by airawear » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:41 am
Thanks for the question trisshala!
If you're asking for a good gauge, I would say at least a month before you launch your product? You should definitely collect an email list of interested backers who want to know more about your product, or are awaiting your launch. An email list of interested backers is a surefire way of ensuring that you'll have support on the 1st day (and getting funding on the 1st day is SUPER IMPORTANT!)
For AiraWear, we hacked together a prototype and went off on a tradeshow to show it off and gather feedback. Fortunately, we got press right off from the event - and that gave us quite a substantial number of emails.
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The most effective way of obtaining backers is your email list. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to start collecting emails as early as you can. Use all sorts of strategies to collect these emails, and your campaign will be off to a good start.
Some strategies are:
- running a giveaway (we used the WP plugin Kingsumo)
- writing and promoting content
- getting some early press (we were lucky to have initial prototypes ready)
Other than that, we've also had good experience with serial backer communities. They are:
- BackerClub
- BackersHub
- BackerKit
- Gadget Flow
We also gained quite a number of backers by running and attending local events. Nobody would ever suggest this to you - but if you're making a hardware product, and it benefits a lot from people trying it, then you should go ahead and run events on the cheap and letting people try it out!
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