KickstarterForum.org

[MalorieMackey]

So, I am halfway through my current Kickstarter campaign. I feel like we did make the mistake of going for 60 days just because it was the most time rather than thinking it through. Because of this, of course, we are in the mid-campaign plateau a little bit. There have been several things that we have done to help keep it going, though, and that has been great- such as adding new reward tiers. That has caused several backers to increase their pledge. We have also been getting more out their in the media, which has helped a lot, too! We were just featured in the Frontera Newspaper, and I feel that was a great success. We are also scheduling a live Q & A to answer questions for our backers and potential backers! We are at a good place, but we are still fighting to make it up to our goal now in the second half of the campaign!

I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas or strategies that they have used to keep their campaign alive while it started to plateau in the mid-campaign mark!

Please let me know! This is where our campaign is now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ma ... ilk-series

Any advice to keep it moving during the second half would be much appreciated! Thank you!

[sbriggman]

Mid mark..... stretch goals, embargoing pr, trying a thunderclap.it, etc. Basically, just keeping at it. The middle is definitely a hard point.

[Revelae]

We are taking new photos, trying to keep things interesting. 10% funded and 20-some days to go!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/19 ... -bath-soap

[youneekstudios]

Did you try Facebook Marketing

[MalorieMackey]

Facebook marketing seems really expensive and has little results from my experiences. We tried it in the beginning and there wasn't much success from it.

[potatoman]

I think the campaign looks really good, you both seem to have a lot of previous exposure which is one of your strong points.
Marketing this exposure is key to having a succesful kickstarter, facebook marketing when done right can bring really high Return Over Investment so if you have access to a marketing expert to help you out it would be really adviced
Make the most of your previous success and best of luck

[Charles]

So, I am halfway through my current Kickstarter campaign. I feel like we did make the mistake of going for 60 days just because it was the most time rather than thinking it through. Because of this, of course, we are in the mid-campaign plateau a little bit. There have been several things that we have done to help keep it going, though, and that has been great- such as adding new reward tiers. That has caused several backers to increase their pledge. We have also been getting more out their in the media, which has helped a lot, too! We were just featured in the Frontera Newspaper, and I feel that was a great success. We are also scheduling a live Q & A to answer questions for our backers and potential backers! We are at a good place, but we are still fighting to make it up to our goal now in the second half of the campaign!

I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas or strategies that they have used to keep their campaign alive while it started to plateau in the mid-campaign mark!

Please let me know! This is where our campaign is now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ma ... ilk-series

Any advice to keep it moving during the second half would be much appreciated! Thank you!

My advice is that you do a major revamp of your Kickstarter project page. Here's why.

1. As far as imagery goes, your project page is very lacking in visual impact and visual energy. All other things being equal, a larger image will generate more visual impact and convey mote visual energy than a small image, where any given image is concerned.

2. The "Share this project" button lists your project page as having 7,928 shares on Facebook. That a fair number, actually, and far better than many projects that I have encountered over time. Yet, what kind of mileage are you getting out of that number of shares? Having almost eight thousand shares is a decent amount of word of mouth. So, why isn't your project gaining more traction? Think about that a bit.

3. Well, there are two beautiful women at the helm of this project, the dual-driving force behind it. One is a former Miss California USA contestant, and the other was/is a Playboy playmate. So, either or both of you constitute visual eye candy, your project page aside. I would encourage you both to ask yourselves how well (or how poorly) that your project page is capturing and conveying your respective visual assets? In my considered opinion, not very well, at all.

4. All kinds of stuff gets successfully funded on Kickstarter. Some decent stuff fails to get funded. What gives? Granted, people can be fickle, and personal taste runs the gamut. But, the real issue isn't why so many other projects succeed or fail, as it is will your project succeed or fail? Make no mistake, your project is currently on its way to not meeting its funding goal.

The bulk of your crowdfunding campaign cycle is behind you, where this particular project is concerned. According to the Kicktraq data for your project, you're running a sixty day campaign. With 17 days and 18 minutes or so left to go, as I sit and write this response to you, that means over forty days have already been expended, to get you to less than half way toward the funding goal that you ladies set for yourselves.

Thus far, your project has averaged $106 dollars per day. Yet, you need to average $314 dollars per day, for each day of your campaign cycle that remains. So, that's roughly triple what you've been averaging over the last forty three days or so. Do you have a Plan B, by chance? What's your back-up plan? When in doubt, return to the fundamentals.

5. The quality of your video is substantially better than the quality of your photos. I even took a detour over to your and Raquel's photo galleries, on your respective websites. By and large, the photos found in those photo galleries are fairly small in size. Size matters. So does resolution. How do you expect to wow people, visually, by not bringing your best visual assets to bear? Your Facebook page, for example, has better visual imagery of yourself, Malorie, than your project page displays of you. Here's one example:



And here's an image of Raquel with someone (her husband, perhaps?).



