Common knowledge says for your Kickstarter to be successful, Facebook ads must be central to your strategy. But in running my latest campaign, PrintAQuest, my numbers say different. How much did I spend on Facebook ads and how much did they make? Take a peek behind the curtain and find out. TL;DR – I made less on Facebook ads than I spent on them, but that might be because I didn’t charge enough for my rewards, or perhaps my campaign just sucked. However, they did close enough to good that I might try them again.
Looking over the Post Mortems of past Kickstarters I’ve run (for which I seem to have forgotten the BattleMechas), I think there’s been a clear trajectory of learning along the way. There’s also been a number of post-kickstarter resolutions that tend to peter off after a while. Like, after the Skyforce Kickstarter I resolved to make monthly models for my Patreon backers… and here I am resolving to do that again. And already my second monthly modeling challenge live stream hit a scheduling conflict and had to be moved to a different day.
In terms of PrintAQuest, there were 2 things I did differently:
- Have my audience pick the subject of the Kickstarter.
- Run Facebook Ads.
What Went Well
But I’m getting ahead of myself. These post mortems have a pattern to them that I need to follow. So let’s start with what went well.
Giving my audience the choice of what I’d work on meant that I didn’t waste a campaign on a suboptimal idea.
I experimented in the past with a shorter campaign to eliminate the sleepy middle, or as I call it the doldrums, and help with burnout. However, I don’t think that would have helped in this case. PrintAQuest requires so much effort that a shorter campaign wouldn’t have helped. Instead, the facebook ads may have helped with the doldrums, and the monthly modeling challenges may help with burn out. We’ll see.
I could not be more proud of the work I did and am doing on this campaign. The models and terrain, as well as the campaign I’ve made for this set has thrilled me to no end. I love the design of everything. Not just the details and look, but the fact that they look as good as they do at the scale that they’re at. I’ve really pushed what FDM is capable of, and came off conqueror.
What Could have Been Better
Honestly… not much to say here. I wish I hadn’t paid for extra facebook ads that didn’t pay off, but aside from that I think this was a perfectly balanced campaign that I’m delivering good value on for my backers and is actually kickstarting something that, I hope, will continue.
Lessons Learned
I think I’m getting better at these campaigns and I’m starting to wonder how soon I can run another. I think my plan going forward will be to develop a small set of characters for post-kickstarter release, see how they sell, and then consider another PrintAQuest kickstarter follow up, whether that’s for physical orders or another expansion, I’m not sure.
There are a few lessons that I want to explore before the cumulative learning list:
Audience Choice
How much did Audience Choice bolster the success of this campaign? I think quite a bit, but not for the reasons I initially thought it would.
Had I just done the campaign I wanted to I probably would have done Balloon Animals. PrintABlok seemed to be on a decline, and at the time there were a lot of those balloon dog sculptures on sale everywhere, leading me to believe this is something people wanted, and I am uniquely skilled to bring it about. But it turns out those sculptures were on the fast track to the dollar store and they were not as popular as I had been led to believe.
Of the 7 ideas I originally presented, I think I would have been happy doing any of them. They were all equally awesome in my mind. And therein is the problem. In my head, every one of these ideas was awesome. You gotta get out of your head to separate the wheat from the chaff. Appealing to others is a great way to do that.
Now, I do have to express some disappointment that the engagement wasn’t as strong as I would have liked. Maybe that’s because my audience is dwindling, or maybe that’s because people don’t have stron opinions about any of this, and I’d be better off focusing my efforts elsewhere. Part of the reason I’m doing monthly modeling challenge live streams is I’m trying to find an audience who is hungry to tell me what to do.
I thought that by appealing to my audience I would find an idea that they’d be hungry to support. In the end, however, they enabled me to avoid missteps more than anything.
Facebook Ads
Part of my motivation for running facebook ads was to find a wider audience. PrintAQuest just felt like the sort of thing that would have wider appeal outside of my regular audience. And it’s an idea I’d really like to find an audience for.
Now, on the face of it, what I spent on facebook ads didn’t return to me in dividends. However, I’m planning on sharing this video on various reddit posts and maybe I’ll get some feedback about what I did wrong, how I didn’t handle it right, and what I could do differently next time. If I do, I may edit this post with some of those ideas.
Perhaps the problem wasn’t the ads. Maybe the campaign just doesn’t have that wider appeal. I mentioned how I worried that some people who saw the ads might have turned away when they saw that 3D printing was a necessity. Maybe a campaign where I was selling physical copies would be better. And if I were to do that, perhaps I should try Facebook ads again.
Selling Physical Copies
Selling physical copies of PrintAQuest has it’s own set of challenges. I’ve been exploring the idea and I think it’s pretty clear that PrintAQuest will never be on retail shelves. The material cost alone makes it unapproachably expensive once everyone along the chain gets their cut. However, if I can keep this as a small, bespoke game, perhaps there’s still some hope. That means I won’t be selling tens of thousands of copies, but perhaps I could sell a thousand. If I could sell 2 thousand I might be able to afford that upgraded work space I’ve always wanted. This is something I’ll explore in detail in a future topic.
Everything I’ve learned so far
So let’s wrap this up with the cumulative list of everything I’ve learned from the past up till now:
- It’s the people who back that made this successful, and never lose sight or stop communicating with them.
- Keep the reward tiers simple. $15 gets everything, maybe a tier for the old stuff, and $100 special tier.
- Digital-only distribution is the way to go. (We’ll test this in the future)
- Plan out when to start and, in particular, when the kickstarter will end.
- I’m not the best at business, so I need to get better or get help.
- Figure out stretch goals that are where I really want to be and fair to my time
- Lead into the kickstarter:
- Poll your audience to ask what they want and do it
- Make a landing page
- Base set prototyping
- Get the starter models in the hands of influencers
- Get printed sets in the hands of big influencers if you can
- Clear the calendar
- Prepare video content to release along the way
- During the campaign:
- Emulate the look and design of successful kickstarters in the same space
- Facebook ads keep things moving in the middle (but don’t spend too much)
- Frequent and regular livestreams
- Have a freebie to release at the mid-way point (I released them early)
- After the campaign
- Digital delivery as soon as possible with a store listing
