Three transformative Kickstarter campaign strategies (and two that sucked)
I’m midway through a Kickstarter campaign for my game Notable Remains, and have been blown away by its success. Buoyed by the advice I’ve gained from online, I thought I’d share three things I think my campaign has benefitted from (and two things I’ve tried in the past which didn’t work).
Prelaunch as soon as you can
I managed100 day prelaunch. This cannot be understated — prelaunch as soon as you can to build your list. I launched with 160 followers, which contributed significantly to successfully funding in 34 minutes. A prelaunch campaign for a Gotham game has 1,300, so I am taking 10% of that for a tiny UK gamesmaker as a win.
It also gives you a lot of encouragement to see these numbers rising, and gives you somewhere to direct interested parties.
Create your campaign tribe
Create a community from the off. My game is based on an island, and I’ve automatically put backers into one of four clans based on their backer number, North, South, East and West.
I’ve written to them all individually, and this has galvanised the backers, with far more social chat about this campaign than any other I’ve had! They earn Clanpoints every time they mention their clan or the campaign on social media, and the amount of added support has been phenomenal.
The winning clan will all get an enamel pin for their efforts and, five days in, it is a straight race between two clans, which can only be a good thing, right‽
Add some ‘Money Can’t Buy’ challenges into the mix
Islander Challenges have been amazing! Taking an idea from Elan Lee (creator of ‘Exploding Kittens’), I created 12 island challenges, each with a ‘money can’t buy’ prize — the chance to have a road named after them on one of the maps in the game. So far this has resulted in the tiniest logo of the game to Notable Remains on national TV, an ultraviolet sign being made and a cake being baked and iced, among other things! This too has brought so much fun to the campaign.
Once you have made your funds, focus on building that community. Make it somewhere people want to tell their friends, participate in, search out new ways to show their pride.
What strategies didn’t work?
One game I made (Pouroboros) was hyper local. The game could have been played anywhere in the world, but because it was London-based, I think this put a lot of backers off. I would do this in the future, but if you are going to make a hyper local game or product, first consider:
- Can I make its appeal broader?
- Can I accept it will limit its market value?
Another strategy I tried was to individually email every one of the 55 past campaigns I have backed in the past. Perhaps I should have messaged them sooner, but I had only two responses, which is I think a pretty poor response rate. I haven’t done this for the Notable Remains campaign, but may do again in the future, to build my prelaunch list.
Here’s a link to the Notable Remains campaign on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1666104729/notable-remains?ref=asimz7
These three have helped so much. What strategies have worked for your campaign?
