How to effectively promote your kickstarter campaign

Having worked with over 4000 campaigns, we can safely say that crowdfunding can be a tricky business. While it seems easy to launch a project even without a mainstream business, it isn't going to work if you don't boost your crowdfunding campaign with the right services and tools.

• How many Kickstarter projects are actually successful? Out of more than 400k launched projects on Kickstarter, only 36.15% have been successful.
• Are some crowdfunding categories more successful than others? Over the years, we’ve seen projects from very different categories experience incredible success. Our recent podcast with Narek Vardanyan, founder of the Crowdfunding Formula and Volterman Wallet, highlights how you can raise impressive funds with a product category as simple as a wallet.
• Is social media effective for crowdfunding? Definitely yes. You need to know how to do it right. Here are nine hacks that can help you along the way.

No matter the stage of your campaign, successful crowdfunding comes to those who use specific strategies to boost their project. You do it yourself or use services but, ideally, it’s a balance of both that will help you the most. We’ve worked with a variety of campaigns over the past few years and we know that the perfect strategy for successful crowdfunding promotion begins before you even launch your campaign.

Why do you need a pre-launch marketing plan?

Having a plan will help you gain exposure and find initial subscribers who can eventually be the influencers for your campaign once you launch. Crowdfunding isn’t just about launching a project and hoping everyone loves it enough to pledge. In the event you fail to achieve your goal within that time, your entire campaign fails. With just a short time span to hit your goal, you have to hit the ground running with a pre-launch marketing plan. With a dedicated pre-launch page from Indiegogo, you can actually turn potential leads into backers within the first 48 hours of your campaign.

Now, if you are wondering how to promote your Kickstarter campaign, here are some reliable services and strategies you can use.

BackerClub

One of the biggest concerns for any campaign is gathering reliable backers. BackerClub is a platform that solves the issue by bridging the gap between backers and campaign creators. Once you join the platform and launch a project, all you have to do is offer a specific pledge for BackerClub backers. This can be a price discount, a free add-on item, or an upgraded reward tier. The idea is to create a community where backers will get to work alongside campaign creators to help their campaigns come by providing valuable feedback.

Hyperstarter

Before launching your project, it’s essential to test the quality of your campaign presentation. Hyperstarter does this for Kickstarter campaigns to offer you incredible insight. This marketing and analysis tool will help you fix any problems with your campaign page as well as find influencers and backers in your product niche.

Facebook Ads

If you’re doing ads yourself, don’t overlook the biggest social media platform on the planet. Facebook gives you a plethora of options to make sure you get the most out of your money. While designing your ads, make sure to do split tests at the ad set level to identify the most engaging audience base for your campaign. Only then can you move to split testing at the ad level for the perfect ad. Facebook Ads have been a gamechanger for many campaign creators – just take a look at the success of the X-Frame mechanical watch.

CrowdReach

Targeted advertising on Facebook can be challenging which is why CrowdReach is a total savior. The idea began after Zack Brown raised $55,000 for his ‘potato salad’ campaign back in 2014. Depending on the stage of your campaign (pre-launch or after launch), you can choose to apply their services either to get more subscribers or drive more pledges.

Pinterest Ads

Pinterest is an often overlooked social media platform when it comes to crowdfunding. But, you need to know that Pinterest is actually really beneficial. It has its own niche audience and functions more like a search engine. As you can imagine, it’s quite necessary for your campaign. Likewise, there are a few opportunities to spread the word about your campaign. You can create boards to drive interest as well as use hashtags on your posts. You can even join Pinterest Boards relevant to your project. Since this platform is all about pictures, you need to make the most of it with your product shots.

Gadget Flow

At Gadget Flow, we have promoted over 4000 crowdfunding campaigns. Our main theme of promotion is about making your product reach a more mainstream audience compared to niche backers. Crowdfunding is confined within a specific timeframe and we cater our promotional timeline around your campaign for maximum exposure. Our user base consists of people who take interest in crowdfunding as well as those who are into product discovery. Learn more about our marketing plans here.

Get your crowdfunding project on Gadget Flow.

Crowdinsight

Nearly two-thirds of crowdfunding campaigns fail and the primary reason is lack of preparation when it comes to marketing. The second reason is lack of real feedback. Crowdinsight by Gadget Flow solves this problem by providing thoughtful, honest feedback on your marketing approach by potential backers, all before you launch your project or even while it’s live.

Green Inbox

One of the best ways to jumpstart your campaign is by reaching out to your personal contacts from the very beginning. However, in order to reach them on social media, you need to create ads as the organic reach of traditional posts is limited. Green Inbox solves this by letting you send personal messages to all of your social media contacts at once. You can customize your list of contacts (because we don’t want to spam everyone!) as well as the message. This service works for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as of now.

PR Newswire

No service, product, or campaign can reach the right audience without a proper PR service. It might sound old school to some, but campaigns that go all-out with PR efforts are able to reach a larger audience base. But, the world of PR can be tough to navigate correctly. PR Newswire is a service that does the PR groundwork for you with maximum efficiency. Once you have your press release, distributing it via PR Newswire will help spread the word and get some coverage.

We know there are many other services that can enhance your strategies on how to promote your Kickstarter campaign. However, there are also a lot of scams. What else have you used in the past to boost your campaign? Share with us in the comments below.