Lessons

Lesson Info

Campaign Goal & Referral Strategy

Let's talk about gold setting, so goal setting is one of the trickiest of all the conversations. What should I set my goal at first of all, we're going to look back at this financial calculator in a minute and talk about the analysis of the goal setting, but the thing to think about in general is you want to set the goal is low is possible without being too low. So here's the thing let's say the carbon flyer actually to manufacture and sell the carbon fire it needed to be a four hundred thousand dollars. Well, if I put four hundred thousand dollars is my goal there's a huge psychology factor to people back in the campaign? So the psychology is you want to hit thirty five percent of your goal within forty eight hours, then you have, like, a ninety percent chance of hitting your goal. If you hit ten percent in the first forty eight hours, then you have, like, a twenty percent chance of hitting your goal because people show up and there's no perceived mo mentum and the psychology of the m...

ob mentality is that, well, gus, I'm not they're never going to make it, so why bother backing the campaign so you got to show the early momentum we're going to show how to do that. In another segment, but right now you would you got to think about is I want to show the lowest goal so that I could show the most momentum early on the danger is let's say any four hundred thousand dollars and I said my goal and attracted fifty thousand words easy to show momentum and then I don't and then I hit fifty thousand, but now I don't have enough money to actually deliver on my promise. So there's a business decision you have to make about what's, you know, am I prepared to deliver even if I don't hit my real goal? But I do hit their public goal so there could be a difference there. My public als fifty thousand, my real goals four hundred thousand I'm taking a risk, but if I put it at four hundred thousand no risk, the risk now is that I'm not going to get any money at all no funding because I'm not going to get enough, so you have to make that decision. What you want to do is be prepared to deliver if you hit your goal even if it was below what's really needed, which means you have to have alternative funding sources lined up or you know you can get it either because you've got it, your friends and family have it or you can get an investor and you're confident in that we talked about this earlier it's not just about making profit it's about bringing in you know mo mentum and market validation all those things so it may not be realistic to think that it's going to cover all your expenses so you want to have those things lined up anyway like hey investor, I'm going to do this project after a successful campaign I want you to put money and we may only get fifty thousand but we're gonna need the balance are you in you know and if they're not then you've got to really be careful about, you know, running the campaign and level where you can't make up the difference people do it and occasionally they figure out how to pull it off and sometimes they don't with the carbon fire we put our goal of fifty thousand we hit four hundred thousand thank god so we were committed to delivering no matter what happened and then what happened is it took off and it did four hundred thousand dollars which is what we needed to deliver in the product because it's a super complicated product so people are like what's the right answer on my goal setting and there's no right answer like you just have to make a judgment call based on your best guest based on where you're at so let's go real quick back to the financial calculator and we look at our goal calculator so let's say you're just making some guesses and that's all you can do is make your best guest so let's say you're going to sell, you know, a thousand units would be a lot of something to sell in the campaign and again off to the right we just have different scenarios scenario one scenario too shaken look at different possibilities and see what would happen in these different possibilities about erasing a particular scenario that so you're selling something that is going toe average fifty dollars per unit is going to retail for seventy five some people are going to get it for, you know, thirty and something we're gonna pay fifty or sixty, but after all the averages out, you're doing an average of fifty that's fifty thousand dollars in revenue. Now you got to think, well, what are my mold costs? So depending so you've got to get, quote, state your mold costs at least some estimates that say it's going to ten thousand dollars for whatever it is we're selling here. Development costs are like engineering in whatever costs let's say you spend ten thousand dollars on engineering, which would be a very a small amount of money, by the way to spend on developing a product that can easily be hundreds of thousands depending on what you're doing, and then you've got that twelve dollars, cost of goods sold let's say, cost of shipping, we're going to call a wash we're going to collect exactly what we're going to charge, so we're just put nothing there that means we're spending twelve thousand dollars, twelve dollars, cost times a thousand units, twelve thousand dollars plus twenty thousand dollars and fixed expenses that we have thirty two thousand dollars and cost, and then we can decide how much with another to which we'll get to in the market thing, or how much we spend on paper click it's where maybe we're not going to spend anything on paper, click ads, and we're but we're going to use, um, you know, so we could use these tools or not. We put the space in there in case they decide to use something like male champ or un bouncer at espresso, which are tools that we typically use and then all the people involved. So this just depends on what you're using, and at the end you come up with your total of your cost to the the campaign, and then you've got your job, platform fees, your total expenses or sixty three thousand dollars sort the end of this you your thirteen thousand dollars in the hole, if that's what you raise so you could do that calculation and figure out where is where my on my goal setting is this you know, where, how many units do I need to sell in orderto achieve, you know, breaking even on it? Or can I eat the thirteen thousand dollars? And this will just help you make the decision about where