KickstarterForum.org

In this post, I will write my personal experience with a few of the marketing agencies we almost hired for our campaign. Long story short, it was a nightmare.

Naturally as a creator I hope to convert every dime of our marketing budget to a full fledged backers. Since we do not have enough funds to continuously burn cash into our advertising strategies, we were actively looking for an alternative. I know these are the options that wildly sprout in every creators mind :

1. Look for a marketing agency which will fund our ads and offer percentages/commissions in return. While it will most probably cost us more, we are ready to cover our losses with the after sales.
2. Look for existing backers database from Fiverr/Krowdster and reach out to them since they are our main target clients : people who most likely interested in new product/idea
3. Try to create a viral post for our product and feature them on social/mainstream news hoping it will go viral on its own.

This is how we execute all our options :

Option 1.

We reached out to all the well known people/company in the business. You name it. Jellop, Funded Today, Eventsys, The Gadget Flow, and some of the wildest one too - Kickstarter Queen, Agency 2.0 among others. They are not within our budget! Its in between $3,000 up to $5,000 range. Some of them require us to bear the cost of ads done by them and its ridiculous if you ask me. Logically speaking, they have the audience we need (which refers to our option number 2) but since we are limited to our own budget for ads on top of the mandatory upfront, it means nothing to us by then. If we spend $100 per day we will only manage to reach up to 6,000 impressions with more less than 0.05% conversion rate! I am speaking about pointlessly spending $100 for 3 backers, daily, if we were lucky enough.

That said, we know this is the best strategy. From our conversations with most of the company representative, almost each and everyone of them (except The Gadget Flow) practice the same business module, this must be the holy grail of Kickstarter marketing. So we proceed to our next option thinking it will be more beneficial to us to get our own list of backers and fund our own ads. Without the upfront cost mentioned, we can now at least double up on our daily budget hence doubling our number of backers.

Option 2.

I am gonna make this short. Nothing works. Krowdster is a total bullshit. Fiverr? Even worst. At least Krowdster made it seems real but Fiverr... its pathetic. How do I check if its legit? I uploaded the list on facebook ads custom audience and it turns out that only a mere 2% of them works. Can you imagine? 2% of thousands of emails? How do we target them next? Its a well known facts to spend more as the crowd get smaller since we targeted a more specific audience. Should I spend 50 bucks per day to get 5 people to see my ads hoping they will convert to backers? No.

Option 3.

We try to reach a couple of sites. Some offered us a free review since we are within their niche while others are too expensive. I have nothing to comment since we got exactly what we paid for : nothing for nothing while the legit sites are too expensive for us to risk our marketing budget. The fees varies between 200 up to 10,000... they don't care if you are a startup, its all the same. You worth even less when you don't have any good portfolio to back you up.

We are now out of options. What do we do next?

We did nothing. I decided that we are not ready for Kickstarter and told my team (actually just me with a couple of my friends) to give me time and re evaluate our campaign. I spend my time on the internet, Reddit, Google, and stumbled upon this forum. I read everything. Literally, everything. As millennial I believe forum/comment section is the best way to learn about others experience instead of direct face to face conversation. We can take our time to think without the pressure of faking reactions and instantly fact-check with google. Almost thankful when I read about Funded Today hiatus and other agencies drama. But what caught my attention is the pinned up post by lowkey. Its an old post about his so called "1 year and 7 months research compiled"...I reached out to him through the forum section and after a week of no reply, I decided to email him.

Its a revelation. How the crowdfunding marketing works, its all seems logical and truthful. I am entirely convinced that he is speaking the truth and from experience. Desperate, I decided to hire him for $2,000 (not as expensive but not that cheap either compared to other marketing agencies).. I don't know what happened. Maybe its the way he write those email, it doesn't seems like a salesperson trying to pitch a plan but a genuine interest and believe in my product. He came up with a strategy that's not as unique since I've thought of it myself but since we are on the same page, and he is more experienced than I am, maybe he can execute it better. If I may, one of the reason I am looking forward working with lowkey is the fact that he will run the ads on my account which allows me to have access to the configuration settings later on to expand whenever I have extra budget for marketing. Other marketing agencies proposed to just send us the bill later.

It went very well. We are now 461% funded, and I am grateful to this forum and inspired to help others too. I experienced firsthand the benefit of a doubt, the mind blowing sales pitch, the frustration of losing a backers and the pressure of every seconds that went by without traffic to your campaign.

My suggestion is to learn your way through the system. Do not try to find your way around it. Its not gonna work and it will cost you more than you think. That said, big problems don't need big solutions. Its all about the experience. I've learned a lot and I hope to continuously contribute to the society. Kickstarter is an opportunity to make every creators dream come true. Do not hesitate to chase your dream.

Here at JS Homes, Inc, We are new home builders dedicated to providing the highest quality new homes and customer experience possible. We build every home as if it was going to be our own. We are equally as dedicated in all the remodel work we perform.

thanks for your feedback on your experience. It is really worth it. Does anyone worked with Braag agency? I cannot find any thread. Thanks in advance!

Don’t you think it’s too expensive? I mean, for a company like this there are a lot of marketing agencies who would work for a way less money. You can even google it or find a good solution here Evolve & Adapt. Besides the fact that it’s a very good digital marketing agency, it is also an amazing place where you can find articles about another marketing agencies and see what they offer. For example, this way I have promoted my website about tourism. For a very reasonable price they have made it popular and I have started to make some good money on this. Reciprocity is everything nowadays, but you have to choose wisely!

Averyton wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 5:51 pm Don’t you think it’s too expensive? I mean, for a company like this there are a lot of marketing agencies who would work for a way less money. You can even google it or find a good solution here Evolve & Adapt. Besides the fact that it’s a very good digital marketing agency, it is also an amazing place where you can find articles about another marketing agencies and see what they offer. For example, this way I have promoted my website about tourism. For a very reasonable price they have made it popular and I have started to make some good money on this. Reciprocity is everything nowadays, but you have to choose wisely!

Where can I find some more feedback?