How do you promote a Kickstarter campaign?
Discussion
I'm attempting to start up a home business, but I need some funding to get the equipment I need to make my products. I'm putting together a Kickstarer campaign to fund this, but until I know I get promotion I don't want to launch it. Promotion is proving the hard part.
My products are aimed at petrol heads, but unfortunately I'm finding it very hard to generate any interest as virtually everywhere I look has rules stopping me from promoting anything.
I've tried forums, but virtually all of them have rules against businesses advertising, PH included. Most require paid vendor status. The few that haven't that I am a member of, I only seem to get a few 'Cool idea' 'nice work' replies. Not enough solid support to be honest.
I've tried facebook. Posting on various automotive pages doesn't really get me anywhere. The ones with decent readerships simply delete the posts, presumably they have paid advertisers. The ones that don't, don't have enough readers.
I've tried some blogs. Mostly no replies. If it's not a arty photo of a cool car, they're not interested.
I've tried magazines. Mostly I think my emails must go in the spam, as I don't get replies. The few I have had reply require me to purchase extortionately priced adverts. A lot of money to go in the bit of the mag no-one looks at TBH.
I'm left scratching my head, wondering if there's any chance at all of actually promoting a Kickstarter campaign to petrolheads. It seems like two incompatible worlds I am trying to connect, and a as a result it looks like my business idea is looking less and less likely.
I need to raise about £10k, and have worked out that to get that I'd need about £15k from Kickstarter backers.
Working on a 0.5% contribution rate, I figure I need to reach at least 30,000 people. I think 0.5% may be ambitious too, so really I think closer to 90k. So far I think I've reached about 500 people.
How do you promote something to that level without spending out a fortune on advertising?
My products are aimed at petrol heads, but unfortunately I'm finding it very hard to generate any interest as virtually everywhere I look has rules stopping me from promoting anything.
I've tried forums, but virtually all of them have rules against businesses advertising, PH included. Most require paid vendor status. The few that haven't that I am a member of, I only seem to get a few 'Cool idea' 'nice work' replies. Not enough solid support to be honest.
I've tried facebook. Posting on various automotive pages doesn't really get me anywhere. The ones with decent readerships simply delete the posts, presumably they have paid advertisers. The ones that don't, don't have enough readers.
I've tried some blogs. Mostly no replies. If it's not a arty photo of a cool car, they're not interested.
I've tried magazines. Mostly I think my emails must go in the spam, as I don't get replies. The few I have had reply require me to purchase extortionately priced adverts. A lot of money to go in the bit of the mag no-one looks at TBH.
I'm left scratching my head, wondering if there's any chance at all of actually promoting a Kickstarter campaign to petrolheads. It seems like two incompatible worlds I am trying to connect, and a as a result it looks like my business idea is looking less and less likely.
I need to raise about £10k, and have worked out that to get that I'd need about £15k from Kickstarter backers.
Working on a 0.5% contribution rate, I figure I need to reach at least 30,000 people. I think 0.5% may be ambitious too, so really I think closer to 90k. So far I think I've reached about 500 people.
How do you promote something to that level without spending out a fortune on advertising?
Not answering your exact question, but have you looked at the UK equivalents of Kickstarter i.e. Crowdcube and Seedrs?
Seedrs recently funded Bikehud (a HUD unit for Motorbike helmets) for £90,000.
There are lot's of investors who check these sites regularly for new listings. Also because it's a startup you coudl get SEIS or EIS startus making it very tax efficient for the investor. Could easily get 10 people investing 1k each.
Unfortunately the main UK peer to business lenders Funding Circle and rebuildingsociety.com don't deal in startups.
Seedrs recently funded Bikehud (a HUD unit for Motorbike helmets) for £90,000.
There are lot's of investors who check these sites regularly for new listings. Also because it's a startup you coudl get SEIS or EIS startus making it very tax efficient for the investor. Could easily get 10 people investing 1k each.
Unfortunately the main UK peer to business lenders Funding Circle and rebuildingsociety.com don't deal in startups.
I'd not heard of them, but looking in to it, I'm not sure that's an avenue I particularly want to go down.
The appeal with Kickstarter (when you can actually manage to tell people about it) is that you retain 100% of the company after funding.
I'm not that hot on business I admit, but I don't like the idea of having other people to answer to or owe money to.
The appeal with Kickstarter (when you can actually manage to tell people about it) is that you retain 100% of the company after funding.
I'm not that hot on business I admit, but I don't like the idea of having other people to answer to or owe money to.
I raised £7,500 on Crowdfunder to produce and online web-series.
Twitter was by far the most successful means of approaching people. I also made videos that could be shared round.
Get a number of people on board who would actively promote your product, should it come to fruition and then offer them something for their promotional support.
PM me if you would like more specific advice and support.
Good luck!
Twitter was by far the most successful means of approaching people. I also made videos that could be shared round.
Get a number of people on board who would actively promote your product, should it come to fruition and then offer them something for their promotional support.
PM me if you would like more specific advice and support.
