Earlier this week I sent out an email to my mailing list and asked them the question “what is the biggest thing you are struggling with when it comes to crowdfunding?”
I got a response which stayed with me for hours. In essence it boiled down to – are Kickstarter promotion services worth it, and how do I know if they are working?
On one hand, I’ve talked to creators who have given a percentage of their take to a professional PR firm and had great things to say. In these cases, if the creator failed, so did the promotion service. These creators have ended up on Mashable, Engadget, local news, international news, and several niche blogs. They have also raised more than their fundraising goal and paid up to 10% of their take (in some cases this can be upwards of $10,000) for the service.
On the other hand, I know that there are dozens of Kickstarter promotion services which charge a relatively small one-off fee and promise no more than some tweets and a press release.
If you’re running a crowdfunding project, it’s entirely possible you’ve been approached by one or more of these companies. While I see no problem with people making their money from crowdfunding services (obviously), I really do have an issue with companies that charge without delivering. Over the last 6 months I have seen a drastic rise in the number of companies that entirely specialise in crowdfunding promotion services.
So, how do you know if a Kickstarter promotion service is worth it?
Firstly, look at your project again
All the promotional spend in the world isn’t worth it if your page fails to convert the eyeballs it does get.
Many people who contact me for help after they have launched don’t have promotional problems, they have conversion problems.
So before you think of putting a dime into a PR service, look critically at your project. Do you ask for pledges in the video? Are people getting to the end of your video?
Look at the completed plays of your Kickstarter video. The project shown below has a pretty good completion rating. If yours is less than 20%, you should probably look critically at why.
Are you answering questions and building confidence in your description? Do your rewards need work?
Check out this post on conversion for more details about making a page that gains pledges.
How much does the crowdfunding promotion service cost?
Some crowdfunding promotion services are free. And if it’s free, it could be worth a try, right? You’re not losing anything but a bit of time.
I’ve heard of sites promoting in exchange for a site review. Or promotion in kind.
In general, if it’s free, it can’t hurt. Give it a shot – and let me know how it goes!
Look at their record
Remember that these people are offering to charge you for a service. If they want their fee, it is reasonable to ask for examples of successful, and unsuccessful projects from their history. It’s like a job interview, and you have every right to ask for references.
If they say that they’ve never worked with an unsuccessful project, your bullshit detector should absolutely be going off.
50% of crowdfunding projects fail. I’ve had failures – it’s part of the business. As a crowdfunding professional, one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes outside factors determine the outcome of a project. It is extremely unlikely every project has been a roaring success for this Kickstarter promotion service.
Beyond that, Google them. Try “[SERVICE NAME] review”. There are plenty of interesting reads on forums all around the internet.
Talk to the people who have used the crowdfunding promotion service
Kickstarter has a messaging service! You probably already know this because that’s in all likelihood how you were approached. The good news is, you can use this service to talk to the creators that have worked with the would-be promoter before. Ask them:
- Did they notice an upswing in support after engaging the Kickstarter promotion service?
- What was their return on investment? Do they believe it was a good decision, and would they purchase the service again?
- Did they receive media attention?
- Did they receive results and insights from the Kickstarter promotion service?
- Were they able to track the data and conversions for their project and the promotion service?
Ideally, they should have got more money, articles in blogs and relevant websites, local and national news coverage, a successful project, and insights into exactly how effective their advertising spend was.
Does the service involve sending messages to a large social media audience?
60,000 Twitter followers doesn’t mean anything. You can literally buy that for $450. Equally, I follow plenty of Twitter accounts run by Kickstarter promotion services that consistently promote projects – it doesn’t mean I click a single link.
If you decide to go down a road which involves sending to a large built-in audience, ensure that the audience is relevant, and has opted in to receiving the promotion (for example, BackersHub has a large list of people who like backing Kickstarter projects. I have no idea how effective they are, but their audience actually wants what they’re promoting, and has opted-in to getting it).
Also make sure you can track your acquisition through analytics. Being able to provide your own bit.ly link is a good start – that way you can at least see how many people have clicked on it from that source.
Can you do the same thing yourself?
If the service involves messaging all your friends on Facebook, you can do this yourself and you’d probably get a better return on your investment because you can actually personalise your message.
