6 Tips for your Kickstarter Ads Strategy

Crowdfunding campaigns are probably the most popular way to launch your first product in the e-commerce world, the major crowdfunding players are Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

As you may know, the purpose of crowdfunding is to raise money to finance an innovative project and people contribute just because they believe in it. But the question is, how to gather people interested in your super-duper cool project?

As with any ''new product'' you will need to advertise it to make people notice it exists, and you have to do it really well that they should be convinced in helping and backing your crowdfunding.

At this point, it is fundamental to build a great advertising plan that will help you to generate qualified leads to go back to your campaign, as well as attract new backers when the campaign is live.

In this article, I will give you some important tips to follow in order to build the perfect Advertisting strategy for your crowdfunding campaign!

Before reading the article...

Make sure to smash like and subscribe to my Youtube channel to support me and to stay updated on new crowdfunding videos that I’m weekly sharing, and keep on following this blog in which I'll feature very useful and detailed Crowdfunding tips.

1. INVEST IN THE RIGHT CHANNEL

Now a days there are plenty of platforms to advertise your product, consider all the major social media platforms like Tik Tok, Youtube or Twitter and more... they're very useful if you want to attract people's attention.

Among them one social platform still reigns when we talk about converting interested people in leads: Facebook, remember that that also includes Instagram, so you can decide to show your ads on both platforms or just one of them, depending who you're targeting.

Facebook is one of the most complete platforms to perform ads, once you've targeted all the people interested in your project or people in general interested in new crowdfunding project you can create your target audience. When you target those people, there will be less struggle required to see a conversion once you launch, because they're already interested in what you're proposing.

Example: You're launching a new e-bike, you're going to target people interested in outdoor sports and bikes, in this way the message will be more efficient and you will not spend time ''educating'' people in what an e-bike is for, and specify all the specs to a newbie who never used a bike in his whole life. That would be time consuming and budget wasting. So you will already target interested people who don't need much ''education'' on the matter.

So of course in this case it's pretty obvious that you should invest large part of your ads budget in the right channel (Facebook), instead of placing bits of your budget divided into multiple platforms, because that will not drive any efficient conversion.

2. DON'T FORGET THE PRE-LAUNCH

This is something that I cannot state enough and tell to all my clients and students: Pre-launch phase is VITAL and you should never skip it or undervalue it.

As a matter of fact, the only way to launch a successful campaign is to run a proper pre-launch phase before the actual launch. In which you need to identify the target for your project, set up a proper funding goal, and create a solid community of potential backers, in order to be sure to already have people interested in back your campaign before the launch.

You should start the pre-launch phase at least 2 to 3 months before going live, you can add weeks or months the important thing is not starting too close to the campaign launch. You will need to start collecting leads after identifying your potential audience.

As I said before it's important to allocate your budget to the pre-launch, because it will allow you to build a network of interested people that you can nurture educating them on your product. In this way you will keep them ''warm''.

Remember that if you neglect the pre-launch phase, you're not likely to build any social proof and you won't see any conversions.

You'll find all the pre-launch phase explained in my free e-book ''3 SIMPLE STEPS TO SUCCESS ON KICKSTARTER AND INDIEGOGO'', download it here!

3. START COLLECTING LEADS

Creating ads at this point will not serve you as an immediate conversion as for an e-commerce, but you will use it to make people go inside the marketing funnel, that is done by collecting emails. In this case you can use your social ads to link your landing page, that will serve as the first page to collect emails of interested people.

It goes like this: targeted people see your social ads about your new product, they're captured by your ads images, copy, description or video, they clic on the ad that leads to your landing page, this landing page should be optimized for lead generation in order to get people's interest and make them submit their email for further communications about your product.

How to optimize your landing page so that people will leave their email?

1) Make sure to add a prominent headline, along with subheading and a copy that should catch people's attention, always try to trigger an emotion.

2) A catchy image that shows the product and how it can be used, remember to use very high-quality pictures.

3) A big shiny CTA button to allow to insert the email.

