Kickstarter from the outside, looks like it takes little to no effort at all. You just make your page, add some images, videos and text, launch your campaign and then the crowd comes to you.
After all, it is a crowdfunding platform. There should be thousands of early adapters and super backers waiting for you to launch your Kickstarter and hand over their hard-earned cash $$$.
But the truth is, it's not that.
I'mma keep this short and give some straight-up Kickstarter facts that you need before you launch you go launch.
Only 15-20% of your Kickstarter pre-saves will convert into Backers.
The first mic drop 🎤
I think this one is pretty important and one to look out for. Throughout your Kickstarter pre-launch, you'll amass followers, waiting for you to go live. You've posted across your social media, created posts on Reddit and you can see the pre-save followers going up daily (Good job!).
But let's add a conversion rate to your pre-save followers. If you have 200 followers, and let's take the average conversion rate on Kickstarter of 15-20%, you'll likely gain between 30-40 backers.
Now the percentage can change. 15-20% seems to be the average across Kickstarter and it can change depending on the category and project. There are a lot of other factors that can change this too, like the quality of your game or the demand etc.
Think, "Will this be enough pre-saves to at least get me to 30% funded in the first day or 2?"
For video games, I think the conversion rate is more likely to be between 17%-30% and over, which is actually a really high conversion rate in the world of marketing & statistics.
I think this is one to consider when looking at your total Kickstarter goal. Think, "Will this be enough pre-saves to at least get me to 30% funded in the first day or 2?" and "How many backers do I need to achieve my funding goal?"
Your social media following is not as reliable as you think...
I've said it once and I'll say it again (actually, I've said this plenty of times in other blog posts), your social media following will not convert as well as you think.
I've seen accounts with thousands to 10's of thousands of followers, and they launch a Kickstarter to only get around 100 backers - That's a 1% Conversion Rate (Womp Womp Womp - Sad trombone noise).
I honestly think this is the moment important piece of advice I could give - DO NOT RELY ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING.
Look at this game below, Holiday Party. They have a whopping 8,000 followers on Twitter (Anyone here calling it X yet?), but when they launched their Kickstarter campaign, they gained a measly 16 backers.
But looking deeper into their profile, something seems off. They barely have ANY engagement on their posts, despite having an okay volume of Views on each post.
So if you do have a highly engaged social media following, you may be able to gain a fair few followers to get things going, but always look for other ways to boost up your pre-save following.
Why not check out some of my older blog post on creating engaging social media posts.
Not everyone will watch all of your video.
Videos take time and one of the most important aspects of your Kickstarter.
Around 30% of views on your Kickstarter video will be full completed plays. That's quite low considering all the effort that goes into a video.
The average video length should be between 2 to 3 minutes long. so if only 30% are watching the full video, 70% are dropping off somewhere.
Make sure to:
Hook viewers early on.
Get all your important information in the first 30-40 seconds.
Show off your trailer, but also mix in game play and other visuals.
Include a voice over, or include yourself in the video for personal touch.
Mix things up. You don't have to just show off your trailer, then go straight into the nitty gritty. You could introduce yourself first, ask viewers to skip to a certain time length if they just want to see the trailer, then carry on with going into the details about the game.
I like to give email sign ups an early preview of the Kickstarter video a day or two before the Kickstarter goes live, so potential backers can go straight through to the page and back as quickly as possible.