advertising. Lamprey says setting aside an amount in your crowdfunding budget for advertising pays off. “You can set 5%, 10% of whatever you make today and spend it on advertising tomorrow,” he says. While he believes the biggest conversions are through email newsletters, he strongly recommends placing paid advertisements on Facebook to drive traffic to your campaign page.

Nathan agrees. She believes that digital ads, rather than media coverage, are a key driver of sales. She says that Tiny Atlas Quarterly was featured on websites like Refinery29, Cool Hunting, Paper Magazine, and several blogs, but these mentions didn’t convert into sales as much as Nathan would have liked. “The money we spent on PR could have been better served on digital marketing ads,” she says.

Emily Nathan and Zane Lamprey will be appearing at at a panel discussion on crowdfunding fulfillment challenges with project creators and representatives of Kickstarter and BackerKit at The Archery in San Francisco on February 23. Food and refreshments provided; reserve your spot here.

The post Crowdfunding is Still Difficult for TV Stars appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

The conventional crowdfunding narrative typically features a first-time entrepreneur or fledgling start-up trying to raise enough capital to manufacture and ship a product to backers. But not all project creators are new to the game. Sometimes, established businesses turn to crowdfunding as a way to experiment with different business and financial strategies.

Crowdfunding and Cash Flows

Founded in 2001, GAMA-GO is a wholesale and native consumer product design company based in San Francisco. It specialises in products and household objects with a quirky bent: animal-shaped tea steepers, bling-ring bottle openers, and Sriracha sippy cups for toddlers, to name a few.

GAMA-GO had been a successful business for over 15 years before it decided to launch its first Kickstarter campaign for the Tea Otter Tea Steeper. “We wanted to see whether or not leveraging our existing customers and fan base would be a useful strategy for launching new products,” founder and creative director Greg Long says. (The company had another motivation, too: a competitor had launched a product that was a “blatant, complete knockoff” of one of its existing products. “We decided to play them at their own game and see how it goes.”)

Long believed crowdfunding could also provide a way for GAMA-GO to balance its cash flow more attractively. GAMA-GO launches between 20 and 50 new products every year. “There’s a tremendous amount of development costs for each product, and we wanted to see whether any of that could be recouped up front,” Long says. Typically, GAMA-GO pays for toolings and development costs, and recovers those expenses “quite a bit down the road”, Long says. Potentially, a crowdfunding campaign could recoup these costs almost instantly, which could have a significant impact on the company’s operating expenses.

GAMA-GO’s Business Advantage

Being an established business meant GAMA-GO was already familiar with all stages of the business lifecycle: design, production, getting the product through customs, and fulfilling the order. “We felt very confident that we would have a successful campaign, and we felt pretty confident that because we know how to manufacture, we know how to fulfill, that we would be able to deliver the product without too much of a problem,” Long says. “We were very curious about the process, about social media, about how much effort everything took to have a successful Kickstarter and fulfill the Kickstarter.”

The process of designing, prototyping and getting the product ready for a crowdfunding campaign shared many similarities with a regular, non-crowdfunded product release, although there were some key differences.

Before its campaign was launched, GAMA-GO had two tea steepers — a turtle and an otter — that were designed and “ready to go”. “We made very sophisticated 3D prototypes of both of those items. Normally we do an in-house 3D prototype, but we went out-of-house and spent some money on getting really high-quality, realistic prototypes done.” Long says this helped “create media and pre-launch buzz”. Then he asked GAMA-GO’s fanbase to vote for their favorite product: the tea otter triumphed.

“When we normally do a product release, we certainly don’t put a whole lot of social media push behind it because we’re primarily a wholesale company. We don’t usually do a tremendous amount of direct outreach to our customers,” Long says. “Crowdfunding was an opportunity to do that and we had a good time with it. It was fun engaging with people who were into it — there were 400 people who were really interested in getting a tea otter.”

Challenges

In some ways, Long says, running a crowdfunding campaign can be more complex than traditional business operations. “The way that Kickstarter works with their metrics is that you must have a good first day,” Long says. “If you don’t, a lot of doors close on you and your chances of having a successful project are really diminished.” The company focused its energies on achieving a strong showing on the first day, working to maintain that momentum through the end of the first week to show it was very close to reaching its funding goal.

But even the most experienced campaigners run into obstacles, and GAMA-GO’s campaign was no exception. Long says the company had “built in extra time” to buffer for any manufacturing delays, but the factory it enlisted had slowed operations significantly, resulting in a two-month delay for GAMA-GO’s production timeline.

Crowdfunding campaigns are time-consuming, and Long advises project creators to ensure they have enough resources to cover all their bases. “You would need someone full-time just to work on the social aspects and the PR aspects of the story. Developing media that you can roll out regularly is critical,” he says. But getting press coverage was “extremely challenging”, Long says. “The press is much more reticent to cover any crowd-sourced product”. “Unless you already have a very large user base, you need to figure out how you are going to get any sort of press.”

By virtue of its longevity, GAMA-GO has a substantial fan base. “We have been in business for 16 years,” he says, “and we worked hard to energize that fan base”. He says there are “pretty traditional cycles through the Kickstarter process that are well documented”, and recommends that prospective project creators “do their research to understand how to motivate people to back” before launching a campaign”.  

