KickstarterForum.org

Hey all,

I've ran a successful campaign a few years ago, but I was very inexperienced with the processes of prelaunch/promoting/marketing etc. The backers came from friends, family, and friends of friends mostly.

I have so much more knowledge and understand the importance of prelaunch, promoting, social media etc. BUT I am not the greatest at it, and as I am pretty much a one man band, I don't know if I can reach big numbers for my funding goal this time around on my own...and the project I'm designing now is totally industrial.

I think in order to achieve the necessary funds, I'm thinking I'll need some marketing/PR help, but of course, I'm not sure which of the gazillions of companies to use. I almost used one for my first project but didn't because I didn't like their pricing structure.

Any firsthand recommendations on great companies, or advice??

Thanks!!

First campaign: search for KLADIS on the kickstarter website
Current project: www.gowithsidebeam.com

Hey Drcontempo, Welcome to the forum! Looking at the way the slider pieces fit together makes me think that you have a really solid product and it looks like you have put alot of work and time into development.

Now before I go any further, I am going to say that hiring a PR/marketing/consulting company is not something you have to do. Almost everything these companies are offering, are things that you can do yourself (i.e. managing Twitter & Facebook profiles, doing press outreach, writing a press release, etc.) but in saying this; working with a PR/marketing/consulting company can save you quite a bit of time, especially if you have to learn these skills from scratch. If you already have a basic idea of these concepts or if you think you can learn how to do everything yourself, then do not worry about hiring someone to work with you. If you are looking to save some time and you are not confident that you can learn these skills in the near future, I will expand on the different types of PR/marketing/consulting companies below.

What you need to look out for are the scam/spam services that will do nothing good for you at all. These companies will offer services such as Facebook & Twitter shares, fake social media likes, and bot traffic to your campaign. It is also not worthwhile paying for press release wire distribution as this kind of service is only useful for the very large companies, not people who are just getting started.

The services that may potentially be beneficial to you are copywriting services, campaign page optimization services, press outreach, social media management, crowdfunding consultation, full management services, etc. For you to be able to determine what services you should be paying for, you need to work out what you can already do and what you can learn to do yourself, then work out the things that you need help with or you are not confident you can do yourself.

If you think you have most things under control but you just need assistance and advice on strategy and implementation, it may be worthwhile to invest in a crowdfunding consultant to guide you throughout the prelaunch/live campaign processes to ensure you are doing everything required for a successful campaign.

Who you work with can also depend on how much money you are trying to raise via Kickstarter as well as how much money you have to spend on your campaign and on advertising.

Please feel free to get in touch with me by replying here, private messaging me, or contacting me through my website if you have any further questions. I understand this was quite a broad response and I didn't give you an exact answer with who you should hire but if you would like me to go further into each company it will probably be best to email me (as my response is going to be quite long).

All the best with SideBeam!


Kind Regards,

Jake
Team Backertree!

From my experience, marketing folks who specialize in crowdfunding have not been helpful. I dabbled with a few. Others I simply avoided because their plans made no sense. Some wanted to just pledge with my own dollars. Others promised to blast out my message to an un-targeted list of "crowdfunding enthusiasts" who likely would already have seen my project on Kickstarter. Not a single firm was able to show me a success story, a campaign whose owner said they got a spike in pledges on the day of a promotion.

My best marketing advice is, still: make something that people really want. If you want more customers/backers, focus on improving your core offering.

Wow huge reply from Backertree above! Hope they contact him as you can see he spent time on putting together a response.

I'm not sure I'd agree on not using marketers, you just need to find the right one

I agree with the point of making something that people want. If the page is well crafted, the press and attention will come for sure.

Thanks for the input everybody! I agree with what's been said, but in terms of finding the right marketeers, it's just really hard to find who the right ones are!

Hi Derek, If you want to PM me directly I can go through how to promote you as well as examples of similar projects we've worked on & results.

drcontempo wrote:Thanks for the input everybody! I agree with what's been said, but in terms of finding the right marketeers, it's just really hard to find who the right ones are!

This is an older thread, but I'm hoping this can shed some insight for other people looking to launch!

Everything you decide when you're looking for that extra help depends on the type of budget and time you have including the goal you're looking to meet.

Here, I'm assuming you want to meet a high goal (since it's an industrial project).

If you're low on time and high on budget, you'll probably want to get help from a marketing agency and PR firm since they'll be able to help create, polish and run your entire campaign end-to-end as well as get the word out there.
- marketing agencies: Tross, Hyperstarter, LaunchBoom, etc.
- PR firms: Dynamo Communications, Astrsk PR, Proper Propaganda, etc.

If you're high on time and low on budget, you'll probably have to go with the DIY method and piece together different advice you see on the internet to get things going.
- DIIY step-by-step PR if you're low on budget: https://crushcrowdfunding.com/the-crowdfunding-pr-strategy-that-works-2019-and-beyond/
- marketing if you're low on budget requires a lot of time and tons of effort on your end. You'll need to frequent forums to post about your ideas and get feedback. You'll need to create your landing page and configure your email marketing. You'll need to become visible on social media. All this sounds easy, but takes time to get going.

It depends on the proximity of the project. How much you want to earn needs a perfect strategy. A marketing farm already has the idea and plan for every course of situation and as per action. But it solely depends on you. If you can able to do the work by yourself then it is always better. You can easily get on with it. It is not rocket science.


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