How to raise $5,000,000 on Kickstarter in 30 days

A while back, I was approached by a company who was getting ready to launch their product on Kickstarter, in one of the most competitive crowdfunding niches around.

The company is called Filippo Loreti.

And if you stay up to date in the crowdfunding space, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of them.

Their team wanted my help with copy and launch strategy. So we hashed out a plan of attack… and then put our heads down and worked for six weeks to get this promotion ready.

Now, I knew this project would do well.

These clients had a great product that had a lot of things going for it.

But the results of this launch even shocked me. This launch proved to be an “out-of-the-park” homerun… more than doubling our initial sales projections.

Here’s what happened:

Within the first three hours, my clients had sold over $100,000+ worth of watches.

After the first 24 hours, they had surpassed the $250,000 mark.

And by day 30, when the cart had closed and the dust had settled… sales totaled just under $5,200,000.

More than 18,500 people had backed the project.

And this became one of the top 20 most successful Kickstarter projects, ever.

Now:

I’ve read that over 69% of Kickstarter campaigns fail to reach their funding goals. And I’m not surprised.

Most crowdfunding campaigns rely on “hopes & prayers” that their product will go viral.

In my own experience, I’ve learned that there’s a bit more too it then that.

You have to put in work. You have to plan your launch like a real product launch. You can’t just hope that people are magically going to go crazy over your product and share it a million times with their friends.

It’s not gonna happen.

Virality can be engineered… but only if you have the right pieces of the puzzle in place.

(And in a moment, I’m going to show you how.)

If you want to succeed with your product launch on Kickstarter, there are a lot of things you have to do right.

And that’s why I’ve listed below (in no particular order) a semi-exhaustive list of things that need to happen if you want to make your Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign a massive success.

Here’s a list of everything you need to do in order to make sure you have a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign:

You need to have a USP.

A USP is a unique selling proposition. It’s what makes your product both unique in the marketplace and better than your competitor’s options. It’s usually a sentence or two that succinctly describes why people should buy your product instead of your competitors.

If you lined up your product next to a few of your competitors, what could you say that would make yours stand out and be the most attractive option? How would you communicate these advantages?

If you don’t have a USP… and your product is the same as everyone else’s… I PROMISE your project will be dead in the water.

You need to think about what your product’s unique advantages are. And if you don’t have any… well… guess it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Your product needs to have a “coolness” factor.

Would people think your product is cool? Wanna find out?

Ask 20 people you know who are both in your target market and outside of it what they think about your product. Describe it to them using your USP. Explain how it works and the problem it solves or the desire it fulfills.

Ask them what they think.

If they want to hand you money right then and there… then you’ve got a winner. If they tell their friends about it, you got a winner. If they look disinterested… or they don’t understand how it works… you’ve got a loser on your hands.

In order for your project to pick up steam and benefit from viral traffic, it needs to have a “coolness factor.”

People share cool stuff on social media. They scroll right through the boring stuff.

You need to build an email list.

On average, about 2% of people will buy the very first time they see your sales page, in any industry for any product.

That’s why you need to build an email list. When you capture people’s email addresses, you can continue to communicate with them and warm them up. You can convince them, over time, why your product will benefit them.

On top of that, over 80% of sales are made on your 5th-12th contact with a prospect. It gets expensive trying to place the same ad in front of someone twelve times. But emails are free. You pay to capture their name one time and then market as many times as you’d like.

Here’s the biggest benefit to having an email list:

When you’re building up excitement for your launch… you’re pre-selling your subscribers on why they should buy before the cart opens. Then, when the cart opens, you’ll get a huge rush of sales which helps your project pick up steam. When other people see that you’ve already surpassed your goal on day 1… they start to get curious and excited about checking out your product.

Have a great product that people actually want.

Before you launch, have you checked if people actually want your product?

The easiest way to find out is to take your prototype to a perfect prospect and pitch it to them. Try this 50 times. Look at your response rate. If you’re having trouble selling to your perfect prospects… you might have to dig a little deeper to discover what people actually want to buy before you launch.

The reason the Filippo Loreti launch did so well was because it both solved a specific problem and fulfilled a number of basic human desires. People desperately wanted their watches. They had a beautiful product made with high quality materials. I personally had never seen watches that attractive at that price point. They created something truly special.

And my clients ran small, test launches before the big one to make sure the product was viable and that people wanted it.

I’d suggest you do the same.

Make your offer irresistible

Crowdfunding projects that do well often make offers that are too good to pass up.

Sometimes they have a massive discount that will never be available again. Sometimes they offer valuable bonuses that are only given out during the launch. Sometimes people offer to give insider access or limited edition items that are sure to run out if you don’t act fast.

Sometimes, products offer all of these benefits… and more.

When your prospect looks at your offer he needs to think to himself “Holy crap, I’d have to be a moron not to get this now.”

If he thinks to himself, “This sounds great. But I’ll get to it this weekend” then more often than not, the sale is lost.

Think about how you can make your offer to your prospect almost impossible to say “no” to.

Offer bonuses for higher tiers of commitment

In the Filippo Loreti launch, a lot of people only bought one watch. But there were also people who were buying twelve and fifteen watches at a time.

If you only expect people to buy one of your product, you’re leaving at least 80% of your money on the table.

