Seventeen days ago we launched (in fact, re-launched) our campaign on Kickstarter.
Unfortunately, we had a number of tough decisions to make independently, and, as it turned out, our questions greatly outnumbered the answers at hand.
The main mistakes that staggered the project's progress were due to the fact that we rushed into Kickstarter without thinking through some key issues, such as:
1. Solid connections with mass-media. We were more than aware of this necessity, since this is the element that everybody stresses. We created a journalist base, prepared the press-release, pictures, sent out over a hundred of similar e-mails to the addresses of various publishers, and started waiting for a miracle. Of course, it never happened, but our project was covered in four articles on several platforms, which was already huge for us
We studied many articles regarding media communications, but it is important to understand that if you haven't developed something groundbreakingly unique, useful and technologically advanced, the chances of getting into Forbes, TechCrunch and alike is very slim.
2. SMM is important, and, in our case, it was non-existent.
We know, it does sound odd and “how could anyone launch a project with this kind of a gap”, but, for a while, we could not find a suitable marketologist.
All SMM was conducted by our team and while we were relatively active on Facebook, other social media was rather abandoned by us, not to mention our blog.
3. Communication with the audience.
If your project presents an opportunity for an open dialogue of developers and customer base, you are bound to success.
We participated in a variety of events and even collected a number of contacts at CES, however, except for a “Happy New Year!” e-mail, we never contacted any of them.
Of course, three mistakes are far from being a full list, and I know that the ones I mentioned here are commonly discussed on similar forums, but I felt that these are important issues to stress, since they are the key milestones on your way to success.
One hour spent on developing and working through these problems before the launch will save you a hundred hours of work after the launch, as one of the forums has rightfully suggested.
Thank you for reading through this, and if you have any comments regarding either of these errors, please, feel free to write us!
Now, to the important stuff - some of our questions have remained unanswered and we need your help!
Statistics say that daily our page is being visited by 300-500 people every day (we think that this is pretty awesome), however, the amount of backers keeps declining.
Consequently, it would be very helpful, if you could take a look at our page and write a review.
If it would be easier, please, answer these questions:
• How would you rate the device?
• Will Mevics be useful for you personally?
• How would you rate the design of the gadget?
Or simply write down anything you think about our project.
Tell us, what are some problems that need fixing, what we haven't been able to notice for 17 days so far?
All opinions are valuable and important to us.
Thank you very much for taking the time!
Do not hesitate to contact us if you shall have any questions.
Best wishes!