you want to set your goal, and then you're balancing that psychology of, like, what's going to work with the backers with the psychology of like, how much can I risk? Can I afford to takes lasting referral campaigns? You can create referral campaigns is a tool inside indiegogo that makes it easy. I don't know that kickstarter has the same type of tool, but where you contract referrals, you could create a separate they create a special link using a tool that they can share with your audiences. If foreign referral campaigns to be effective, you need to offer an extremely exciting incentive to the people who are sharing it in order to get them to share the campaign effectively meaning if you get three people to refer or like with a quickie, we had any single person you get to refer, you get a free quickie and that worked very well, like you get fifty people to come in and buy a quickie than you get fifty three quickies, and we had people learn a couple hundred quick he's that way. So that was a very attractive referral campaign we've had others that were less attractive, you really, for a referral campaigns to work, you gotta truly incentivized people, and you've got to look at it as a marketing expense, so we like, how much does the free one cost me that's? Just a marketing expense? If I'm spending twenty dollars to make a sale with paper, click ads, and the thing cost me twenty dollars, then it's, like I can give one away for every single person sale that they make and it's the same. She just got a look at it through the same lens, and create the most attractive referral campaign you can, where it makes money in order to cause it to spread, and so refer, campaigns can be more or less effective, but they're an important piece of the campaign. For a lot of the campaigns that go bigger, get a lot of viral sharing. The viral sharing again helps you not just because the sales it creates, but it shows momentum on the site, so interest was cause you more organic hits because it raises your profile on the public pages, you get more organic, so again, the questions you're asked yourself, if you're considering campaign, what is your goal? How do you? Where do you want to set it, given what you you know, got in front of you do want to set your goal of ten thousand fifty thousand a hundred thousand dollars and what do you, you know, committed to doing? If you don't hit your goal, are you ready to make up the difference yourself? How are you going to do that? So their homework for you is as you're looking at your campaign and building your campaign, this is especially for those of you watching online is how clear is your value? Well, first, we'll gather up some similar sites, gather up those sites that are relevant to what you're going to do, man, and ask yourself about that campaign, and then about your own campaign that you're going to create what's the value proposition. Is it clear? How does the campaign make you feel? But what's the brand kind of message behind it? What's the angle and what works and what doesn't work like I love this about the campaign, I don't love that and being analytical and coming up with list and coming up with, you know what works, what doesn't work about each one, the campaigns and taking the time to be thorough and detailed, and your analysis in order, set yourself up to win and that's it for this segment, and when we come back, we're going to be talking about the video, which is the most important part of the campaign or than the product itself, we spent a lot of time on these key elements, but the video is what really drives that it's, what causes people to say yes or no? And so we're going to dive into that, and then we're gonna talk about the marketing that you do before you launch the campaign order. Set yourself up to win. All right, a couple of questions here from the online audience before we wrap up this one. This comes from general, who says great information so far is it a good idea? Toe launch the same campaign on more than one platform, for instance, indiegogo and kick starter. I know people understand there are more than one platform out there. How do people decide it is okay to put it on more than one? Is that okay? Is I mean, I think sure, it's ok the challenges if you're trying to build an audience and market to an audience typically you're trying to drive him someplace. So how are you picking where to drive them and why? And so so so much of especially, the early campaign is created by you driving people to the site using an email list in your social networks, it's becomes confusing to me where you would drive them I have seen a couple campaigns that started in one place, then did a second campaign later on another site, but I haven't seen a ton of examples of that, and I can't like clearly say it's a good idea. It strikes me as potentially not a great idea in terms of creating channel conflict. Okay, uh, and as I've said, we have a huge international audience out there watching, so this one actually comes from roman who's in monaco, and the question is, do you think that there's a huge difference and or limitations and using crowdfunding platforms based in the yusa versus ones that are based in europe? Do you have any experience working with other international platforms? I guess that just of the question is, do people in different countries have to be weary of this? Like, should I support something that's based in the u s if I live in monaco or vice versa, is there any guidance for people who may be hesitant to to launch something or to back something in a different country? Um, well, I know I don't know the platforms, the international platform, that I know they exist, I do know that indiegogo has a huge international presence and actually like on our campaigns, something like a third of our backers tend to be international on oliver campaigns and I know that's the same with kickstarter as well. I think they both have a large international reach. People from all over the world are back in the campaigns. Certainly, if a local, you know, platform might be beneficial in terms of being in the local language and, you know, supporting locally as well, like here's, a local company, let's, support the platform local platform as well. So there's something to be said for that. But the reach of, you know, the internets global, and I think you wouldn't be, you know, making a mistake to put your campaign on indiegogo or kickstarter.