Updated May 14, 2019
Strategies—Both Failing and Succeeding
This post is LIVE, meaning I’m updating it throughout the campaign with my strategies, thoughts, and reflections.
There are strategies here that could be considered failures and successes depending on what your goals are.
Most books raise $5k on Kickstarter but only 30% of children’s book campaigns are successful.
Primary goals
Always know what your goals are as they will probably differ from mine. Different goals require different strategies.
For this campaign, I wanted to:
—raise a modest goal of $3500
—gain the Kickstarter Project We Love badge
—get the Kickstarter algorithm to work in my favor to show my project to people on the platform
—grow my audience beyond those who already know me
—not annoy my friends and family
If my goal was to raise a large sum of funds, as it was for my first campaign that raised $10k, I would’ve priced my reward tiers and campaign goal differently.
Mini Goals
I set mini goals for myself every day. “Today, I want to reach X number of backers.” “Today, I want to raise $X.”
Doing these mini goals really helped me focus on tangible goals and see progress. It’s very easy to feel like you’re doing a ton of work and not seeing results if you aren’t setting these goals.
Public Gratitude
Before I dive into marketing strategies, I just wanted to say that the most fulfilling posts I ever created were my Wall of Gratitude posts where I publicly thanked every single backer on Facebook.
I loved creating the graphics and typing out everyone’s names. I loved trying to tag everyone in the post and ensure that they saw the thank you, and I loved their comments and responses.
When you lead with gratitude and show genuine thankfulness, you will feel so much better about your campaign and people will feel good about being a part of your project.
Always lead with love.
Facebook Ad Strategy
Disclaimer: I’m not good at Facebook ads even though I took a course and have been experimenting for a while.
Facebook usually gobbles up my money without any click throughs so I wasn’t going to run any ads.
I decided to boost my “We’re live on Kickstarter!” post because it had 19 organic shares, a bunch of comments and hearts on it from launch day.
I boosted it for the equivalent of $10 for one day and ended up with a bunch of clicks coming to $0.50/click.
Nice. The average cost per click in the US is $1.01 according to Google, so this ad is performing well.
Let’s keep it going.
I just increased the budget to 300 kr ($35) and will monitor it to see if the costs are still around $0.53/click.
If I start hemorrhaging, I’ll pause the ad and try something else.
What Launch Day Looked Like
I sent my two kids off with my husband to his office because I knew I needed to focus without interruptions.
So, off they went with their headphones and iPads to draw on whiteboards at the headquarters.
Launch Day Timeline
8:15 am—I pressed the Prepare to Launch button on Kickstarter and followed their directions (eek!)
—Created Kickstarter referral tags so I could track traffic from different sources. I labeled them Facebook, Instagram, Email, Homepage, etc.,
—Changed my homepage to a landing page design to send people to my campaign.
All digital roads on websites that I own lead to my Kickstarter page.
—Changed my sign-up landing page to redirect folks to my campaign. I don’t want people signing up for my newsletter, I want them heading to my Kickstarter campaign.
—Updated my blog sidebar widget
–Posted an update to LinkedIn
—Scheduled my book-specific newsletter to go out at 11:30 am CET/5:30 am ET
9:17 am—received first spam email offering promotional support
9:50 am—Updated my Instagram profile picture, link, post, and stories
—Added “offers” to my Facebook Shop on my professional pages
10:19 am—Sent out newsletter to 181 people (not specific to the book but to crowdfunding)
—Updated my email signature to just send people to my campaign
10:30 am—started emailing friend and family. Most are on the east coast of the US, so they were still asleep, so I focused on my EU-based friends first.
11:09 am—Received second spam promotional email offering “help” with my Kickstarter campaign
—Boosted “We are live” posts on Facebook for $5-$10/day for one day on both of my professional pages
11:55 am—received third promotional spam email promising exposure
12:00-13:30—took a lunch break, screen break, read a book and sat in the sunshine
13:30—got back emailing friends, family, and fellow authors
15:00-15:30—took a break, answered the front door, puttered around a bit
16:00—started emailing and messaging people again and scheduled an automated newsletter to go out at 21:00 for everyone who hasn’t opened my first newsletter
18:46—Kickstarter emailed me notification that the project was selected as a Project We Love!
19:00—ate dinner with my family (I remember those people)
19:30—20:30—client call with an author
21:00—received another spam promotional email
22:00—finalized my Launch Day Heroes visual to share on social media
Phew. Good night!
Strategy
Setting my goal
There are two different goal-setting strategies that I see on Kickstarter:
- Setting an artificially low goal and work hard to exceed it
- Setting the goal amount you need even if it means you might not reach it
There are different reasons and methods behind each strategy, but I’m going with strategy #1.
My goal for this campaign is to grow my audience, so I want to price my reward tiers with maximum “no-brainer” appeal. I’d rather have 350 backers than $5k, so that’s why I’ve priced my main reward at $15 including shipping.