4) Offer something in exchange for their email, like special discount when the campaign will be live.

This is what I mean with optimized landing page, but make sure to test different variations of your landing page in order to see what converts better. And don't worry, you don't need to be a web engineer to create your own landing page, you can use Leadpages to do it, it is so easy to use and user friendly.

I advice all my students to use Leadpages for their landing pages and they all made a great landing page without difficulties!

4. PAY ATTENTION TO CREATIVES

Adding some creatives to your social ads is fundamental, without the right image or headline people will just scroll by and you will get unnoticed. Keep in mind that people see a tons of ads everyday, how to make them stop at your product ads?

With creatives we're referring to the images, graphics and copy included in your ad. Let's see how you can stand among hundreds of ads a person sees on socials:

1) Use bright and high-quality image or set of images

2) Create a short catchy video including something catchy in the very first 3-5 seconds

3) Use graphics that describe your brand (your signature colors, bright colors, geometric shapes etc.)

After choosing the best graphics to describe your project it's time to focus very well on the copy and on what you want to communicate to attract interested people's attention.

The most important thing in the copy is the headline and the subheading or short description, keep in mind that the best copy always create an emotion or delivers a promise. People should feel something in order to click on your ad, that could be curiosity, excitement, aesthetic etc.

You will need to refer to your product's benefit with your copy, but at this point you're not trying to get people to buy your product yet, but you're creating interest to entice them to click.

Just look at these examples from my client eBreath, their campaign was fully funded and their social ads were very clear: high-quality images, great graphics, simple copy.

5. STUDY YOUR PERFORMANCES

Check how your ads are going, test them, and based on that make sure to fix your ads accordingly to what performs best. In order to study your performances take a look at your Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Here's the most important KPI you have to keep track of:

- Click Through Rate (CTR) Helps you know how many people are clicking on your ads.

- Leads Through Rate (LTR) Is the conversion rate you'll experience on your landing page.

- Cost Per Lead (CPL) It's the most important, it tells you how much you pay for each email.

Keep and eye on these indicators as they will tell you if your ads are going well or you have to change something, for example if the cost of a CPL is very high probably something is not working well. The problem could be that your landing page is not well structured (LTR) or the ads are not performing well (CTR), why?

The ads may not be appealing for your audience and it takes more money to convince them in clicking your ad or you're targeting a not interested audience. In order to have a low-cost CPL you will need to work well on your landing page in order to raise the conversion rate and you have to work on the creatives of your ads.

6. CREATE ENGAGEMENT

Now you finally have collected emails, but the job is not over yet!

After you have so many people interested you can't just keep them there and announce them when the campaign is live, otherwise they will lose interest. What you need to do now is nurture them and create hype, you have to work consistently to get them engaged and thrilled to back your campaign. There are some ways to do that:

1) Send automatic emails after they enter their email in your landing page communicating them that they achieved a special discount.

2) Create your own Facebook group with people that have sent their email. In this group you can inform them about the news of your product, you can talk to them, ask their opinion and more.
This will actually create a community around your project, they will be part of something!

3) Send emails once or twice a week to talk about the project and encourage them to respond the email or inside the Facebook Group.

All of this will contribute to create engagement, these people will feel part of the project, and they are actually a fundamental part of it, because backing your campaign will help you create your product, in this case they're the first people to invest in your project and who believe in you, treat them like your best investors!

WRAPPING IT UP

This is it for today, make sure to follow these steps firmly in order to make your Ads convert like crazy!

A crowdfunding launch requires a lot of hard work and sacrifices, but I'm sure that it will be worth it in order to start making your dream project come true.

Always remember that before launching your project you will need to analyze and prepare your pre-launch phase to launch your first product, I’ve got you covered with my crowdfunding pre-launch free e-book called ''3 steps to success on Kickstarter and Indiegogo''. 

As always make sure to subscribe to my channel to stay updated on fresh new content that I’m gonna drop there.

Ciao ciao! 

Privacy Policy: We hate spam and promise to keep your inbox safe, occasionally sending high-quality content related to this topic, according to your permission.