Long read about successful and unsuccessful campaigns online and took Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigners out to lunch and asked them “a lot of questions” before embarking on his own project. “We did a tremendous amount of preparation beforehand,” he says. “We went it to it with our eyes relatively wide open.”

Greg Long will be appearing at a panel discussion on crowdfunding fulfillment challenges with project creators and representatives of Kickstarter and BackerKit at The Archery in San Francisco on February 23. Food and refreshments provided; reserve your spot here.

The post Boost Your Business with Crowdfunding appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

David Fooden’s Yukon Salon is an unconventional card game. Its cast of characters include lumberjacks, grizzly bears, and duelling hairstylists. Presently, with over two weeks to go before its Kickstarter campaign’s completion, the project has met its funding target and unlocked one stretch goal. It has also managed to net plenty of blog coverage in the process, with mentions in gaming podcasts For All Intents and Purposes and Going Last, and reviews in blogs such as Junk Spirit Games, GeekDad, Indie Game Report, the Board Game Vault, among many others.

Securing reviews boost a project creator’s credibility, and are a handy way to generate publicity and expose the game to a wider audience and new backers. However, getting your game in front of a blogger or games publication can be challenging for first-time creators. Fooden and GeekDad senior editor Jonathan Liu share some wisdom from both sides of the divide.

Priming Your Game For Reviews

Liu’s inbox is inundated with pitches and requests for GeekDad reviews on a daily basis. He chooses which games to feature by considering its suitability for the GeekDad readership. “Even if it’s a game that I don’t personally think I would like, we do circulate the pitches among our team of writers to see if anyone else is interested,” he says.

Taste is subjective; what appeals to one reviewer might revile the next. Nevertheless, there are some general ideas on what constitutes an engaging game-playing experience. “Generally what I’m looking for in a prototype is the gameplay,” Liu says. “Are there interesting mechanics at work? Is there an interesting story? Is it fun to play?”

For game creators, extensive playtesting can provide invaluable feedback and ensure the game is ready for public consumption. Yukon Salon underwent many revisions in the leadup to its launch. “The first prototype had a rule set and went through many rounds of playtesting and iteration. I would playtest it and find out what worked and what didn’t and make changes,” Fooden says. “Refining the graphic design and the look of it was very important as well.”

Fooden asked for playtesting feedback from his friends in the gaming community as well as creators he’d met through events like the PAX South Indie Showcase, where was able to demo his game and generate buzz for his crowdfunding campaign. He also took it to Mox Boarding House for Playtest NW, where prototypes from Seattle game designers are playtested by the gaming community and the general public.

The Best Way to Approach Bloggers

Getting reviewed on an industry-specific blog can help generate publicity and momentum, but timing is of the essence. Sending a press release about your game well ahead of your launch date (and following up via email) can increase the likelihood that it will be reviewed. Liu recommends that game creators get in touch with publications well in advance of their launch to give them a chance to playtest their prototype. “We get a lot of pitches where the project has already launched,” he says. “Or maybe it has launched a week ago or it’s launching tomorrow.” By that time, he says, it’s too late.

Liu urges game creators to budget enough time to make their prototype and send them to reviewers ahead of the campaign. “Arrange for a prototype about a month in advance of the launch if possible,” Liu says. “We typically say we want to arrange enough time for us to receive the prototype, be able to understand the rules in case there are any questions, play it a couple of times, and have time to write a review by the time the project launches.” He doesn’t expect to get a firm grasp of component quality from a prototype, although he says more games appear to have finished artwork by the time of launch. In any case, Liu says, he’s willing to overlook artwork or components if the gameplay is compelling.

David Fooden (right) interviewed by Ryan from Hyper RPG at the Evergreen Tabletop Expo, 2016. Source: Hyper RPG. 

Fooden sent out review copies of Yukon Salon two weeks before its Kickstarter launch, although he says games with more complexity should be sent out farther in advance. Card games are typically easier to playtest. “Before I launched the Kickstarter, I was mostly reaching people at conventions and going to events at local games stores,” Fooden says. “I reached out to other gamers and blogs, and secured some game reviews from bloggers of various levels of followings online.”

Fooden drafted a form letter that he sent to prospective game reviewers and kept track of his outreach via a “sizable spreadsheet”, and cast the net pretty wide. “I sent out press releases to any place that seemed like it might possibly cover it,” he says. A lot of local news outlets, blogs — anyone with anything to do with board games or card games, or websites that covered funny, quirky stuff.” Fooden reached out to approximately 22 reviewers, most of whom responded; he ended up getting 16 reviews. He notes that “it helped to have a how-to-play video to send them featuring the game artwork”.

Liu concurs, adding that it’s important to keep a blog’s readership in mind. “I always have to pay attention to whether or not it is something people are going to be able to play with their kids. It’s not our primary criteria … but that’s a bonus for our readers.” Suitability should be front of mind for game creators when they’re pitching publications — for instance, don’t pitch an adults-only game to a family-friendly website. He urges aspiring game creators to read GeekDad’s comprehensive guidelines on how to pitch the publication.