So, how do you convince people to buy more than one item?

Offer bonuses that they can only get when buying two, or three or four or more of your products.

If your product has different collections, then they already have a reason to buy more than one item.

But if you’re just selling one, single product, make it enticing to buy more. Maybe people will buy another product for a spouse, a sibling or a friend.

Maybe they’ll just want to buy more than one for themselves.

Always reward people for buying more.

Drive massive amounts of traffic

Pay to put people’s eyeballs on your sales page.

If your product is good, and you’ve done all of the above steps, then it’s worth it.

For every one dollar you spend on traffic, you should be able to generate 3–20x the amount of profit back. When you have a decent conversion percentage on your sales page, it’s like owning a $1 vending machine that spits out $10 bills.

Plus, when you use Facebook ads, if people like your product they will tag their friends and share your ad on their timelines. This drastically lowers your ad spend and gets you cheap and sometimes free eyeballs on your page… many of whom can turn into buyers.

When people see a project crushing it, they want to join in. It’s the herd mentality. Social proof of a huge project will turn “on-the-fencers” into buyers.

Have a short, but powerful explainer video

You should be able to explain your product, inspire prospects, and do it in an entertaining way in about 2–3 minutes.

Sure, your video can be longer, but if your prospect doesn’t understand what you’re offering or they don’t understand the problem you’re trying to solve, then you’ve lost them.

You can film it yourself, but I’d probably get a professional team to produce it for you. Not everyone is going to spend 10 minutes reading all of the copy on your page, but they will spend 90 seconds to watch a video to determine if they’re interested in learning more.

Here’s a formula you can follow:

Problem, solution, proof, compelling offer.

Use an attention grabbing headline

I like using your USP to inspire your headline. When people click through to your page, what can you tell them or ask them to get them to stop and want to learn more?

If you use a question, you could focus on the problem your product is solving.

If you’re fulfilling a desire a statement headline might work… just as long as you’re explaining your product’s unique benefits. Either way you need an arresting sentence to get people to sit up and pay attention to your offer.

Tell emotionally compelling stories

People love reading stories. It’s why fiction authors outsell non-fiction authors by at least 1,000-to-1.

Your product has a creation story.

You yourself have an origin story.

You might have stories of customers who’ve used your product or whose lives has changed as a result of your discovery.

Tell these stories in your emails, in your videos, in your copy, on your opt-in pages, in your FB ads.

Use them everywhere.

They’re hard to ignore. And they help people bond with you and your brand instantly.

Get PR & Press Coverage

Want some free traffic?

Get important people to talk about your stuff.

Get stories about your product published both before and during the launch. Go on interviews. Film videos with influencers. Get your project in front of new audiences.

The more press coverage and PR you get, the more free traffic you get coming to your page.

Plus, one well placed article or product review can mean a ton of new prospects rushing to your Kickstarter page with money in hand.

Use Scarcity & Urgency

People want what they can’t have. If they know something is in short supply, they will do whatever it takes to make sure they’re one of the select few who can get their hands on it.

There is an obvious level of urgency with any Kickstarter campaign because they only last for a limited time.

Put think about ways you can ramp this up.

Think about how you can make your offer more appealing and more rare. Think about how you can get people to act immediately… because they’ll lose out big if they wait.

Turn your product’s features into benefits

People want to know the features of a product. But they buy because of the benefits of what those features will do for them.

Take every single feature of your product and explain why this is good for them.

For example:

If you say your widget has a steel case… let them know that this makes it indestructible and they can drop it as many times as they like without ever having to worry about it breaking.

Make your product’s most boring features its greatest selling points.

Offer an outrageous guarantee

If you guarantee your product, at the very least, you can expect to triple your number of buyers.

Why?

Because people want to feel comfortable knowing that they can get their money back, no matter what.

Will a guarantee increase your amount of refunds? Of course. But that’s OK.

When you make an outrageously generou guarantee, people feel more comfortable with making a buying decision, because they know they risk absolutely nothing.

They either fall in love with your product, or they can get all of their money back.

Always offer a guarantee… the longer the better.

Use testimonials

You can brag all day about how great your product is. But if other people are bragging about it for you, it’s much more powerful.

The best part about using testimonials on your Kickstarter sales page and in your emails is not only the third party validation.

You also get to learn all of the hidden benefits of your products. You understand what makes your product great, but your customers might also present other reasons they love it that you might never have even thought of.

Try to collect an overwhelming amount of testimonials and stories… and use them every chance you get. Social proof is powerful.

Have a strong call to action

At the end of your pitch, you need to instruct your prospects what to do.

If you’ve persuaded them with your USP, your story, your benefits, you video, your emails, and your irresistible offer… the last step is to instruct them how to get what they want (your product).

Explain, in clear terms, exactly how to order. Don’t be timid here.

Tell them to click the button, fill out the form, etc.

Tell them what will happen next.

Remove all feelings of insecurity that are associated with buying things on the internet. Explain to them exactly what will happen next and when they can expect their purchase.

Wrapping Up

This list is by no means an exhaustive list off all the things you need to do to raise a ton of money on Kickstarter.

But it should be enough to get you started.

If you put in the work… and if you have a game-changing product… then you could become the next record-breaking multi-million dollar Kickstarter launch.

Good luck.