If the service involves messaging bloggers and niche audiences, again – YOU CAN DO THIS YOURSELF! Yes, it will take time, and research. And it’s going to involve emailing people and making a case for your product, but the only thing stopping you is time.
I’ve got a post on writing a press release, one on making a press kit, and one on how to email your friends and family – and they all come with templates to make it easy on you. I’ve even got a post on the different ways to promote your project.
There’s a good chance you can do everything they’re offering, with more passion, than any one of these services.
Flat fee or percentage?
This is a hard one. I know exactly why flat fees work for crowdfunding services – otherwise we don’t get paid for a lot of our work!
Equally, if a promotion service is worth its salt, you will fund – really well – and the cut you give to the company will reflect how hard they work to get your message out there. Plus, if the promotion service fails, you are “protected”.
It’s really up to your own judgement to decide on this one, but it is worth thinking about – what sits best with you? At the very least some of the fee should be based on whether or not you actually raise your funds.
Keep in mind that PR companies working for a percentage will want more ownership over their work, and may be highly selective about the projects they take on. It makes sense – because there’s more risk involved for them.
I don’t tend to blanket-recommend services, but I do recommend you check out this post on making the most of your PR spend, before you start approaching companies.
Where is the guarantee?
Does the Kickstarter promotion service guarantee to send a press release, or for your project to receive media coverage? Do you have the ability to request a refund if the promotion strategy is a flop?
You might pay $99 for a press release, but if you don’t get any coverage, you might as well have given some local journalists a phone call to make a pitch yourself.
Conclusion
To be honest with you, most crowdfunding promotion services have a bad rep. At best, they sound dodgy, at worst they take your money while providing zero results. If you’re serious about promoting your crowdfunding project, consider talking to a professional, established PR firm. Or get creative with some of the strategies from this post.
Whatever you do, make sure you do your research before whipping out your credit card. In the world of crowdfunding, there are no guarantees.
If you’ve used a crowdfunding promotion service, I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below. Or get in touch with me confidentially. Let’s find out what’s worth it, and what isn’t!
Hi Kat,
Thank you for this helpful article. Could you recommend any marketing company or they all don’t worth it? My campaign is about a website, looks like it’s not a very popular category. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/king-anna/discover-gems-you-cant-find-in-your-country
Hi Anna,
A website is a hard sell. But to give you a short answer – no, I don’t have any recommendations. The companies I have worked with either haven’t provided results, or require more momentum in the initial campaign to work properly.
Hi!
I just launched my campaign on May first, I have just over 1k funded so far and need to propel that quickly! 😁(as everyone else I assume lol). I have been sent soooo many messages it’s overwhelming and it’s so confusing whether these companies are legitimate or not. If you could take a look at my campaign or suggest the proper way to go about getting exposure I’d really appreciate it!
My brand is an all organic skin and hair care line handcrafted by me using essential oils. $1 from each product sold goes to Lyme disease research and awareness :)
http://kck.st/1r8T2KH
Excited to hear your feedback :)
Thanks!!
Thank you Kat! It is a great article.
I just launched my 1st campaign at Kickstarter and I’m pretty lost in where and how to promote my campaign. I got few messages from promotion company but I don’t know which one is legit. Your article definitely got me to start on my own. Please check out my upcycled leather bag campaign.
http://kck.st/1oChaUh
we are trying to promote out LOKMATE product currently launched on IndieGoGo. It is not going anywhere because of no promotions. We just don’t know which PR service group is trustworthy and that a very scary thought, since we don’t have the fund to try several services. Please help out
Your article is definitely have given us more thoughts as well as more worrisome
Hi Kat!
You wrote a helpful article, it gave me ideas on what to do. As I am running a fundraising campaign, do you have more ideas how I can raise funds for this family? Since I am working as a Virtual Assistant, I am planning to make it as a deal (providing them any virtual service) in exchange of donation. Will it make sense? For you reference, here’s the fundraising I am working: https://www.youcaring.com/my-fundraisers.aspx
Appreciate any help Kat. Thank you
Good article. I’m presently thinking about throwing $100 or so at a promotion company just to get it out there. I have a large Facebook audience and medium Twitter audience. So far friends are the only detonators. I’m trying to see if I can encourage strangers to donate at the $5-$25 level. Thinking wider distribution will help with that.
