Reach Your Kickstarter Campaign Goals Without Spending A Cent — 15 Gadget Platforms to be Featured on 🚩
So you’ve finally taken the first step — putting up your creative projects on Kickstarter. Don’t exhale just yet, your campaign still has a long way to go. Did you know that only 30% of Kickstarters actually reach their goal?
As a result, many campaigners resort to online ads to get the awareness and traffic they need. You could choose to do so too, but sometimes views do not mean meaningful engagement. You want people who believe in your product or service. To get as much visibility and attention to your campaign, it’s all about effective promotion. This means playing it smart because you don’t need a ton of capital to get your name out there.
There is no catch — you don’t have to be a professional or have experience in the world of advertising and promotion either. In this article, you’ll learn how to craft your campaign to make a lasting impression and where to promote it for free.
How to Land A Punch With Your Kickstarter
Sure, fancy ads could earn you some traffic, but it wouldn’t matter if it’s not making sense and attracting your desired audience. In a way, it’s like going on a first date — first impressions DO matter. It’s important to know who your desired audience is, which sites they would be on, and if your campaign will catch their attention.
Users see tons of content everyday, so if your campaign effectively speaks to their pain points, you just landed yourself a valuable lead. Take promotion to the next level — which is to really engage and appeal to your audience. So scrap scripted, formalised, one-size-fits-all type of content. Breathe some life into your campaign, you’ll see that it’ll garner more attention.
Go Hard And Prep A Soft Launch
Instead of waiting for your product to be ready to do an official launch, rely on a soft launch to help you gradually grow your reach. Doing a soft launch is essential in helping gather data, gain publicity, and also feedback from users. Introduce your project, and tell users to “watch this space”. Lure them in with an email form to collect their emails so that you can engage with them. You can devise an email campaign that updates supporters about the progress of your project, prototypes, behind-the-scenes videos, etc. That way, it’s like continuing a conversation with your audience and building a relationship with them. Plus, you get constructive feedback that can help progress your product or service further.
Alternatively, you could also start up a social media page to flaunt your campaign and engage with users directly. You might even find yourself connected to possible influencers and opinion leaders who can help boost your campaign to their followers. Additionally, if you have a substantial amount of support before the soft launch, chances are you’re in a good spot to really gain contact with people who will support your product or service.
Pitch Like A Champion
To differentiate yourself from tons of other Kickstarters, you’ve got to craft a pitch that scores the homerun. The first rule of thumb is to never ever undersell yourself. If you believe in your product, others will too.
Secondly, you need to know who you’ll be pitching to. Is it a lifestyle blog? Is it on social media? Is it a live presentation? These scenarios all require some tweaking in your pitch delivery. It doesn’t hurt to do a little bit of research to help you add a bit of personalisation and flair. It’s important to bear in mind that engaging pitches get you more attention, compared to one that is stuffed with only facts and numbers. Ditch the idea of sending the same pitch to the same few sites, and customise it to fit the demographic the site serves.
Additionally, you have to know your product or your service well. What pain points does it address and how does it resolve it? Craft an engaging tagline, or a value proposition, to make it memorable. You can also sell your campaign through story-telling, but it’s important to keep it straightforward. Stories can help people visualise and relate to your pitch better, but too much of it can lose their attention. So don’t beat around the bush, get right to the point. Also, you could add in relevant references or trends to really engage your reader too.
Is There Anything Else To Do?
YES. A great way to really boost your Kickstarter campaign is to get it featured on other sites. With a soft launch on your hands and a compelling campaign, interested sites would be more than willing to work with you. In this section, we detail some sites to contact to help you with your campaign. Hopefully, you find something that is relevant!
Gadget User—Get Featured and Discovered
Hey everyone — this is Patrick Castellano, Founder of Gadget User. I’m excited to be sharing all of these great avenues to boost your crowdfunding campaign. We are excited to include ourselves as the top platform to build your brands presence, and to boost your crowdfunding marketing today. Our product featured reviews are one way to increase your brands authoritativeness and social presence on our platform. We are also involved with the largest gadget giveaways in the world — and will get your product in front of real gadget enthusiasts. Our platform cares about your future prosperity as a new brand, and want to help you get discovered by real buyers—whether you sell audio gadgets, sleep gadgets to all things tech, we are here to push your online marketing to the next level. If you’re really interested in getting the exposure you deserve, please get in contact and connect with us.
Visit Gadget User Promotions now!
Fubiz
The go-to for the latest news about art, pop-culture, design and all things creative — this site is a great place to shoot your shot. They’ve published relevant articles such as “Best-of Kickstarter Projects on Fubiz”. All you have to do is create an account with them and submit your Kickstarter details.
All Top Start-ups
To get featured here, head over to their “product/startup review” feature. This site features business and tech type of products and services. It’s still free to submit your Kickstarter campaign, but due to a large amount of submissions, there is a bit of a wait until you get your feature approved and published by the site. However, for a fee, you can opt for a premium option that puts your submission in priority — you’ll get featured on their homepage, their FB page, and constantly shared during the week of the publication.