Good luck!
Interesting that you mention twitter. I've never really used it, how would you approach promoting a fundraising campaign?
I find facebook practically useless. As I am pitching to car enthusiasts, common sense would dictate that I should approach various car pages, but all they seem to be interested in is sharing pictures of cars, anything that looks remotely like promotion gets either deleted from the comments or ignored via email.
I find facebook practically useless. As I am pitching to car enthusiasts, common sense would dictate that I should approach various car pages, but all they seem to be interested in is sharing pictures of cars, anything that looks remotely like promotion gets either deleted from the comments or ignored via email.
Kozy said:
I'd not heard of them, but looking in to it, I'm not sure that's an avenue I particularly want to go down.
The appeal with Kickstarter (when you can actually manage to tell people about it) is that you retain 100% of the company after funding.
I'm not that hot on business I admit, but I don't like the idea of having other people to answer to or owe money to.
So, you want other people's money, but you don't want to 'answer to them;?The appeal with Kickstarter (when you can actually manage to tell people about it) is that you retain 100% of the company after funding.
I'm not that hot on business I admit, but I don't like the idea of having other people to answer to or owe money to.
This pitch won't play in the Dragons' Den.johnfm said:
So, you want other people's money, but you don't want to 'answer to them;?
So if you sell, I dunno, let's say fabricated car parts, as a part time business. You're telling me that if I buy one from you, I'm then entitled to tell you how to run your business?
I'm entitled to steer your business decisions, take a cut of your profits?
Kickstarter is basically a pre-sales platform, I want to attract customers rather than investors.
Edited by Kozy on Wednesday 26th February 16:01
spikeyhead said:
Or get someone else to make the first few so you've a product to demonstrate.
Already at that stage. It's too expensive to be a viable product while I am outsourcing, hence the need to raise funding for my own equipment.It's not generally available second hand (it is, but it's very rare and doesn't hang around long), it is available to lease but I would rather buy.
Kozy said:
Hi Greg
Cheers but the project was successfully funded back in May!
Congratulations. Cheers but the project was successfully funded back in May!
If you need further funding worth checking them out though - good look with the venture.
ps It's actually meant to read G Reg (but it does make me look like Greg...so I guess that's how I'll be known from now on!).
Stressful, to say the least.
Spending a good number of hours every day chasing people and pages on facebook who I could persuade to share my facebook page and campaign. Hilariously despressing success rate with this, people just didn't bother responding for the most part.
Forum promotion was virtually impossible, if I attempted to post anything myself I got shut down for breaching advertising rules and if other people did it, it didn't get many responses. On a couple of occasions I got "Yea nice idea but I can do that for £30 so don't exactly see how he's charging £100 and needs £15k".
The best thing I did was pay (rather a lot of money I wasn't sure I would see a return on) to advertise in about 5 different car magazines.
Each one ran an 1/4 page advert and a small editorial feature in their 'new products' section and also promoted my facebook page and Kickstarter link on their social media accounts. I think this accounted for about 30% of my funding. I was lucky that after Performance BMW promoted it, a BMW parts distributor in the USA dropped 50% of the funding in to get me off the ground, in return for 100 units. I am eternally grateful for that because without it I would have fallen well short of target purely though the difficulty of promotion.
Now, you might say "Well clearly not a very good product then", and you might be right. I just prefer to think of it as extremely niche, only really appealing to technically minded car enthusiasts which were, unfortunately, difficult to reach through regular crowdfunding channels.
It was a stressful month and it hasn't really got any easier since funding! Link to my website in my profile if you're interested in what I'm doing, though it's not had an update recently.
Spending a good number of hours every day chasing people and pages on facebook who I could persuade to share my facebook page and campaign. Hilariously despressing success rate with this, people just didn't bother responding for the most part.
Forum promotion was virtually impossible, if I attempted to post anything myself I got shut down for breaching advertising rules and if other people did it, it didn't get many responses. On a couple of occasions I got "Yea nice idea but I can do that for £30 so don't exactly see how he's charging £100 and needs £15k".
The best thing I did was pay (rather a lot of money I wasn't sure I would see a return on) to advertise in about 5 different car magazines.
Each one ran an 1/4 page advert and a small editorial feature in their 'new products' section and also promoted my facebook page and Kickstarter link on their social media accounts. I think this accounted for about 30% of my funding. I was lucky that after Performance BMW promoted it, a BMW parts distributor in the USA dropped 50% of the funding in to get me off the ground, in return for 100 units. I am eternally grateful for that because without it I would have fallen well short of target purely though the difficulty of promotion.
Now, you might say "Well clearly not a very good product then", and you might be right. I just prefer to think of it as extremely niche, only really appealing to technically minded car enthusiasts which were, unfortunately, difficult to reach through regular crowdfunding channels.
It was a stressful month and it hasn't really got any easier since funding! Link to my website in my profile if you're interested in what I'm doing, though it's not had an update recently.
Since it's now closed and I'm not 'advertising' it any more, this is my Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dkoz/engineer...
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