Here’s my campaign:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bensonmusic/stop-the-creep
Great Article Kat,
A lot of these flyby night services are popping up and giving a bad name to a lot of legit established crowdfunding blogs and promotional services like ours.
I would love to share this article with my readers and followers . I would also like to know if you are interested in guest blogging on our site as well? Do you have an email I can reach you at?
Hope to hear from you!
Mike from Ayudos.com
Hi Mike,
Feel free to get in touch via the contact page. Would love to have a chat!
Kat
hi ayudos. saw your service from researching this morning. I hope that you are the real thing as we will continue to research for our LOKMATE product currently on IndieGogo. It is a very good product but it will need to be promoted
Hello, this post was super informative. We will definitely be exploring free and percentage based promotion for our campaign.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dotanddash/dotanddash-the-mystery-of-the-red-dot
The campaign kind of got off to a bad start due to bad timing, so we lost the advantage visibility most new projects enjoy.
We’ve since been approached by several “promotion services” but they seemed a little sketchy to me. One of them does seem more professional than the others. Does anyone have experience with a site called best-crowdfunding-websites.com ? I’m glad we read this first, it may have saved us some money.
Hi, nice post and allot of nice opinions!
I´ve been running a few crowdfunding campaigns myself, and i´ve been scammed more than once by the “service” providers.
Because of this i have created a review forum at my new website http://www.crowdfundingscams.org, its completely built upon user reviews, altho we will run our own independent investigations if users ask for it.
In a few days, this site will be up and running at 100% feel free to take a look.
Of course, the site will be 100% free. FOR EVERYONE.
Great write up Kat! Success on Kickstarter (or any other crowd funding platform) doesn’t only come down to how awesome of an idea you have but also, how well are you able to share the word about it? At BackersHub.com, we created a Backers-only community that sign up to get notifications of awesome early bird rewards and deals from Kickstarter + IndieGogo alums. We work with current campaign creators that have products that are the right fit for our community by getting them featured in our weekly newsletters.
Marketing your campaign is definitely going to be a challenge. Besides reaching out to friends + family, take some time to find the contacts for bloggers, bloggers and communities that are relevant to your niche. Establish relationships and rapport with such contacts/groups and create win/win situations. One of the mistakes campaign creators make is they often wait until they launch before they start their marketing efforts. Preparation for a Kickstarter campaign should be done months before. Find campaigns and pay attention to the ones you enjoyed. How did those campaign creators do their video? What was awesome about the rewards offered? What was it about these campaigns that caught your attention?
Cheers + Good Luck!
Dwight from BackersHub
Thanks for your comment Dwight! I’m a member of the BackersHub community and really do rate it. You make some good points – most of which are covered in other blogs on this site.
Also enjoying your From 0 to Funded creator Facebook group! Thanks for stopping by! :)
Hey Dwight-
Thanks for sharing that information, I plan to make a move later on this year and just doing some research.
I will keep your information just in case.
Today my Indiegogo campaign was trending #1 across all categories with over 600 views in less than a few days. But yet, only 10 contributions. Im at a loss. I dont know if the promotion services can help because they seem to focus on products so news outlets make sense. My campaign is more about backing a philosophy…
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bugoudi-house/x/8089280
I welcome your opinion on if I should pursue a promotional company or not. Thanks
Hi Amy, thanks for getting in touch. Honestly, I think you’re failing to sell your potential. Concentrate on your conversion, rather than the number of eyes you’re getting. Film a video where your talent talks about what you do for them. Send out some updates and thank the people who have come on board! Be active within your campaign. Once you have a campaign with a higher conversion rate, then talk to some people involved in PR in the hip hop industry. These will be the people with the contacts to make it go POP! If you’d like to chat some more, feel free to book a Skype session with me. All the best!
Please support my friend
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/follow-your-heart-if-you-follow-your-heart-1year
This article kind of scared me a bit because I was about to buy a service before I read this. Glad i didn’t easte my money. Great information. Thanks!