This might come back to haunt me later, with a smaller margin for error, but we’ll see.
Emailing friends and family
I’ve been emailing personal emails directly to my close contacts so they understand how critical their support is on launch day.
I really don’t like emailing promotional emails to my friends and family, so I led with the story of the book—why I’m publishing it and why I’m excited to share it with others.
My emails don’t feel spammy or pushy to me (I asked my friends to check my language), and I feel good sharing them.
Emailing superbackers
I tried to hire someone to help me reach superbackers on Kickstarter and he TURNED ME DOWN saying that my goal was too low to draw much attention.
First of all, I appreciate him not just taking my money if he thinks I won’t be successful, so kudos to him, but this is not the first time I’ve been turned down by PR folks for one reason or another.
Hence, why I offer consulting services to indie authors. NOBODY ELSE WANTS TO WORK WITH US. Frustrating beyond belief.
Homepage takeover
I created a new homepage that will go live when I launch that will drive any traffic landing on lisaferland.com to head to the Kickstarter campaign instead.
Doing this required a bit of time and technical knowledge, so I got this all set up 10 days before launch.
Talk it up
I talked up my campaign to A LOT of people before I launched. I attended a conference in Amsterdam the week before launch and told everyone there what I was doing and got their emails if they were interested in learning more. That effort probably yielded 3-5 backers.
I posted blogs on my website and sent emails to my newsletter discussing the importance of backing authors on launch day to prime the pump and educate people before I launched my campaign.
I created informational images and sent those to my newsletter folks and posted it on my personal Facebook page that explained why I was crowdfunding my book and how Kickstarter worked.
In essence, I discussed Kickstarter and how people can support authors non-stop on all of my social media platforms, blogs, and videos 30 days before I even launched.
Honestly, by the time launch day rolled around, I was so sick of hearing myself talk about it.
It’s hard to keep in mind that there is so much noise on social media these days and people are only hearing and seeing a fraction of what you’re putting out.
It feels like a TON of overload for you but most people aren’t seeing what you’re doing.
Kickstarter Campaign Page
The campaign page was completely finished about 15 days before launch.
I worked on it over the course of several weeks, commissioned graphics by my illustrator, and researched reward tiers by other campaigns.
The campaign video took one day to create (it’s 1:26 long) and I used Camtasia as my video editor.
Someone commented saying I needed to add more “personality” into my video (apparently, my voice was too chill), so I edited it a bit and added in some personal aspects about my kids reading the book into the middle of the video.
I kept the length the same because short and sweet works for me.
I received feedback and input on the content, rewards, and goal amount two weeks before launch.
Blogs
How a Silly Conversation Turned into a Children’s Book
The Secret to Marketing Your Book Without Annoying People
10 Reasons Not to Crowdfund Your Book
Halloween Themed Clocks That’ll Resurrect Your Love for Analog Time
The Story Behind the Story: the birth of a silly Halloween Rhyme
Links will be published here when they go live.
Podcasts
External Press
Why This Book Will Help All Children in Sweden Learn to Tell Time—Littlebearabroad
Why ‘When the Clock Strikes’ is a Must-Have for Your Child This Spring—The Newbie Guide to Sweden
Kidlit Review: When the Clock Strikes on Halloween by Nathalie Abejero
MaltaMum Interview: Lisa Ferland, the story of a multi-talented writer and mother to a ninja warrior and a dancing firefly
Advanced Reader Copies
I printed off advanced reader copies via KDP Print so that bloggers and teachers could have books in hand to review, photograph, and read to their kids.
I sent off five copies to teachers (three responded with quotes and images), and six copies to bloggers for book reviews and giveaways on their websites during the campaign.
I also sent everyone on my newsletter list a PDF copy of the book. Of the 150 people on my newsletter list, 47 people opened that email and 38 people downloaded the PDF.
I used Bookfunnel to deliver the PDF seamlessly and ensured that only my newsletter folks could access it.
Additional Content
In creating the graphics for the campaign, I upgraded my Canva subscription to Canva for Work so I could easily resize images, use color palettes, and have access to Premium stock photos. This alone saved me a ton of time.
I batched my efforts and created 15 promotional gifs/videos during Ripl’s free trial for 5 days. I don’t need Ripl’s services beyond this campaign, so I canceled after the free trial.
Ten days before launch, I updated my Facebook personal cover photo and profile image with links to the campaign as a sneak peek and started including more book-based promotional images in my IG and FB stories.
Website Modifications
In addition to creating a new temporary homepage featuring the book, I changed up my footer and blog sidebar widgets to feature hyperlinked images that would direct people to the campaign and to rewards specifically for authors.
Basically, all roads lead to my campaign.
Coming soon…
—Where did my backers come from? I’ll give you a detailed breakdown of my sources.
—Was all of the effort worth it?
—How I created my campaign video
If you want to visit the campaign and see how it’s going, click the button below: