KickstarterForum.org

Dear Salvador,

We've launched our project HaloTouch on Kickstarter last week, and since so we realised we are doomed for preparing almost nothing on promotion. That's the reason we read tons of articles and kept come across yours, so please let me take some time and say THANK YOU for your sharing.

However, there are some issues
* How to choose PR service?
We are a bunch of R&D people, so PR or media exposure is a pain. However, we did manage to setup Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest account and tried put something meaningful. However, we still need professional help, and there are MANY! We've got contact from Backershub.com, KinshipMarketing.com, CrowdTell.com, fundzinger.com, etc. However, we found it's very difficult to qualify their service (only from pricing? ha). We've been searching on CrowdFundingForum and Facebook and found some are even tagged as "scam". Any suggestion to choose a honest one? (We might go for BackersHub.com, but can't google for more useful information from them)

* Is there a typical "Conversion Rate" to refer?
By saying Conversion Rate, we mean the rate of "Video playing times (on Kickstarter's project dashboard)" versus "number of pledges". Ours is like 70:1, where we think is quite low. We guess different project (Art & Hardware) should have very different ratio, and pledging amount & reward design might have some influence. However, if there's a reference ratio for different categories, it should give newbies a more precise guess of what will happen in the end. Although this might be too late to help us, we still thanks for your help to other new comers!

It's becoming a long mail since there're too many questions here.
We thanks for your time and look forward to your feedback.

--HaloTouch Team--
===================================================================
Kickstarter: http://zzb.bz/Kickstarter

Website: http://www.HaloTouch.net

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HaloTouch

Twitter: @HaloDigi

===================================================================

How to choose PR service?

First of all, would recommend reading this: http://createhype.com/why-press-release ... o-instead/

As a small business person/tech person, the above article will give you an introduction as to how to do PR on a budget.

"We've got contact from Backershub.com, KinshipMarketing.com, CrowdTell.com, fundzinger.com, etc. Any suggestion to choose a honest one? (We might go for BackersHub.com, but can't google for more useful information from them)"

I am biased, because I run CrowdfundingPR.org, which offers similar services, but from hearsay, I've heard of a lot of people disappointed with Kinship and Fundzinger (customer service). Would use the search function on this forum and google and the crowdfundingforum.com, as there are several reviews of them. If you choose to use BackersHub, please leave a review on this forum, otherwise the cycle of no information will continue.

"Is there a typical "Conversion Rate" to refer? " - See: http://www.crowdfundingpr.org/kind-conv ... ter-video/

Looks like the "conversion rate" varies a lot across projects. Again, I wish there will be some one to collect enough information for a more thorough release of conversion rate, so every creator have a (rough) idea of how many video playing they should reach.

For PR company, actually I avoid Kinship & Fundzinger due to the google result I got on the forum. If I choose BackersHub, I will come back and provide a review after my project finished.

Thanks for the sharing and happy Valentine's Day!

--HaloTouch Team--

Any insight into the results from BackersHub?

I think if your going to use a PR company your will need to go the distance. I've considered using some for my own but the "pre-packaged" plans that they offer are very cookie cutter. For example I bought a "customized" lead list and a PR written about my project, but after seeing it and doing the leg work I realized I could have done this in a few hours.

The conversion rate on Kickstarter (according to one of their DATA blog posts) is around 3.7% of page visitors convert, not sure where the mid-funnel of video watches plays into that.

I actually agree with what @customeglow says regarding "I realized I could have done this in a few hours."

For the gold tier on CrowdfundingPR we provide a list of customized (yes we manually generate this list for each campaign) list of 30 bloggers/journalists/publications the reader can reach out to. However, if you were to spend a good 4-5 hours on google researching contact info, I think you could come up with a pretty good list also. It all comes down to what your time is worth.

You actually learn a lot about your product and demographic by hunting down your own leads, but as @sbrigman says its ALOT of time.

If you do decide to do it here's some methods I've been using:

1) Search Google for similar products and who writes about them.

2) Use http://www.similarsites.com to traverse through all the other sites like it... one site will give you 10 others, those 10 will give you 100.

3) If they look interesting add them to the lead list.

4) Check out their facebook page and see who they "like" some blogs even have an "our friends" section that links other blogs. Repeat those sites from step #2.

5) Sign up for StumbleUpon and mark your interests like your demographic would, and start stumbling, if you find a site that fits, repeat from step #2.

Awesome forum here - I wish I could have chimed in early.

I'm Dwight, one of the moderators for www.BackersHub.com - we take a totally different
approach with marketing. We are a growing community of Hardcore Backers - with
an opt-in list of several thousand Kickstarter Backers, we allow new campaign creators
to be featured in our weekly newsletters.

We have helped plenty of campaigns reach their goal by promoting them to our growing
community - we are not a Press Firm. We believe the best way for Backers to reach their
goal is to find people that are looking for awesome campaigns to support.

If you guys and gals ever have any questions - feel free to shoot me an email
at Dwight@BackersHub.com

Cheers,

Dwight from BackersHub.com