The Startup Pitch
You’ve heard of the phrase, “Life’s a pitch”, right? Channel that passion for your project through a simple and straightforward pitch and voila, you’ve got yourself a feature. Head over this site for a short and sweet submission process on their “Post A Pitch” page. However, do take note that while it is a free service, it may require a wait of up to two months for approval of submissions.
Core77
This site accepts submissions either via email or through sign-ups at their page. Their team of editors will review your submission for approval. If so, they will include it in their blogs. Described to have a supportive audience of designers of all levels, this site would be great if your product or service is related to design or the arts.
Mr Gadget—Gadget News, Reviews, Inventions
Mr Gadget generally delivers more in-depth crowdfunding product reviews than the rest of the pack providing a good opportunity for readers to hear all about the features and benefits you worked so hard on. Focusing mainly on the tech space, it’s a great platform to get your tech and gadget products showcased in detail to a heavily male audience! It’s a relatively new site, but with 30,000 monthly visitors, it’s quickly becoming a crowdfunding product discovery powerhouse.
Killer Start-ups
In case you haven’t heard, this is the platform that featured Uber during their early days. The feature led to a significant growth in crowdfunding just three months after! The best part? Getting featured is absolutely free. It’s a great platform that features anything innovative; be it start-ups or crowdfunding projects. Their key statistics shows they’ve got a whopping 125,000+ monthly unique views and their famous features include Uber and Tinder. If you’re looking for a killer promotion, give this platform a shot.
Mashable
This platform has been labelled the top platform for anything about social and digital media, technology and web culture — and for good reason. Docking up over 40 million monthly website pageviews with a strong presence on Twitter and Facebook, Mashable is THE site to get featured on. You can choose to email a story to them, or fill up a form on their site. Remember to keep it short and sweet, and follow their guidelines!
Oddity Central
Much like the name suggests, anything out of the ordinary goes at Oddity Central. So if you’ve got something quirky up your sleeve, or if this is where your desired audience might frequent, you can consider submitting a pitch to them. It’s absolutely free to send in a contribution for approval. Feel free to attach images or videos as well!
The Awesomer
This site’s criteria for submissions includes the need to “be awesome”. If your Kickstarter campaign is anything relevant to technology, design, or music, this is the platform to check out. Their review takes over a couple of days, and requests that submissions are not submitted more than once. It’s free to send a submission as well, so it’s definitely worth a shot — you may get some awesome results.
NotCot
Calling all creatives! If you’re looking for a platform where all the hipster designers browse through, Not Cot is the place to be. It’s a minimalist site where ideas, aesthetics and amusement are welcome, so if this sounds like your campaign, you can easily submit a new post for free. You can even attach an image (min. 500 x 500px). If you like flexing your creative muscle and your flair for aesthetics, chances are many people who visit Not Cot do too. It’s recommended to have your winning shot ready as posts are presented in grid format with photos domineering a single grid.
Bless This Stuff
With content like menswear, gear, tech, gadgets and more, this is a good site to get featured on if you have a campaign that will appeal to the male demographic. With a wide variety of categories and six social media platforms, you’re bound to gain the exposure you need. Their tagline is “Stuff we drool about…”, so make sure you’ve got a snazzy pitch that will leave them salivating for more.
Thrillist
Known for engaging articles mostly under the Lifestyle category, you can feature your campaign here if that’s relevant. It’s free and easy to do so, and Thrillist would love to help you feature your campaign to the masses. Just shoot them an email or get in touch with their editors directly. If you’re not convinced, Thrillist has compiled numerous positive reviews from businesses they’ve featured on their site. Go on, take a look!
Kickstarterforum
Managed by Salvador Briggman, the man who founded CrowdCrux, a blog that provides effective tips on how to run crowdfunding campaigns successfully. Kickstarter Forum on the other hand, is the platform for forging communities and meaningful connections between creators. This makes it an awesome platform to get your campaign out there with other like-minded individuals. Plus, you get a free pass on the website to promote your project after it has successfully launched.
Product Hunt
Chances are you’ve already heard Product Hunt is a tough one to get featured on. I mean, some of the great things in life require a little bit of hustling, right? Others have advised perhaps offering the site an exclusive discount or early access to your product or service. Alternatively, you could also tag them on Twitter (@producthunt) and tweet your best pitch and a link to your product or service in 280 characters!
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. Hopefully, these resources will come in handy in your Kickstarter journey. Remember, promotion is essential in getting you the backing and the reach you need for your campaign. As someone who runs a venture, I get that timelines are demanding and everything can feel very fast-paced. Despite the mad rush, the progress I have today wouldn’t be possible without the hard work put in to get it out there. So, keep your chin up, things are possible with a little hustle. Hope this article has helped you — let’s get to promoting!
