Tag: Audience

Some People Care About You

Saying that no one cares about you isn’t exactly true. It’s not that NO ONE cares, it’s just that most people aren’t going to randomly or instantly fall in love with your idea. Of course, that is what we would like to happen. We want the world to stop and for people to be unable to continue with their day until they have backed our project. But how often does that happen to you?

Most of the time we ignore the hundreds of marketing messages we receive every day. However, every once in a while, we come across something we just can’t live without. When that happens, we usually have strong emotional ties and care deeply about it.

In order for your project to be successful, you need to find the people who are going to have a strong emotional connection to it. It’s not going to be everyone, and you don’t need or want everyone. What you need is a core group or niche of people who will love your idea and bring their friends along.

It only takes a few

One misconception about the way Kickstarter works is that you need hundreds or thousands of people to back a project. This isn’t true at all. Just because money is being raised by “the crowd” doesn’t mean that the crowd has to be that big. Most projects are funded by a relatively small group of people.

My first project, Identifying Nelson, was funded by 170 people. This is a relatively small number considering our goal was $15,000. We didn’t get thousands of random people from the Internet to back our project. We just got a few people, mostly family and friends, who cared enough to make our project happen.

A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

Introduction
A Kickstarter’s Guide to Kickstarter: Introduction
How Kickstarter “Kickstartered” it’s own website
Understanding Kickstarter
The Basics of Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an updated version of the Parton Model
Kickstarter is like girl scout cookies…without the calories!
Make sure your project has an ending
Some additional benefits to running a Kickstarter project
Perry Chan’s Six Principles on why Kickstarter projects are successful
Yancey’s thoughts on getting funded
Brainstorming Your Project
What is this damn thing about?
Simplify your project for success
Is your project a Purple Cow?
Making Lemonade And Telling A Good Story
Reward The Patrons
Naming Your Kickstarter Project
Doing Your Homework
Before you launch, do your homework
No one cares about you
Some People Care About You
Who is Your Audience?
Where is Your Audience?
Resonating With Your Audience
Crossing Chasms
What Will it Cost?
Understanding Profit Margin and Costs
Setting Your Goals
Make or Break Decisions
Running the Numbers
Focus on what you need
Reasonable funding goals
Why be Reasonable?
How long your campaign runs depends on one thing, momentum
30 days or less
Managing Deadlines
Going for the BIG bucks
The Allure of a Large Backer
Pricing theory, thoughts about pricing your Kickstarter rewards
The Paradox of Choice
Crafting Your Pitch
Creating a compelling pitch for your Kickstarter project
Four questions people want answered when visiting your Kickstarter page.
Show some credibility to get more backers
Clarity is your friend
How to ask for Support
Kickstarter is a video-driven site
Examples of great pitch videos
Launching Your Project
Launching your project
How to track the progress of your Kickstarter campaign
The 30% Kickstarter project “Tipping Point”
Conclusion
How to engage an audience with a Kickstarter project: Idea & Story

No one cares about you

This was the most important thing I learned from my Kickstarter’s campaign. If you take away nothing else, try to understand this very difficult lesson about marketing ideas online.

While surfing online looking for advice on marketing, I stumbled upon this video featuring Seth Godin. It’s only 1:43 long but it is so powerful.

Seth was interviewed about the explosion of YouTube. “YouTube had five billion videos viewed in July. How could that possibly be?”, says the moderator. “We are all running businesses, how do you put that to work?” Seth cleverly answers the question by explaining that the Internet was not invented to sell ads.

This is SO important. Ready? No one cares about you! They invented television to sell ads to you. They invented radio to sell ads to you. They invented newspapers to sell ads to you. That’s not why they invented YouTube. That’s not why they invented the internet.

The internet doesn’t care about you. People don’t have to watch channel 7 anymore. They can entertain themselves mindlessly for hours by pressing the StumbleUpon button.

So, if someone is going to watch a video, they aren’t going to watch it because they care about you. They are going to watch it because they care about [themselves].

The lesson here is that just because you care about the project doesn’t mean other people will.

I think one of the biggest false assumptions people make about Kickstarter is that it’s going to bring massive amounts of traffic to their idea. Kickstarter is a platform that enables your idea to spread. It does not guarantee that it will.

Don’t assume Kickstarter is going to build your audience. You need to do that. You need to do the homework and find all the people who might be interested in your idea. Then if your pitch is good enough, your idea is interesting enough, and your story is compelling enough, you might build something people will care about.

A Kickstart’s Guide to Kickstarter TOC:

pssst…you can read all of this offline by downloading the e-book.

Introduction
A Kickstarter’s Guide to Kickstarter: Introduction
How Kickstarter “Kickstartered” it’s own website
Understanding Kickstarter
The Basics of Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an updated version of the Parton Model
Kickstarter is like girl scout cookies…without the calories!
Make sure your project has an ending
Some additional benefits to running a Kickstarter project
Perry Chan’s Six Principles on why Kickstarter projects are successful
Yancey’s thoughts on getting funded
Brainstorming Your Project
What is this damn thing about?
Simplify your project for success
Is your project a Purple Cow?
Making Lemonade And Telling A Good Story
Reward The Patrons
Naming Your Kickstarter Project
Doing Your Homework
Before you launch, do your homework
No one cares about you
Some People Care About You
Who is Your Audience?
Where is Your Audience?
Resonating With Your Audience
Crossing Chasms
What Will it Cost?
Understanding Profit Margin and Costs
Setting Your Goals
Make or Break Decisions
Running the Numbers
Focus on what you need
Reasonable funding goals
Why be Reasonable?
How long your campaign runs depends on one thing, momentum
30 days or less
Managing Deadlines
Going for the BIG bucks
The Allure of a Large Backer
Pricing theory, thoughts about pricing your Kickstarter rewards
The Paradox of Choice
Crafting Your Pitch
Creating a compelling pitch for your Kickstarter project
Four questions people want answered when visiting your Kickstarter page.
Show some credibility to get more backers
Clarity is your friend
How to ask for Support
Kickstarter is a video-driven site
Examples of great pitch videos
Launching Your Project
Launching your project
How to track the progress of your Kickstarter campaign
The 30% Kickstarter project “Tipping Point”
Conclusion
How to engage an audience with a Kickstarter project: Idea & Story