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It was surreal. Sitting there after launch and just watching the numbers jump. My team was gathered in our office and we were projecting our campaign dashboard on a large TV screen. The numbers kept going up every few minutes. And we hit our goal in 2 hours!

I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing to reach our target so quickly! I mean, it's great we're funded. Yay! But we were prepared for a long drawn out battle to get the word out and claw our way to the finishing line.

Our prelaunch marketing campaign helped a lot. We raised awareness and garnered 10k followers on Facebook. So we shouldn't be too surprised to see how fast we got funded. But it was still surreal. Now I'm fretting over how to maintain the momentum. Some of my friends tell me that I should chill and that it is ok to have a drop in intensity since we're funded. Yet, I want to keep it going. 200% is the next step and then 300% and so on. Shouldn't that be the case?

Any tips on how to get to our next milestone?

This is my first ever Kickstarter campaign and the biggest lesson for me so far is that I need to establish contact with popular websites, influencers and media figures prior to the launch. I knew that and I kept reaching out but the effect not as good as expected. How do you get the word out to these sources of traffic? Especially when you only have a landing page to show since the campaign hasn't launched?

Congrats on your success, Jenxi! To get your after funded boost and reach broader audience you can use a press release in targeted media. There's a great chance that you'll get a lot of coverage since the media loves success stories.

Vanessa wrote:Congrats on your success, Jenxi! To get your after funded boost and reach broader audience you can use a press release in targeted media. There's a great chance that you'll get a lot of coverage since the media loves success stories.

Hey Vanessa, thanks! Yes, we have been sending out press releases. Response is not ideal though, probably due to them having many emails to look through. I hope it will pick up this week.

Great

Great reads!

I agree with you, that first campaign to get awareness before it started of above 10k, wow, that is really impressive.

I think its vital to get the base support prior to launch if your going for a larger funding amount.

Nice work

Monster Ego wrote:I agree with you, that first campaign to get awareness before it started of above 10k, wow, that is really impressive.

I think its vital to get the base support prior to launch if your going for a larger funding amount.

Nice work

Thanks! It was a lot of prelaunch promotion for us to hit 10k fans

Focus on retailing and planning your sales goals after crowdfunding momentum.

Good luck!

Hey, love hearing stories like this. its hugely encouraging. Any advice on garnering a supportive base following prelaunch?

ohbugi wrote:Hey, love hearing stories like this. its hugely encouraging. Any advice on garnering a supportive base following prelaunch?

I spent about a year preparing an audience for my first campaign. I found a good way to build an audience was to start a blog about the niche (watches, in my case) and then convert as many of those readers as possible into mailing list subscribers. I blogged about watches for around a year, ran relevant giveaways, engaged with people on social media etc and built up a mailing list of thousands.

When I finally got round to launching, I had a load of people that knew who I was and so trusted me to deliver. I was fully funded ($25,000) in about 20 minutes and raised around $200,000 in total, all without spending anything on ads or promotion. It was the best way I could have spent my time, as that list has now funded 3 projects in a row for me.