Kickstarter Lesson #23: Setting and Achieving Goals

In the next few posts, I’m going to talk about specific methods of outreach during the project. Specifically, I’m going to talk about outreach to:

• current backers
• bloggers, podcasters, & reviewers
• paid advertising
• hometown press and local media
• Reddit
• social networks

Back in Lesson #5: Connecting with Bloggers, I talked about specific methods of outreach to bloggers and reviewers before you launch your Kickstarter project. Most of the advice in that post applies to outreach during the project as well, but I’m separating the two because no matter how many bloggers you reached out to before your project, it can never hurt to reach out to a few more during the project.

That’s where today’s post comes in. During your Kickstarter campaign, you’re going to be very busy. There are tons of different things you can do to promote the project and improve connections with backers…so many things, in fact, that you might encounter what us gamers call “analysis paralysis.” In the face of so many options and a ticking clock, you might freeze up and choose to do…nothing.

Obviously that’s not good. “Nothing” isn’t good enough. Kickstarter might look like a platform where you can launch a project and sit back to watch the money roll in, but that’s not how it works at all. You’re going to have to work your butt off not only to reach your funding goal, but also to do your backers justice and strive to reach your stretch goals.

So to avoid this analysis paralysis, you need some structure. You need a plan. You need goals.

For Viticulture, my goal was to have the game mentioned by a blogger, podcast, reviewer, or local press once a day. Most of those mentions were in the form of interviews, but some were guest entries, reviews, or simple mentions of the game.

This goal not only helped more people find out about Viticulture, but it also helped keep me sane during the campaign. There isn’t enough time in the day to reach out to everyone and answer all interviews on a single day. By spreading them out over the course of the project, I was able to pace myself and balance the press that Viticulture got.

That last point is particularly important because a common occurrence on Kickstarter is to start off hot and then go cold for a while before warming up at the end of the campaign. A steady stream of outreach will help you avoid those mid-campaign doldrums.

That’s the foundation for the next few posts. Set reasonable, achievable goals for outreach over the course of your campaign, and then fulfill those goals one step at a time.

Next: Backer Engagement

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