Lessons learned from a successful Kickstarter Campaign

Lessons learned from a successful Kickstarter Campaign

I got the idea to make a Kickstarter for NMF.earth app back in June 2019. Here is what happen after that.

It quickly started in October with a Kickstarter, ending one month later in November 2019 after being 100% funded. The video was filmed a month before the start and Anthony and I did around 50 versions of the app design. To give you an idea on how things have changed, the first design of the app had dark mode enabled by default.

Dark mode by default in the beginning… good idea for nerds like me, not a good idea for everyone else. Showing my progress to people helped me to realized that. Do it too.

I did a lot of research about climate change, read a lot of articles and followed the news to understand what is going on, why we are in such a bad situation and how we could fix things. It was both really interesting and depressing to be honest. At the beginning, my focus was on scientific facts, figures and reports but it also went towards psychology very quickly. Psychology is paramount when you deal with so much bad news. Therefore, after collecting data about climate breakdown, I spent a lot of time organizing and presenting this data to my audience. You can’t say “hey guys, you are doing it wrong, let me explain what to do in your life”. Otherwise no one will listen to you, even if you are right. I’ve changed my speech so many times to ensure that no one gets offended but still gets the message.

Finding the right words is something really hard that I clearly underestimated.

Before you start writing your Kickstarter campaign and video speech, make sure to check several successful Kickstarter campaigns first. There are some patterns and ideas you can reuse to your advantage. Maybe before that, check if Kickstarter is actually the best platform of you. Maybe Ulule, KissKissBankBank are more suitable for your projects for example.

To promote my Kickstarter, I realize now that I spent too much time creating social media content and put too much energy on the website. I also put a lot of energy in ProductHunt launch when the Kickstarter went live and it was a big mistake. ProductHunt fooled me and did not feature my Kickstarter on their homepage even if the project got dozens and dozens of votes the first hours. My marketing plan was simple: be first on ProductHunt at the beginning of the day and that will ensure me even more visits at the end of the day. Without a clear explanation, ProductHunt refused to show NMF on their front page even if I got the required amount of votes. The experience with ProductHunt was very disappointing but lesson learned: I should not have put all my eggs in the same basket.

For these reasons, the Kickstarter campaign was stuck around 15% funding during 20 days and I thought I would not make it. What an amazing surprise one morning when I realized that someone helped me to reach the goal, I couldn’t believe it! I’m glad I adjusted and chose a low goal — 30 000 SEK (around €2700/$3 100) instead of the initial target of 100 000 SEK (€9 400/$10 586) or else all of this would not have happened.

I was really happy afterwards that I didn’t received too many backers because sending rewards took me a lot of energy and time, more than I expected because I decided last minute to send personal handwritten letters to all of my “stickers” backers. I thought I would start coding the app right after the end of the Kickstarter but it wasn’t the case at all. I was exhausted.

Conclusion

For a small/one person Kickstarter, you should probably start working 6 months prior to launch. In terms of marketing and growth hacking, try to get at least 2 or 3 sources of visitors. Make sure your goal is not too ambitious and focus a lot on your speech and your video presentation.

Summary of the lessons above:

• Show progress to people and get opinions
• Do your research
• Choose your words wisely
• Diversify your marketing channels
• Give yourself a break if you need it

Pierre Bresson, founder of NMF.earth