This post is brought to you by Ivo Kalburdzhiev, Campaign Strategist and Project Manager for UVMask. He is also the CEO of CreatorClub.com, a community-based e-learning platform for startups to launch and grow innovative physical product businesses.
I’ve updated this post from the original version, as I’ve since learned about how the UVMask project is being discussed by backers–it seems that despite the high funding level, it has not been successful at all in the eyes of many backers who feel duped or scammed, and I’m reticent to focus on the funding total in light of these findings. I only have a little bit of information at this point, but it’s enough to make this significant edit.
However, I thought Ivo included an interesting anecdote worth sharing about an advertising typo that ended up being a pleasant surprise, so I’ve retained that portion of the original post below.
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The other main factor that contributed significantly to the initial success of UVMask was Facebook advertising.
With the help of the Sprint Crowdfunders’ Fund, we spent over a quarter of a million dollars on Facebook ads!
That might sound like a lot… but thanks to our tight preparation, we had our first sale from ads just an hour after the launch and achieved an average of 9 ROAS (return on ad spend) during the second day of the campaign.
All our ads had “just launched” badges or text mentioning that — it is essential to let people know about the early bird deal.
Not everything went well, of course, although you can’t tell 🙂
Read carefully:
Yep! UVMask just “Lunched” instead of “Launched”! Whoops!
Did we turn it off? Nope!
Instead, this silly mistake brought us most of our early advertising results.
You see, the Facebook algorithm rewards advertisers for high rates of engagement.
And can you guess which form of engagement has the highest impact?
Comments!
When the ad went live, a lot of people were eager to “correct” us. Nobody could resist commenting that it’s not “Lunched” but “Launched”.
And as comments are one of the highest forms of engagement, Facebook’s algorithms showed it to more people.
And we noticed some abnormally high conversion rates!
So instead of turning it off, we joined the jokers in the comments and began making our jokes.
It’s always good to face your mistakes and make fun of them, especially when they’re the reason for great results!
So what lesson did we learn? Do you need to start filling your copy with mistakes from now on?
Absolutely not!
There’s a significant risk that this will backfire. That people will start reporting them. And that Facebook will block your ads. But always think of ways to increase the engagement of your ads!
Another key to the advertising success was broad targeting.
Dust, pathogens, viruses, and pollution are universal, and realizing that gave us an idea to broaden our targeting for related interests/topics and those not that much related at first sight.
In doing that, we got a BIG help from Google Analytics — the Affinity and Other Interests categories help to discover directions that we didn’t even consider.
We sorted out all the sources according to transactions and carefully checked out which source had the highest eCommerce conversion rate.
So we went ahead and created ads on Facebook targeting people with those interests, which helped keep the momentum going.
The best performing interests were News, Business and Finance, Cooking, and Astronomy — yes, we were as surprised as you about the last one!
***
Thank you for taking the time to share these detailed lessons and examples, Ivo! For readers, what do you think about these?
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23 Comments on “How an Advertising Typo Led to Algorithmic Success (guest post)”
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I’m glad you edited the article, but also think there are some important lessons in the original. KS especially consumer faith in creators is a tragedy of the commons situation. Each campaign that is poorly managed, or tiptoes the line of honesty, negates the goodwill created by the hard work and transparency of a dozen creators.
I agree, Jasper. It’s very much a shared ecosystem, and backers tend to associate the rare failures with it much more than they remember the abundant successes.
Personally the issue I have is that since the original article included an admission of presenting a false funding goal to attract backers and since the campaign itself seems to have rather disappointed backers based on not meeting its promises, I find it quite hard to believe that the “mistake” which resulted in the most successful single advert of the campaign was any sort of mistake. Generally I’d not be so cynical, but when a campaign has as many other indicators and issues with honest and transparent presentation its hard to accept that a company which spent a quarter of a million on advertising would make such a mistake, especially since Kickstarter provides a free to download set of “just launched” label images.
Hey Glenn,
Thanks for your comment.
I can assure you it was an honest mistake by the ads department that were in a rush to get the ads going.
It was actually done by the design team who accidentally ate an “a”.
Ivo
Yes, but if the issue at hand is that by tip-toeing along the line of honesty you’ve undermined the trust of others in you then your assurances aren’t going to bolster that are they?
