How to Promote your Kickstarter project

Kickstarter's mission is to make creative projects exist in the world, and they believe that such projects make for a better world. You have to stay aligned with their mission and remember that your audience care about making the world a better place.

• Do your research to set your goals:

Operations and marketing are the backbones of any startup. Your efforts should be split among operational research and market research, to determine the costs needed for running your business and be able to forecast crowd's fund.

• Know your USP: 

USP stands for "Unique Selling Proposition"; which is the one main important competitive advantage that your product has got. Projects on Kickstarter are innovative by nature, many of the entrepreneurs that post their projects on the platform think that their idea is one of a kind and that they have no competitors… but they are wrong, if you do not have a direct competitor, you always have indirect competitors. On Kickstarter, you do not only have to compete with running projects similar to yours, you also have to compete with other projects on the platform. One contributor may have an extra $100 to pay on Kickstarter, for the sake of "making the world a better place", but once they contribute the amount, they will not contribute again, no matter how much they like other projects, they will not contribute until they have excessive disposable money again. Through research you have to know all your competitors and determine how to bring your "A game".

• Visualize your idea: 

Produce an attractive video to be placed on your product's page, upload it on the social media networks that you decide to use. Most of the videos on the platform are high in quality and low in budget, so keep your video as simple as possible. Add pictures of your product, and add infographics and elaborations whenever possible.

• Conversion rate is your best friend:

How much do you pay to get audience interaction? How much do you pay to get them contributing? The contributors on the Kickstarter platform are active users of Social media networks. To choose how to distribute your budget over social media platforms, you have to realize the value of the product, determine your primary target audience, watch them closely, and notice to what extent they are active on different platforms. Your approach to monitoring your target audience will surely vary with the amount of budget available for research… The main value of such research is to help you optimize the series of A/B testing that will begin when you start running your social media campaigns. It helps you start testing with options varying from "Good" to "Excellent", instead of options varying from "Bad" to "Good".

• Interact with backers: 

Be active and updatable, many projects don't succeed because of the "not enough interaction", let people feel that you are doing something, answer their questions, provide them with any information they need.

• Make your idea accessible: 

Post blog articles about your project, and try to find other bloggers to help you. Show off your idea in and out of Kickstarter.

• Send emails to all friends and connections: 

It costs you nothing, but it lets you discover who is willing to stand by your side and who would not… Entrepreneurs do not grow up individually, they grow up in networks, and nothing is better than building your own network at early stages.

• Keep the message consistent: 

When you are creating a video, a blog, a social media post… you have to keep them all delivering the same message, stressing on the importance of your project, and pushing toward the same direction. The main key is to keep everything aligned to your strategy. This strategy must involve answers for these questions, what is your Unique Selling Proposition? Who are your target audience? Why would they care about this product?

• Give Rewards: 

People get encouraged by rewards, gifts and they can easily fund in this way, (free copy of my book for contributors, a set of paintings that I drew…)

• Keep it real: 

With the whole world integrated through the internet, people have more chances to act fake and to be perceived as they would like to be, instead of how they actually are. People hate to interact with online robots, what we really do miss in this fake world of interactions is a real human touch. Shoot some videos or take pictures of your customers trying out your product or talking about your project. Keep showing these "real videos" with real life interactions from other people… Depending on the type of your idea, the type of interaction could be determined. Whatever your approach would be, keep a human touch involved.

Source : articlesbase.com