Our newest Kickstarter campaign is set to begin running next month. I’m sure many of you saw our post about Dynamo PR where I was mistaken about how they contacted me. Anyways, the campaign will run from March 1st thru April 20th with a plan to raise over $200,000 from backers pre-ordering on kickstarter.
We have been preparing for this campaign for 1 calendar year, and have vetted potential marketing partners extensively. Every direct response channel has been carefully considered in-house to maximize our exposure once the product launches.
PR (public relations) is a cornerstone to our team’s marketing plan. For technology media outlets, our team will keep that niche to ourselves. We have prior experience securing media coverage at publications within that sector, but we are still lacking in gear media and women’s lifestyle publications.
For targeting women’s lifestyle channels, outlined as a key sector for us, we did actually engage Crowd PR in dialogue. This was several months ago, and I will share some of what I learned about them in hopes the community will provide feedback. We have not settled yet on an exact partner to publicize us here quite yet, and reviews and feedback are greatly appreciated still.
We reviewed the communications plan provided to us by Rene Smith, an associate publicist. The plan demonstrated a method for pitching our product to the press, and it included numerous top tier publications. I did question this somewhat, as I am aware that our product is not pressworthy enough for many media outlets.
I received confirmation from the references provided by the firm, many of them were very positive. It all checked out, and an invoice was sent to us for approval in the amount of $3,000 for the first month of press outreach to journalists. The firm insisted it was important for the PR to begin pre-launch to ensure journalists could be rounded up for an embargo.
But I digress.
Our partners here have took an interest in Funded Today (
http://www.funded.today) for this sector as well. And I must say they do have a large portfolio of campaigns behind them. Although it is unclear precisely what they did for each former client considering they do paid media, earned media, and content production. Our emphasis is getting through to journalists, so checking references on their past clients for that specifically has proven challenging.
Our current situation is that launch date is quickly approaching without us having filled our need to target the women’s sector. Both quotes were very similar, $3,000 - $5,000 upfront fee, 20 review units sent to journalists, and photography content must be provided by our team.
I have been warned thus far from this post and the others about companies named Crowd, and I see Funded Today has mixed reviews (understandable given their size and weekly client load). We spoke with each firm directly by calling their phone numbers and they both do seem to be very results oriented agencies. But many posts online say that is not the case. Communications is vital to our campaign gaining exposure at launch, and we really want to get this right.