“Consider board games for a minute, when do people spend the MOST time playing?” — I think in general this point is totally true; the point about Coolest Cooler launching in winter rather than summer is of course Kickstarter legend (and infamy, as others have pointed out).
However I did want to mention that I thought long and hard about when to launch the Kickstarter for my first campaign, a travel-themed card game. Instead of the conventional Spring or Autumn, I chose to launch in August, which is peak holiday season (or was, back in 2017). Normally I would think that would not be too smart for the same reason that weekends are not good launch days – people on holiday are on Kickstarter less. But I figured that since it was a travel themed game and was designed to be a travel accessory, it was a good idea to launch during peak travel time. I don’t have a control campaign to know if I was right of course, but I did raise $113k – which ain’t bad for a first timer.
So now, I try to consider theme as much as anything when choosing a launch date.
Malachi, that definitely makes sense.
A “theme” is a close reference to the ‘timing’ that Bill Gross also discusses here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY
Meet people where they are.
Ivo
I saw an ad for this on Facebook, and as I have started doing, I went to Kickstarter and did a search. I chose not to back it for two reasons. 1) I hoped I would not need a mask by the time it was delivered. 2) I have seen other Kickstarters that have early bird pricing and they just keep bumping the available early bird pledges so that everyone ends up getting that price. Looking at this campaign now, I see they did not do number 2.
You can see more of what is in this article here. https://blog.thecrowdfundingformula.com/how-we-raised-5m-for-uvmask-on-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-in-6-months/
I understand why Jamey decided to edit the post an at the same time I am happy I read it before it was edited out.
Still the typo is an interesting fact. I wonder if it is worth doing it on purpose just to get more attention: company X started a kikcstarter project for a new boardgame. What happened next will shock you.
“kikcstarter” typo AND classic clickbait title. You cannot have more engagement!
MK,
We actually advise against it as it might back fire eventually as people would start reporting it if they started seeing it often and it would also wear out.
Doesn’t hurt to try it once or twice and see if engagement of your ad changes.
Ivo
I’ll be honest, this post started rubbing me the wrong way as soon as the Coolest project was mentioned. I think it is fair to argue that, regardless of the impact of the relaunch, that project is not a model to emulate. “Time your project better so as to dig a deeper whole and take money from more people you won’t be able to deliver to” doesn’t seem like good advice.
Further, the UVMask project sounds like a complete disaster, at least based on the Kickstarter page. That might speak more closely to how many issues the comments pages of Kickstarters have, but it certainly doesn’t paint a picture of a well-managed, well executed campaign. In all candor, I’d like to see less about how to maximize funding here and more on how to execute and deliver, or even perhaps how to work with a community when things aren’t going as planned.
I’ve gone ahead and edited the post to focus on the interesting anecdote, as I agree that focusing on the funding goal when backers aren’t happy isn’t in good taste. I’ve written many articles about how to learn from backers, execute, and deliver here: https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter/full-list-chronological/
Hey munch,
Appreciate your comment here.
Unfortunately, creator management of supply chain and delivery is outside of our control.
We did our best during the campaign to maximize the results, and we had little idea things would turn out that way for both the creator and their backers.
The goal with this post was to share the strategies we used, that worked well and are generally helpful to creators, prior to knowing this would end up the way it did, I hope you would appreciate that too.
To your last point, I totally agree, backer communication is key, and managing expectations is paramount, and this is something we advise all our creators (and clients) take very seriously.
Hope this helps,
Ivo
I have to say, I do find it a little ironic that in the same article Coolest Cooler is referenced as a success story and its suggested that launching with a goal that couldn’t supply the product if reached could be a good idea. Given that the Coolest Cooler comments board is at this point a mass of hundreds of comments from backers who got neither their product nor a refund bringing it up as an example of good practice of any kind seems a little odd, if anything it seems more like object proof that raising $13 million is not identical with a successful campaign. Wouldn’t you say that reaching a goal which is not actually sufficient to complete and cancelling a funded campaign would seriously undermine backer faith in any possible re-launch? In addition, spending a quarter of a million on advertising and suggesting just cancelling if things don’t go to plan seems quite a lot to let go of on a bad launch, how would you go about re-couping such losses in that event?
