Lately, I’ve been curious how effective Kickstarter is at raising money.
I mean, if some guy named ‘Zack Danger Brown’ can raise more than $55,000 to (and I quote) “make potato salad because I’m hungry” is this really a serious platform for entrepreneurs to turn to when they need to raise funding and build a customer base?
Luckily for me I know Aaron Hallerman, Founder of Lexell Watches (and most recently Vincero Watches), a childhood friend of mine who turned to Kickstarter to raise more than $221,000 for their first venture (Lexell Watches) and is at it again with Vincero Watches campaign on Kickstarter that has raised more than $123,000 to date (August 15 publish date).
I chatted with Aaron earlier today asking a few tips about raising money on Kickstarter …
… and his advice was so solid that I couldn’t help but share it with my readers.
Here are some of the top tips that Aaron shared with me.
Tip #1: Mine Your Own Network
Aaron mentioned that his team wanted to avoid “spamming people” with the Lexell Watches campaign.
There’s only so many times you can say “PLEASE BUY MY STUFF” before everybody gets annoyed with you
With that being said, Aaron mentioned that his team tapped into their own networks and asked for really simple things such as:
- Share this campaign with your Facebook friends (one click share)
- Reach out to your network at least 30 days before your Kickstarter campaign kicks off
Tip #2: Build Up Your Network Before Launching Kickstarter
For the Vincero Watches campaign, Aaron noted that they spent a solid 2 months collecting email addresses of interested customers and pulled in more than 2,000 names.
Learning from their first campaign with Lexell Watches, Aaron mentioned that 60 days wasn’t even enough prep time up front: they really wanted to spend more time collecting the names of those early adopters.
It’s critical to build up your email database of early adopters. Those are going to be your first customers and you want as many of them as possible.
Tip #3: Show, Don’t Tell
Eventually, buyers are going to want to see the product. Aaron’s team spent their 60 day build up period producing product videos, taking photography and networking with journalists to show them how awesome and unique their watches were.
That being said, the “SHOW, DON’T TELL” mantra comes into play here: Buyers need to connect with your product early and often!
Tip #4: Prepare to Fight for Space
Kickstarter has changed quote a bit in the past 6 months: It is crazy crowded and everyone is fighting for position on the homepage as well as being selected as a ‘staff pick’
Staff picks go out to millions of people on Facebook and sit on the front page of the website, giving your product tons of exposure.
Prepare to fight for premium position by mining your network, contacting Kickstarter and driving as much traffic as humanly possible to the Kickstarter page.
Some Closing Words of Advice
Aaron mentioned a few other things that were helpful:
- Kickstarter tends to have much higher conversion rates that e-commerce stores and websites. Take advantage of that.
- Using Kickstarter comes with a 9% fee on all money raised, so make sure to budget correctly as they take a cut of your funds. Kickstarter themselves takes 5% for using the site while Amazon payments takes 4% for powering the payments aspect of the site.
Any Questions for Aaron?
Drop them in the comments section and I’ll have him weigh in on a follow up post.
