In this episode of the Effective Ecommerce Podcast. We’re gonna be talking how to launch a new product using Kickstarter. So I just launched a new product using Kickstarter. I did a lot of research leading up to this and tried to figure out what is the best way to launch a product using Kickstarter and I came up with a lot of different information. So I’m gonna go over all the information I came up with along with the process that I used to raise all a little over $16000, 16000 and a half thousand dollars and I know that’s not insane I know a lot of people out there talk about I raised three hundred thousand dollars using Kickstarter well something interesting I did mine in 30 days I did 30 days’ worth of work to launch to make 16 and a half thousand dollars on Kickstarter so I’m pretty proud of that I think obviously if I would have spent more time I could have done a better job also my product isn’t one of those three hundred thousand dollar products. We’ll talk about the whole process here in just a second so the real thing I wanted to try to do is figure out what is the 80/20 of launching a product using Kickstarter if you don’t know if the 80/20 it is it’s basically what’s the 20% of things I can do that will give me 80% of the results think about when you’re studying for a test usually looking back in the days when you’re setting for a test in school you could do about you could study for a long long time but ultimately what it was, was there was two you could study for let’s say five hours to get a B on the test but it would take something like hours to get an a on the test so if you don’t mind getting an 80% on your test you could easily do that in 25 hours but if you wanted to get that 100% on your test you’re gonna have to study for 25 hours so in conclusion a lot of the effort you put into life you can kind of you can get similar results we can get four-fifths of the results doing about 100% of the work now this isn’t always true obviously but I wanted to test this with the launch of my Kickstarter so I wanted to see what are what is the minimum I need to do to get decent results and I think I found it so let’s talk about what I personally did I took a two-pronged approach first off what I did was I gathered emails and I did that using Instagram so I had my own personal I’m account and an Instagram account for my company. And I did use a certain system to follow other people like their photos comment on their photos try to gain as many followers as possible and it was an automated system I don’t want to talk too much about this because it’s not I’m not really supposed to be doing it. But there’s you know email me travis@effectiveecommerce.com if you’re interested in more information about that anyways I used Instagram and an automated system and in my bio it would say enter for a chance to win a free box of Performance Nut Butter and what would happen is people would click on that link give me their email and that’s where the magic started so most people stop at this point most people collect emails and you know maybe they give out that that prize that they guaranteed but that’s it that’s all they do and maybe they even and then some people take it a step further and they have an email funnel they’ll send out an email saying hey our product launched what I did was I sent every single person a personal every single person a personalized email and I told them hey thank you so much for your interest in Performance Nut Butter I just wanted to let you know like I just wanted to let you know a little bit about the product and then I asked them a question I’d say what do you like to do for fun and the reason I picked this is it allowed me to do some research into my market let me do some demo democrat demographic research that’s a mouthful apparently some demographic research tried to figure out what people that are interested in my product are also interested in it also allowed me to start a conversation which is very important so the next email I’d follow up with and say hey thank you so much and I try to connect with them in some some way shape or form and then I would say by the way I have this launch group it’s a Facebook group called the Performance Nut Butter launch group on Facebook if you enter that if you join that you’ll have a better chance of winning a free box of Performance Nut Butter now keep in mind I did give away boxes or jars actually a Performance Nut Butter at the time and what I did what I did is really I picked the people that seemed the most interested in my product that seemed like they were willing to share it that we’re gonna share it on Instagram and Facebook and blah blah blah I also used that Facebook group I’d keep them updated I’d ask them questions I’d say hey guys here’s a bunch of logos what logo do you think is the best and I’d let them pick out what the best Performance Nut Butter logo should be here’s some packaging what do you like about the packaging what do you not like and I got some really good feedback and they were part of shaping this so it really was not just my product it was their product as well so I brought them along for the journey and what was cool about having a Facebook group versus just an email list was I would post something and multiple people would comment and people can see that other people are commenting and it gets them excited and then they want to comment where if it’s just an email it’s just a one-to-one conversation it seems very impersonal it seems almost fake it seems like I’m some big person up on my castle and I’m just saying hey here’s an email what do you think about this product where a group creates this community type dynamic which i think is much more helpful and much more important for launching a product so they felt like they were involved they felt like they were part of my company so that was a big part of what I did I also did a whole drip campaign so I did something where it’s like two weeks until the launch share this video for extra chance to win up jar one week from launch share this video and I did a lot of videos and it was very very much like videos I do on my youtube channel the effective e-commerce YouTube channel I just turn on a camera I’d start talking and I did a little bit of planning I tried to figure out a little bit of what I was gonna say but it wasn’t perfect and I asked people to share the videos and I know videos on Facebook do fairly well so that’s why I picked videos also it didn’t look like an advertisement which helps but ultimately I had this community that was really excited so what happened is when I launched my product when I launched the Kickstarter I launched it at 6:00 in the morning PST time and my girlfriend was next to me and so she wanted to be the first one to