Ivo is specifically referring to the amount of money raised by Coolest Cooler. I agree that on other levels, that campaign is not a success, and part of a successful campaign is raising enough funds (particularly on a per-unit basis) to make and deliver the product.
It doesn’t look like the UVmask product (as opposed to campaign) is a success either, going by the comments on the Kickstarter page. None of these tips appear to have anything to do with the quality of the project, which maybe is the sad reality of Kickstarter.
Wow, yeah, just checked the comments for the UV mask project and it is not good. Backers talking about raising class actions and filing complaints with their state’s attorney generals. Raising large amounts of money is surely sort of meaningless, even worse than meaningless really, if it comes from a campaign that doesn’t get close to delivering and is driving backers to report it as potentially fraudulent isn’t it? I mean, if you raise a billion dollars and then run out of money before fulfilling you’ve not succeeded on any level. I could sell ten dollar bills for five dollars each and I’m pretty certain I’d get a huge level of backing, it would still be sort of foolish to call the campaign a success on the basis of the huge amount of money I’d have raised though.
Glenn-
I wanted to clarify that the Coolest Cooler is not a reference for a successful campaign per se (which we all know crashed and burned as a company due to various reasons), but a reference for the perfect timing of when you should launch your campaign.
The mention of their campaign was in the section of Takeaway #1: Only launch when the timing is right.
Here’s a quote from the original one:
“Coolest Cooler’s first campaign launched in December and failed to reach its goal (thankfully), raising a mere <$100k.
Then, a few months later, it re-launched in the summer for a record-breaking $13M.
I often see winter products (jackets, ski accessories, etc.) launched in the summer/autumn in the hopes of backers receiving them for their winter adventure or holidays.
Or vice-versa, summer products get launched earlier in the year in the hopes of sending them during the summer period."
Hope this clarifies!
Ivo
I get the concept, the point remains that mentioning a project that went as horribly wrong for backers as Coolest Cooler, but picked up a lot of money doing it, while discussing the “successes” of a campaign that picked up a lot of money, but appears to have gone horribly wrong for backers, as an example of good timing feels a little off base. Its sort of like pointing out what a nice colour the paintwork is on the car you sold someone as they careen over a cliff because it’s got no breaks.
Re: “And remember — even if you don’t reach your desired end target, you can always cancel the campaign before the timer hits zero. No harm done.”
From my perspective as a backer, if you aren’t willing to deliver at your funding goal, you shouldn’t set the funding goal at that point. Don’t lie to your backers. The harm done is that now your backers know you cannot be trusted – what else might you lie about? Delivery dates, shipping fees? Product quality?
That’s a fair point, Wendell. Transparency is key to gaining and earning trust.
Wendell,
I totally respect that, and I would never encourage someone to lie to their backers.
To give you an example, here’s a recent campaign that ended up not reaching their goal because it was too high from the get to:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tuckbike/tuck-bike-the-folding-bike-with-folding-wheels
Now, put yourself in the creator’s shoes.
Committing all the sweat, blood and tears into this for months and probably years, only to see it fail because of a mere 20% from the total funding.
Now, had they started with say $100K, or even $50K would have allowed them to reach that goal much quicker, and give other backers confidence the project would actually become a reality.
That in turn would have enabled the creator to scale it further and with much higher probability cross their internal goal of $158K.
So, if we imagine asking the creator now, after the fact:
“Would you have started with a smaller goal from day 1 and have a higher chance of crossing your internal target with the risk of having to cancel it or choose the same funding goal all over again, but run the campaign again as it were? – what do you think their answer would be?
All am I saying is, from a creator’s perspective, carefully weigh the pros and cons of shooting with a super-high funding goal that might never get reached, or start lower, with the possibility of disappointing your backers if you had to cancel, BUT with a much higher likelihood of success which would make everyone happy if your internal targets are met.
Ivo
I guess the issue though is that the Kickstarter you’ve linked to there has upset far fewer backers than the UVMask project, and maybe if we now asked the UVMask project, after the fact:
“Would you rather have set a higher goal from day 1 and risked not funding, but have enough money if you did fund to actually supply what you promised, rather than upsetting hundreds of backers by failing to actually provide anything, to the degree that some of them are now pursuing legal action against you?” What do you hope their answer would be?
All I am saying is, from a creator’s perspective, not funding never results in taking money for something you can’t supply, funding with an inaccurate goal sometimes does.