Liu encourages creators to contact GeekDad via email. “We don’t do as much ‘discovery’, where we look for a game on Kickstarter and say, ‘Oh, this looks good — I would like to review it,’” he says. This puts the onus on game creators to be proactive in their outreach strategies. “For new creators or first-time projects, we wouldn’t know about them unless they contact us. Once they’ve launched, it’s too late.”

Building Networks

Doing the rounds at conferences and game stores can help spread the word about a project and build support networks within the gaming community, makes your game and crowdfunding efforts more visible to the press. When it comes to garnering press mentions or blog reviews, it’s often not what you know, but who you know. Reaching out to other gamers is a great way for newer and inexperienced crowdfunders to learn the tips of the trade. What’s more, supporting and playtesting other games can help make a game the best it can be, and also generates goodwill.

The post Landing a Game Review: Advice From an Editor and a Game Designer appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

Successful projects are ones that typically demonstrate momentum from the get-go. In practical terms, this means securing backers before the campaign has officially launched. This sounds like a catch-22, but it’s easier to achieve in practice. One way to secure funding before launching is to reach out to existing community networks before the campaign is live.

Foldscope’s success illustrates the benefits of acting early to engage audiences.

The Importance of Outreach

Foldscope, a foldable microscope made from paper, has a catchy tagline: “Curiosity, discovery, and science for everyone!” It had a funding goal of $50,000, and surpassed it on the first day of its launch, raising $65,186. It accumulated an astonishing $393,358 by the conclusion of its campaign, with backers hailing from almost every corner of the world.

Foldscope’s strategy for building community engagement was a slow burn, rather than a slapdash effort. Building networks can take time and planning. Maxwell Coyle, director of community engagement, says the fact that the project had been running for three to four years had tipped the scales in its favor.

For Foldscope, initial public interest may have been sparked by a 2012 TED Talk where Foldscope co-founder Manu Prakash introduced the concept to the world. The team went on to run a test program in 2014. “We had done a pilot program where an earlier version of Foldscope had been sent to 50,000 users in 130 countries,” Coyle says. “We were able to do a lot outreach that way.”

In the lead up to its Kickstarter launch, Foldscope raised awareness of its campaign through its mailing list of 20,000 people. It also used social media to promote the campaign.

Foldscope had also run workshops in the US, India, Madagascar, and other countries which helped to bolster a strong network of enthusiasts who were excited to see the project come to fruition. Regular email and social media updates kept these networks informed of the decision to launch a crowdfunding campaign, and let them know when funding milestones had been achieved.

Having a fervent core of early supporters lends legitimacy to your project, and makes backers more confident that it’s a campaign worthy of their support. In Foldscope’s case, much of this outreach was done well before launching on Kickstarter. The campaign became a rallying event which energized backers and allowed funding goals to be met swiftly.

Creating a Conversation with Backers

Keeping backers in the loop about your project’s funding progress is a no-brainer for project creators. Posting short updates on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, social media, or in an email newsletter makes backers feel invested — emotionally and financially — in the outcome of your project.

The best interactions between project creators and backers are two-way: they enrich the experiences of both parties. Microcosmos, Foldscope’s community page, takes a creative approach to engaging backers: it encourages its community to upload and share images from their microscope with the world.

Microcosmos had a dual function: it served the interests of Foldscope’s creators as well as its backers. “It gave us a sense of how Foldscopes are being used, and gave ourselves a continuous line of communication with our users,” Coyle says. “It’s a site to post discoveries, but it also lets people post questions and help other community members out. We’ve had people translate Foldscope instructions into different languages and put them on Microcosmos so other users can use that resource.”

Many of the images are taken by school students, and are otherworldly, unrecognisable observations of familiar objects. One uses Foldscope to examine their head lice; another class inspects and takes a photo of the stomata cells, mid-rib and lateral veins in a croton leaf.

Foldscope’s Microcosmos project sparked spirited discussions and discoveries by summoning a sense of wonder and encouraging interaction within its scientific community. It was in alignment with Foldscope’s ethos: to bring people of all ages into the scientific process.

Getting a Media Bump

Getting the attention of the press can be an uphill battle for project creators, but it is immensely useful: it can help a project expand its reach and raise more funds once the initial burst of backer enthusiasm has waned.

Foldscope had been featured in scientific journals before, but mainstream press attention helped to showcase its aims and aspirations to a global audience. Foldscope was featured in a dazzling array of high-quality US and international media outlets, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, MIT Technology Review, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and many others. Having a lightweight product that costs less than a dollar to produce also makes it very easy to send samples to the media.

Sometimes, a particular publication can give a campaign a handy bump. A piece published in The New Yorker on December 14 in 2015 coincided with a sharp uptick on funding during the Kickstarter campaign.

Foldscope’s media blitz is somewhat unusual in that media organizations, rather than Foldscope itself, initiated contact. Nevertheless, there’s a lesson there for project creators. Creating a movement around a project makes backers feel included in a campaign’s aims — and also makes for an irresistible narrative for the media.

The post Grow Your Audience: Foldscope’s Kickstarter Success Story appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.