Kickstarter Lesson #32: The Final Week – Stonemaier Games

Kickstarter Lesson #32: The Final Week

Lounge of Opulent Frugaltiy
Lounge of Opulent Frugaltiy (Euphoria preview)

I can sum up the goal for the final week of your Kickstarter project in one sentence: Create a frenzy surrounding your project.

Your campaign has gone through ups and downs over the first 3-5 weeks. Maybe you’ve reached your funding goal, maybe you’re still struggling to get there. Either way, you want to go out with a bang, so you need to amp up the excitement surrounding your project.

Here are a few ways to do this:

  1. Daily Project Updates: All project update rules still apply, but you need to give people something to talk about or be excited about on a daily basis. Updates are how you communicate those topics. Make them as short as possible, and include a visual and/or a video in each one. If you go with the video, convey your passion in the video. Passion is contagious.
  2. Add and Revise Stretch Goals: Stretch goals give people a good reason to share the project with others. The more people back the project, the better the project is for everyone. So if you have a $20k stretch goal and a $30k stretch goal, add something new at $25k or lower the $30k stretch goal to $25. Only do this if your budget still works, though. If you add a monster stretch goal that will be a large expense, take a cue from Dungeon Roll and set the goal really high. That gives backers something to strive for without bankrupting you with the additional expense per unit produced.
  3. Call to Action: Ask your backers to spread the word about the project to a specific friend or two, Like your project on Facebook, or tweet about it. This may seem like something you shouldn’t have to do, but people are much more likely to act if you specifically ask them. I read an article a while back that suggested using the phrase, “You should ________” (i.e., You should Like this project on Facebook). Another article I recently wrote about on my personal blog is to give people the freedom to say no. For example, “You should Like this project on Facebook, but feel free to say no.”
  4. Update Ads: If you have ads anywhere on the internet, update them to say “Ending Soon!” That way people who have seen the ad before get a sense of urgency that they need to act on right away.
  5. Be Available and Accessible: The final week is going to be a lot of work for you. You probably won’t sleep much, and you’ll be in constant communication with backers. The worst thing you can be is to tune out the final week.

Remember, just because it’s the final week for the project does not give you an excuse to spam people, including other project creators. I’ve gotten a number of e-mails from project creators with about 4 days left in their project. The final week isn’t the time to network.

Have you seen other projects do anything particularly clever or engaging the final week?

Next: The Final 60 Hours

4 Comments on “Kickstarter Lesson #32: The Final Week

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  1. I really liked what David did with Ground Floor (and I believe you blogged about this) when he offered an entirely new game as a stretch goal. Don’t remember if that was in the final week.

    Anyway, this might not be ‘clever’ per se, but it was moving – Peter (https://kck.st/17G0VZ7) simply posted a video (and comment to backers) genuinely thanking everyone for the experience, regardless of reaching funding. You’ve said it yourself – sincerity matters. And I wish this kid a lot of luck.

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