Kickstarter in Review Part V: How Backers Discovered Our Project
[Read the full Kickstarter in Review series]
At the time of writing I’ve received 970 BackerKit survey responses out of 1,278 backers (1,232 in the campaign + 46 late pledges).
While we still have a few hundred backers to go, it’s enough of a sample size to start digging into the data.
Kickstarter Traffic Source
Kickstarter provides traffic sources for your campaign.
The rule of thumb is that campaigns tend to generate 4 backers from Kickstater for every 6 backers they bring directly to the campaign. That is, you should expect 40% of campaign backers to find you through Kickstarter.
62% of our backers navigated to our campaign page through a Kickstarter link.
However, certain sources such as a search for our campaign on Kickstarter are more likely to be driven by campaign awareness outside of Kickstarter, rather than organic on Kickstarter.
Once we segment the data further, 43% of backers likely discover our campaign through Kickstarter, 36% through organic or direct non-Kickstarter sources, and 22% are indeterminant.
The data is just a snapshot of where backers navigated to the campaign page from, and doesn’t give us a clear picture of how backers actually heard about our campaign.
For instance, if a backer saw us on The Dice Tower Crowdsurfing, and then later clicked on our campaign from the Kickstarter Discover page, they would be counted as a Kickstarter sourced backer.
So, I decided to ask our backers directly…
Survey Responses
We asked our survey respondents:
How did you hear about the Nut Hunt campaign?
I didn’t restrict people to selecting only one response, but we also didn’t tell them to select multiple.
I wanted the survey to reflect how people remember interacting with our campaign and discovering us. This means that responses might not be reflective of the first place people saw the campaign, but rather what stuck with them or was resonant.
There’s a lot to unpack.
Kickstarter Drove > 50% of Traffic
Kickstarter organic traffic was a major driver of our campaign’s success, accounting for more than 50% of backers.
This is a meaningful outperformance relative to the ~40% rule of thumb.
I think our campaign punched above its weight for a number of reasons, some of which I touched on in our Kickstarter Successes article.
Our campaign sold itself: Our campaign page was presented professionally, we had an excellent promo video, and strong social proof. I don’t have data showing page visits to converted backers, or a broader dataset of how those numbers should pan out, but I believe that our campaign stood out relative to other campaigns.
Campaign engagement increased Kickstarter placement: Making it to and maintaining a high position on Kickstarter’s front page can be a major driver of eyes on a project and traffic.
We don’t know exactly how Kickstarter’s algorithm weighs various factors, but it seems to be based on: amount funded and velocity of funding, backer count and velocity of backer count growth, and less substantially but still important backer activity and interaction.
Our campaign was extremely active with over 700 comments. We incentivize our backers to interact with us on the campaign page, including reminders to comment, personal messages to every backer, and a phone wallpaper giveaway.
I can’t imagine how powerful a Project We Love badge, or Featured Project spot on Kickstarter could be.
The Kickstarter value proposition is strong: An ancillary takeaway is that Kickstarter brings substantial value through its ecosystem.
There is occasionally discussion on board game forums around the benefits of Kickstarter, Gamefound, and now Backerkit. For smaller and medium sized creators, I would be very hesitant to switch to either platform unless they can demonstrate strong organic traffic away from their headline campaigns.
A few percentage points savings in fees is insubstantial relative to the organic traffic Kickstarter brought in the door.
Momentum
I segmented out survey responses based on whether they learned about us through direct interaction (outreach on forums, our review campaign, conventions, etc.), versus what I am labeling as momentum driven.
That is, traffic that was generated by our campaign visibility, from people other than us talking about the campaign, Kickstarter round ups, or by happening upon us on Kickstarter.
The delineation isn’t perfect, but it is telling.
65% of our backers found our campaign through momentum.
The size of your post launch reach is determined by the early momentum your campaign achieves -by backer count growth, by hitting thresholds to get on the radar of content creators, and by earning a spot on Kickstarter’s front page.
While a professional campaign page, and engaged backers are vital to both discoverability and conversions, at the end of the day it all comes back to building a pre-launch crowd. Because, the size of your crowd is multiplicative to your ultimate campaign reach.
The size of that initial crowd will amplify all of the little things that you are doing right.
Organic
I segmented our respondents into organic sources (forums, personal interaction, conventions, etc.), and inorganic sources which was just our paid advertising, and preview & review content (which was partly paid, and partly free).
92% of our backers found us through organic sources.
Which is a really good sign that
We did a pretty good job at organic marketing (which I talk about here: The Mosaic of Organic Marketing), and
We have a lot of room to improve our inorganic marketing (I talk about mistakes made here: Facebook Advertising & E-mail Onboarding).
We had a fairly extensive review & preview campaign, so I did expect a somewhat higher portion of backers from the channel (versus 4% of survey respondents). That said, even if those sources drove only modest traffic, I believe that they were massively helpful in building social proof on our campaign page.
Plus, most of our reviews are permanently discoverable, meaning that for years to come they’ll help consumers learn about our games, and decide if they are right for them.
A Mosaic
As I review the moving parts of our campaign, and think through how to run an even more successful campaign next time, I always keep in mind that a Kickstarter is more than the sum of its parts.
The best paid advertising in the world won’t convince people to buy a game if the gameplay isn’t there, if the page isn’t professional, and if there isn’t social proof. The best campaign page ever designed wouldn’t get a single backer if no one ever saw it.
We did a lot of things really well with our Nut Hunt campaign. And, there are a lot of things we could have done a little better (plus a couple of areas with some real room for improvement).
Analyzing how backers discovered us is a good indication of where and how our efforts paid off.
How do you discover new campaigns?