buy so as soon as I hit the launch button she went to the computer and tried to buy it she was the fifth person to buy it there was four I think either the fifth of the six there was four or five people that were able to buy it before she did because they were that excited they were they must have been sitting there clicking refresh clicking refresh they could not wait to buy my product even though it was a Kickstarter they weren’t gonna receive the product for a few months they were still that excited about it so that’s that’s what I’m trying to communicate here is when you have a community of people they get each other hyped up and they get really excited I hit my goal of ten thousand dollars in just three days so I raised ten thousand dollars on Kickstarter in just three days and I know it was because of my community so that’s the first prong of my two prong approach I took to launch my product the second one I did was sending out jars and remember my final products gonna it comes in boxes and pouches and ultimately in boxes but I did jars at the beginning because it’s much cheaper to do well I can do a smaller minimum order quantity of jars so I bought about jars and sent them out to influencers bloggers Instagram personalities etc now that’s not all I did once again if you can tell by now I don’t do things usually just like every other person just the whole normal way what I did that was a little bit different is I went to iTunes and I searched up different types of podcasts that were related to the niche of Performance Nut Butter related to things that people that like Performance Nut Butter would also be interested in so that’s CrossFit that’s lifting triathlons you know anything that’s performance-based we’ll call it mud running all that kind of fun stuff so I looked up those people and I invited them to be guests on my own personal podcast it’s called how to do your s and what happened is we had an hour-long conversation about my guest it wasn’t about me it wasn’t about my product we had an hour-long conversation where I interviewed them and try to share their message with my audience now at the end of that interview I mentioned to them I’m looking I’m launching this Performance Nut Butter company I want to get your feedback what do you think about this product and now they had different opinions I I love their opinions because these are the people that I really care about and I want them to love my product so I the opinions were very important but what the real thing was was I asked them can I send you a free jar of Performance Nut Butter and of course nine out of ten people and probably ninety five out of a hundred people said yes to this because it’s a free it’s a free thing I’m obviously very excited about it why are they gonna say no so what happened next was a good percentage I’d say to % of them maybe even a little bit more maybe up to % of the people that I sent a free jar to shared it with our audience in one way or another so this allowed me to bypass the cold email so I didn’t just send people a cold email saying hey here’s my product can you share it I developed a relationship with them and they were happy to share it because they were part of this process once again they were part of the design because I took their their words of wisdom into account if they said hey you know what I really don’t think it should have this in it I would consider it now I didn’t always people said certain things to me that I didn’t agree with so I didn’t always take everything that people said % but I definitely definitely thought about everything that everyone said so anytime someone had some feedback from me I would think about it but I didn’t always take it I guess what I’m trying to say so anyways those are the two major prongs that I did I also a third one I did a road trip and I went to Jim – Jim and I went in person and I handed out free jars and spoons and got people to try it and got feedback whatever I don’t think that did that much I didn’t I don’t think that helped nearly as much as all the other stuff I did like I said I raised ten thousand dollars in the first three days and then I only raised about $, the rest of the twenty seven days plus all the time after the Kickstarter so I really think the community building and the influencers were the biggest things I did I know that one person Dominic D’Agostino alone probably generated me a thousand dollars in revenue so that is it for this podcast I hope you guys found this helpful I do have a checklist for helping you launch your product using Kickstarter in my e-commerce success pack go to effective e-commerce comm you’ll find the success back there just search around it’s real easy to find and on top of that if you go to iTunes or if you have an iPhone you can do it in the podcast app leave a five star review for this podcast even if you don’t listen on iTunes even if you’re a stitch a person like me you can go to iTunes leave a five star review and I’ll enter you two in a for a chance to win a free one-on-one consulting session with me so when you leave a five star you it helps me out it helps let me know that people are actually listening to this podcast and on top of that you’ll get a chance to win a free one-on-one consulting session so that’s a win-win hopefully hopefully go do that it’s very helpful I also have some ecommerce courses and go to effective you commerce com this is an audio course the first this whole podcast is a giant audio course but there’s some things that I can’t really explain in this course in this audio course there’s things that I need to explain via screen recordings so if you want to check out the e-commerce courses I have that Effectiveecommerce.com I’m also going to be coming out with a like a straight up ecommerce class which would be a five-week class where we take people and probably limit it to people and we’re gonna do it together we’re gonna come together weekly for Skype calls and it’s gonna be people that just have an idea we’re gonna take them from an idea all the way to a finished ecommerce store so with all that being said I hope this episode was helpful hope you enjoyed it definitely leave that five star review and check out Effectiveecommerce.com to get your free success pack thank you.
Launching a product via Kickstarter or other crowdfunding source is a great way to validate a market/product and raise funds for your production run. I recently raised over $16,000 and in this episode, I share all the strategies I used to hit my goal. The interesting part of this is that I was able to do it in just 30 days as a side project.
Two-pronged approach
Get emails and move them into a facebook group and ultimately create a drip campaign
Get influencers/blogs etc. excited about your product
