Little kids.
No matter how much you like them, there is only a rather small chance that you currently have any right at this moment. Which means, in turn, that you are probably quite unlikely to back a Kickstarter campaign for a product specifically made for little kids. Or so one might think.
Just last month, such a campaign by a first-time and still relatively unknown team of creators, beat the demographic odds that were stacked against them, and amassed nearly $400,000 in funding. The name of the product is Pop 'N Go, a playpen that parents can take quite literally everywhere. And today, I'd like to tell you play by play (no pun intended) how they became such a success.
You may want to read especially closely if you have a product idea that targets a very narrow demographic. So, let's get going, shall we?
A successful launch on Kickstarter requires not only a good product idea, but both preparation and presentation.
The preparation of the campaign included researching and finding a strong marketing partner, and in this case, this partner was Funded Today. The moment Pop 'N Go signed on with us, we immediately began a research cycle. Here, we sat together with the creators and found angles that we could use for the first step of launch prep. We decided in favor of an email lead generation campaign, as we knew that this would allow us to target our key demographics very specifically. This process began nearly two months before launch, with a relatively humble budget - and advanced so well that we decided to add more money for lead generation purposes twice more before the campaign went live.
In addition to the work provided by Funded Today, Pop 'N Go build a tremendously attractive campaign page (you can see it here) with in-depth information and quality images that they believed would encourage prospective backers to think something like this:
"I can see my kids really liking this."
Unlike so many other creators who set the focus of their images on their actual product and its features, Pop 'N Go got page visitors to create mental scenarios of them using the product - a golden technique that can significantly boost conversion rates.
Finally, they also lined up a major influencer to post about the campaign on launch day, which helped the campaign gain both credibility and recognition.
On March 6, after two months of pre-launch preparation with Funded Today, we set the campaign live. And, things went rather well on the first day, with Pop 'N Go raising nearly $25,000 in the first 12 hours. More than 60% of that raise was directly attributed to the email lead generation campaign run by Funded Today.
While the influencer post raised less than $1000 during the first two days, it likely helped with priming potential customers about the product, so they were more responsive later on to other types of marketing.
Within two days, Funded Today was running Facebook and Instagram ads, media outreach, affiliate marketing and cross collaborations. Seeing the enormous potential of the project, we deployed most of our "weapons" early on. While pledge levels dipped a little in the following days, they rarely fell below $5,000 per day - which helped the product to keep trending on Kickstarter.
March 19 was a significant day for the campaign. Nearly two weeks in and still more than two weeks from the finish line, that date marked the last day Pop 'N Go raised less than $10,000. It was also the last day that Facebook ads run by Funded Today raised less than $5,000. We saw that the campaign was on its way to a very solid quarter-million dollars in funding, but we wanted more. We knew we would have to step up our game, so we increased budgets and focused in on our best audiences. The phase of hard scaling had begun, and very soon after, we were raising $20,000 a day once again. All was set for the grand finale.
As we entered April, we had already surpassed our $250,000 mid-campaign trajectory, and now, had decided to reinvest all the money we had raised into more, highly-optimized ads for ideal results. The tally continued to rise faster than ever during those final days of the campaign, ultimately making Pop 'N Go one of the most successful children's products to ever be crowdfunded.
By the end of the campaign, Funded Today had contributed exactly $206,475 to Pop 'N Go's total raise of $395,479. This equates to slightly more than 52.2 percent. Due to the inefficiency of referral tracking, we can quite safely assume that the actual percentage is higher - probably much closer to 60 to 70 percent. The first lesson from Pop 'N Go's success story is, therefore, to choose the right partner.
Funded Today is such a partner. With more than 2000 campaigns under our belt and nearly $200 million raised with our clients, there is probably no other marketing agency out there with a stronger set of expertise and track record. What's even better: We've remained at the cutting edge of our industry and have been its leading innovator for new revenue streams for our clients. As such, we have ways of raising you money that you are not going to find elsewhere.
But there is more that creators like you can do.
The second lesson from Pop 'N Go is to not be afraid of targeting only a small target population. Not everyone has to have an interest in your product for it to be successful. Products for a niche - even a rather small niche based on a small demographic subset - can be successful and raise vast amounts of money.
The final lesson for today is to start preparation for your crowdfunding campaign early, and to calculate in a few months before launch to get it right. From shooting a high-quality video to designing an outstanding, credible page, to building a strong email list, to gaining a following on your own business social media accounts, to lining up media coverage - it all takes time, effort, and a lot of energy. If you hire us for all of these things (and you actually can!), we will complete this process in six weeks minimum - and our team has the experience of thousands of past campaigns. When you go and do it on your own the first time, expect to stumble (and perhaps also cry) in some places and take much longer.
For the creators of Pop 'N Go, it is now on to fulfillment and retail, both of which are scheduled for later this summer. But you don't have to wait for them to get there. Instead, take out a pen and a napkin, and come up with your next great idea. Who knows where we can take it together? Let's chat. Click here to arrange a time to speak with one of our talented Client Specialists about your next big idea!
