Chew and Chat Recap and SDSI Newlsetter - August 25, 2016
/Event Recap- Chew and Chat: Kickstarter case study with RinseKit and how they surpassed their goal by 1,320%
RinseKit set out on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $30,000 and the hopes of raising $100,000 and gaining some brand awareness along the way. To their surprise, they reached their goal in the first 48 hours and closed their 30-day campaign with $396,299 from 2,412 backers. SDSI brought the General Membership to the RinseKit headquarters this morning to learn from Founder, Chris Crawford and CEO, Eric Fagan what they attribute their success to and lessons learned along the way. Below are some key takeaways from Chris and Eric’s presentation. View event photos here.
- Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Kickstarter may not be the right option for all companies. Is your goal to raise funds or awareness? An honest evaluation on your company’s goals and a full due diligence on alternative strategies will determine if Kickstarter is the right choice. After determining that Kickstarter was the best route, RinseKit spent two months developing their campaign and was ready to execute the full 30-day campaign before it was activated. Setting yourself up for success is key, make sure your campaign goal is realistic and attainable but also lofty enough to be compelling to supporters. Remember, if you don’t reach your campaign goals you do not receive any of the backing!
- Successful Kickstarter Campaigns Require Investment. That is Capital and Personnel. Rinsekit recommended $150-1,000/day, in advertising spend alone, to properly promote a successful campaign. And for the full, 30-day campaign, the entire RinseKit team was laser focused on promoting and prioritizing their campaign.
- Don’t do it alone. You cannot rely on Kickstarter to push people to your campaign. New campaigns are only temporarily featured before they get buried on the Kickstarter site. And as Kickstarter is becoming increasingly more popular, its increasingly more challenging for your campaign to go viral, so you have to bring your own audience. Building a list of key influencers and providing them consistent messaging and content to easily share on their social platforms was critical for RinseKit’s success. RinseKit also interviewed several third party Kickstarter specialists to help them develop, deploy and maintain their full 30-day campaign.
- Momentum is key. RinseKit largely attributes their viral campaign to a feature on GI Gadgets. Their single GI Gadgets Facebook post received 581,000 views and 5,600 shares. RinseKit’s partnership with a third party Kickstarter specialist to establish this momentum and spending advertising dollars to fuel the momentum, was vital to their success. But a successful campaign is not over in 30 days. Now, nearly 90 days after their campaign is closed, the RinseKit team is still working hard to maintain that positive momentum. As Eric put it “Losing momentum is worse than never having it at all”.
