I’ve noticed a growing sense of professionalism, or at least the appearance of it, in the world of crowdfunding. Many projects seem to follow the right strategy on paper, but then struggle to take off.
I asked myself why, and I came to a conclusion: very often, Lead Generation and Email Marketing processes are carried out because “that’s how it’s done,” without a real understanding of the underlying reasons behind creating a strategy.
Let’s try to understand why to follow a particular strategy and how to do it in the best way.
The Standard Strategy
Typically, those who want to launch a crowdfunding campaign will first create a Lead Magnet (in the case of a role-playing game, it will most likely be a Quickstart). This will be used to attract an audience in exchange for an email contact to whom informative project-related communications will be sent. Over time, these contacts will become more and more interested and will be “ready and warm” when the launch day arrives.
Let’s go step by step and understand why this virtuous circle is often not triggered.
The Quickstart
Our Quickstart is more than just a product demo; it’s how we provide value to the people we hope to turn into buyers over time. A good Quickstart must be visually appealing and well-written because rarely will a user who doesn’t know us overlook these details when judging our work. Getting the Quickstart wrong seriously jeopardizes the project and burns money in acquiring contacts that will probably arrive at too high a cost or be of poor quality.
Mistakes on Kickstarter – The Quickstart People don’t seem interested in my Quickstart, now what?
Now you’re in trouble: it’s time to step back, ask those who downloaded it for feedback, and find out if what didn’t work was the content, the way it was presented, or the audience it was offered to. There’s no middle ground; it’s time for self-analysis.
People tell me the Quickstart is full of errors or ugly, now what?
You’re in trouble, but it’s less serious. These are feedback, so users are interested enough in your proposal to tell you that something is wrong. Avoid getting angry, as it would be both unhelpful and unfair, and try to accommodate the feedback as much as possible. Plan a second Quickstart and thank your beta readers profusely.
Lead Generation
Lead Generation encompasses all processes aimed at acquiring new contacts and potential buyers. We’re probably talking about advertising campaigns targeted at people with interests close to your product. The advertising market changes rapidly and is different for each niche. But if you want a good number, in August 2021, with about ten euros, you should acquire between 8 and 12 contacts to be on average. Above that number: everything is going well. Below: something’s not right.
Mistakes on Kickstarter – Errors in Lead Generation I don’t have a budget for advertising.
There’s not much to be done: if you want to crowdfund, you have to invest something. Advertising is one of the pillars of your success. Take a step back, look for a publisher, or set something aside. You can’t do without it.
Contacts are too expensive.
Something is wrong with your campaign. Analyze the data and try to understand which ad performs best. Start from there to build similar copy and experiment with something better.
In addition to testing new copy and ad sets, you can change your approach. Try testing other interests besides the usual ones or test the same interests but approach them from a different angle. For example, if you wrote that your game is the most innovative of all but received only criticism, try to better justify that statement or change it completely and highlight other strengths of your project, as innovation may not come across in a Facebook ad.
Contacts don’t open my emails!
This is a big problem, one of the most difficult to solve. A contact acquired who doesn’t open emails is a less useful contact (not useless, mind you, but of lower value than a genuinely interested one). First of all, what email provider are you using? We always recommend Mailchimp.
You can try to remedy this by testing different subject lines in your emails and trying to understand if the open rate rises with a particular way of communicating. If that doesn’t work, it’s likely you’ve acquired low-quality contacts, and you need to try different angles or interests.
Building a Community
In addition to an email list, you probably want to build a community. But it’s possible that the people on your list aren’t super interested in chatting with you on Facebook. Is it a big deal? No, but it’s not a good sign.
We’re in the gaming industry; let’s ask ourselves why our community doesn’t want to come somewhere to talk about games with us. Perhaps we haven’t convinced them, or maybe our choice to create a group on Reddit didn’t align well with the user base. In this case too, the best weapon we have is to ask. A nice survey on where they would prefer to create a community and how many would be interested in joining could stir things up!
Alright, but how do I know if I’m ready to launch a project?
This is a tough question, but I’ll try to give you an answer that can help. If you’ve done a good job, you’ll convert between 10% and 15% of the people on your email list. This is before other users arrive from the platform, and word of mouth and advertising spread the project.
Do the math: try to understand if you’re at the right number, and…
good luck!