I picked those two photos for a reason - either of them are more visually "alive" than any of the photos currently on display on your project page. Look at Raquel's face in the photo that I posted here. She's beautiful, of course, but in fairness, when is she not beautiful? But look at how animated she is in this photo. Her eyes are wide. She has her tongue partially out. She exudes visual energy. Your project page has numerous canned photos on it.

Look at your photo, again. You're beautiful, but you're also elegant. Look closely at your eyes. They are quite captivating. I don't say all of this in order to pay you numerous compliments. Rather, I say it to try and persuade you to look, anew, at your project page's utilization of your and Raquel's visual assets.

Basically, you want to overload your project page with lots of visual impact, visual energy, and the vigor of youth, since you're both fairly young. In a nutshell, your current approach robs yourselves. It does an extremely poor job of showcasing your creative team, and even worse, it doesn't do much in the way of building up the personal side of your project's story.

6. Your material presented, as far as the various videos go (and I have watched both the project video and three "episodes" of what it is that you seek to create, is oriented around the silly. But, it is a far cry from the inspiration that you sited of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. But, those two ladies are some of the very best in the business, so it is hard for others to live up to what they make look so easy.

Overall, the episodes were a combination of humorous and boring. The episodes are short, so it's very difficult to put much meat on the bones in such a brief time frame. It also has a canned quality to it. It doesn't come across as being very spontaneous. Which begs the question of why you are strangling yourselves with such brevity?

But, if those are the kinds of episodes that you two ladies intend to create, then you need to focus your efforts on the other aspects of your project - with the content of the project page, itself, being foremost amongst them.

7. I looked at the project pages for the other two Kickstarter projects that you have created, Malorie. Go back and look at them, and take note of the virtual dearth of imagery on those pages. With this latest project, your project page enjoys a notable increase in the number of images - but, that is quite a distinct thing from whether those very same images are imbuing your project page with the visual heft that it needs, in order to get the job done for you.

8. The opening sequence of your videos has upbeat music. It's energetic, both visually and in an acoustic sense. Sound and sight are both visually entertained. The rest of the videos, however, do not live up to that nice opening sequence.

9. Ultimately, people who encounter your project will likely connect with either the content or the personalities. Aside from the personal aspect, there is the human element that runs through every crowdfunding project. Do people relate to you? Do they relate to your humor? Do they relate to the persons that exist beyond the personalities that are thrust to the fore? Why should they care about your project? Why should it matter to them? You're both celebrities, of a sort, so why do you need them - the individuals that collectively comprise the public?

10. Your chosen approach to utilization of text leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, you've got a good bit of text, there, but does it reach out and grab the project page viewer? Does it make me want to read what's written there?

11. Your project's spiel, as I like to call it, is this:

Chocolate Milk is an over-the-top sketch comedy show about the wacky lives of Malorie and Raquel and the adventures they embark on.

Say that three times, really fast. How memorable is it?

12. The article that's posted on the project page (the Espectaculos one), if some of your project page visitors can't speak/read Spanish, then how likely do you think that they will be to linger on and read that article? You want people to linger. You want them to spend time on your page.

13. I looked at the photos of your art, while browsing your Facebook page, Malorie. Your art has more visual interest than the image son your project page have. Yet, you and Raquel are definitely prettier than any of the art that you created, which I encountered. It's in HOW the WHAT or the WHO is being presented.

14. Again, to try and underscore the point, and in an attempt to better illustrate what I am trying to say, where imagery is concerned, you want to use images that are crisp and clear and full of sharp contrast, normally. You want photos that grab the eye, that dominate the visual viewing field. Make photos that you do use bigger, if possible, and make them clickable to reveal even larger versions, if possible.

15. You might want to consider swapping out your project mage for another. Experiment, to see if a other images yield better results in that slot.

16. All things considered, I think that your current approach woefully undersells the potential of your project, regardless of what my criticisms of the content of the videos are.

Good luck to you in reaching your funding goal, Malorie and Raquel!

[SmithShawn]

Hello! How are you hosting your Live Q&A? Through a "traditional" webcast service like WebEx or GoToMeeting?

We are considering a similar tactic since we are funding a mobile role playing game (see http://kck.st/1C1GTGj) and with this approach we could demonstrate our game prototype.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Shawn Smith, Peace Foundation

[kickstarterguru]

We'd love to get your project funded by promoting it to top 20 under Popular Film!

Check it out, no kidding:

http://alturl.com/f4hc7
http://alturl.com/kio9a

[giftsandcoupons]

Wow +1 to Charles for his detailed reply, I think the original thread owner should thank him...although I think he was attracted by her beauty which led him to delve further into the project (which isn't a bad thing if it attracts comments/backers!)