#Testimonial: How Andrew reached his $5000 Kickstarter goal in 20 minutes ''Go Away Covid!''

$5000 goal reached in 20 minutes, that's a great achievement!

This is the goal my client Andrew Olsen reached nearly a week ago and he also got picked from Kickstarter featuring ''Project We Love'' with his amazing ''Go Away Covid'' project and today I had the pleasure to meet him (well, meet through Google Meet of course) and ask him some questions and tell us his experience on Kickstarter!

I'm sure that this interview will be helpful for all the creators that are getting ready to launch their first product ever through a crowdfunding campaign.

I'll be resuming here all the questions and answers that we had on this video.

But before moving further...

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THE INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATOR ANDREW OLSEN

Go Away COVID! Is a children's book plus puppet that teaches the importance of building and maintaining healthy habits during the COVID-19 pandemic. ''I first had the idea for a children's book based on informing and protecting children from COVID-19 when my 6-year-old nephew drew me a picture of what he thought the COVID-19 virus looked like'' says Andrew.

Now let's get into the Q&A session!

1. Why did you choose the crowdfunding method to launch this kind of product? And what lead you to choose Kickstarter?
I own a toy company and I found this was the perfect product to launch that also had the right potential to become viral, I chose Kickstarter because it was a mean that helped reach a different target of people besides the one I already reach through my website and Amazon. After I saw a lot of projects on Kickstarter similar to mine that had success, I was able to study and implement the same kind of strategy.

2. What was your knowledge about Crowdfunding campaigns and Kickstarter before having a consultation with me?
I knew basically nothing about it, I read many articles and watched a lot of videos, but I had very little knowledge about all that concerns the launch and how to do it successfully. Also, there are thousands of campaigns on Kickstarter and a lot of new projects every day, so it is so hard to be noticed into this big market that's why your help was fundamental.

3. How was your pre-launch phase?
I started the pre-launch nearly 2 months before the launch, I created a landing page to gather e-mails and to show my project with graphics and images, then I run ads with Facebook to acquire contacts. Over these months I generated 3000 e-mails during my pre-launch phase, two weeks before the launch I started my e-mail campaign to get people excited and engaged and inviting them to share the campaign with their friends, so at the moment of the launch, I had the guarantee to get to the goal successfully. 

4. Did you used campaign marketing once close the campaign launch? Did you send the welcome e-mail?
I only started two weeks before the launch because I didn't want to send tons of e-mails and wanted to send only important ones, I didn't send a welcome e-mail, I only sent one 2 weeks before the launch, another 1 week before, one the day before and the last e-mail only when the campaign was live. The good thing is that I nearly had no unsubscribe and that's because I only sent important e-mails and basically no spam.

5. How helpful was the fact that you already had a company in that field?
It sure was very helpful, borrowing and using my company's e-mail list helped a lot, also going through the process of the product development was much easier because I had my own manufacture and when the fulfillment time came it wasn't a nightmare to source stuff. Having an experience with my company in this years really prepared me to launch a product on the market and also preparing the marketing strategy.

6. How was helpful having support from a consultant like me in order to launch your campaign in the most effective way?
It was really helpful to have a call with a consultant, my first Kickstarter campaign was very lost at the beginning, I was trying to read books and articles but somehow things didn’t come together, after a call I was able to go back and create a master plan, starting with the pre-launch marketing, to Kickstarter marketing and then the fulfillment program. It is crucial to have someone that coaches through the whole process especially if it's your first time like me, in order to smash the goal really quickly.

7. Could you give some advice to be picked by Kickstarter ''Project We Love'' as you did?
There is no secret sauce, no secret algorithm, campaigns are hand-picked by real people, the best advice I can give is to focus on your story, make sure your ideas are well refined and your video tells your story very well. Actually, I was hoping to get picked before launching the campaign but I was picked 3 days after the launch, that's because I reached the goal in 20 minutes. I was getting a lot of attention on Kickstarter and it hacked the algorithm so that the editors decided to pick it! If you don’t get picked before the launch don't give up, just focus on your pre-launch and launch day and try to get funded as quickly as possible to have higher chances to be picked.

NB. Andrew explained each of the rewards on the Kickstarter page in specific, this is very very important for all of you creators, you need to take into consideration to show visually what is gonna be inside each reward, helping people to make a pledge over your crowdfunding campaign. 

8. How much did you raised so far?
I’m very close to 10.000, my initial goal was 5.000 and I reached it in 20 minutes after the launch, I'm a week and a half in the campaign, there are 20 days left and there will be a lot of time to reach a bigger goal!

9. Which kind of advice would you give to creators that are approaching Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns?
As with every product development, make sure your product is fulfilling some needs or solving some problems, if people don’t have a reason to buy your product they’re not gonna buy it! So make sure you have a really developed and refined product that has market demand, secondly, focus on storytelling, marketing is all about creating a story around your product and your brand, which is gonna give you the edge over the other project out there!

WRAPPING IT UP

Anyway, Andrew did a really great job with his ''Go Away Covid!'' campaign and I'll surely interview him again once the campaign will be finished to tell us his complete experience, for sure the goal will be even bigger than the actual one, so stay tuned!

It is always a great pleasure to meet my clients and hear about their achievements, it makes me so proud and that's the reason why I do this job and share my best advice with you because I want you creators to succeed and reach your dream objectives!

So, always remember to create a community of interested people around your new product, gather them and keep these people warm with special and detailed content about your new product, in order to make them want to support you and be part of your journey.

If you want 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''. 

It’s gonna guide you through the right strategy to follow in order to build a warm community of potential backers for your project.

As always make sure to check out my new video right on top and comment to ask me questions and subscribe to my channel to stay updated on fresh new content that I’m gonna drop there.

Ciao ciao! 

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