by Helena Kaufman

Time to Ship Out

Photo credit usps.com

You’ve reached your goal!  You’ve ‘shipped’ personally by getting the project done. Now time for the conventional shipping that sends out the rewards promised to backers who supported your potential.

Kickstarter has some tips on the reward fulfillment phase to help get out your final product to funders:

• Be organized. It reduces overwhelm.
• Have fun! It may even make it all simpler and easier, and less stressful.
• Get backer information. In the all or nothing funding model, you request information needed to deliver rewards only after project funding is complete. Kickstarter has its own survey tool where you design forms for the information you need. It notifies backers by email and their responses are entered automatically, ready for use in your Backer Report.
• Plan ahead –Take shipping costs into account when you budget at the start of your project. They are often underestimated. Factor in how you’ll ship rewards, their weight and both local and global shipping costs. Transportation, packaging costs as well as fees and time to deal with customs forms all cost. Kickstarter suggests you research at USPS guidelines, checklists, and bulk mail info, and then other options to help you select the best mode for you.
• Continue to Communicate! Engage and inform all the way through your fulfillment process. Your photos of packaging up rewards, your post office dramas and the fun and foibles from stamp licking to send off are all of interest to your backers.

Do share the photos and videos people love to see and make it a celebratory party for all involved.

You’ll ask your backers to communicate at least one more time—to tell you when their reward arrives. This is the last moment of your hard won first phase of your project. Enjoy it and hopefully you’ve planted the seeds for your growth and your backers telling friends, who’ll tell friends… and extend their experience in your success.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Communicate to Propel Project Success

Launching your Kickstarter Project

You’ve chosen to create something that matters. While you may have followed Kickstarter’s well designed and guided model, it and some of the new demands in marketing may be a bit out of the “business as usual” mode most of us were raised in.

This means that some people experience ‘fear of shipping’.  In this instance we’ll use shipping as used by Seth Godin, a marketing pioneer known for bolstering creative types who are carving out new models. To succeed you must actually get your product or message out there.  Communication is one of those critical and ongoing requirements.

Barriers to getting the word out well might include fear, project fatigue, hesitancy to promote yourself or simply lack of know-how.  These can delay or avoid communicating about your project and its various interesting and essential components. Each stage has a ‘shipping’ situation that must be met to make it real and to help it meet with success.

Ship Shape and Ready to Communicate

Let’s simply reframe this pressure and call it sharing. Kickstarter has some suggestions to ship out information and ensure your success at this more than mid-way time in your project:

Project updates – share progress, post media, and thank your backers. Posting a project update automatically sends an email to all your backers with that update.

Maintain momentum- inform and inspire project supporters for the duration of your fundraising period. Sharing fun followups helps spread the word while your contribution time clock ticks.

Say Thanks Inclusively – A meaningful thank you to all the people that helped make your fully funded project possible is accomplished by sharing your process.

Boost communication success by sharing:

• photos
• progress such as finding artists, supply sources
• personal experiences of the process
• decisions, feelings about meeting goals, challenges and even asking for feedback
• celebrations such as reviews, press, and photos from your project out in the world-being read, played or viewed.

Keeping backers informed and engaged is essential to Kickstarter and other outreach models.

Unfold your story, rather than simply posting pledge requests—bring it to life for your backers. You may find communicating with your backers to be the most rewarding parts of the process for you. Try it. Everyone will like it.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Promotion Power

Le Kickstarter

Promotion, or marketing, is the natural next step on your path to bring any creative idea, product or service you’ve conceived and nurtured to public attention.

After you’ve refined your goals and project details during incubation, you must go public to succeed, so prepare to launch your project. Use the momentum you’ve gotten from communicating your message in text and video and go out there and engage your audience directly. The due date is now and smart marketing will take your “baby” right to delivery and beyond.

You’ll get valuable feedback from your promotional interaction and you’ll create success throughout its life cycle in the marketplace.  Kickstarter estimates that “as much as 80% of your accomplishing your goals and finalizing a project will be due to marketing.”

Use Your Networks and Power Up Promotion

Product promotion fuels the success of any business. Here’s a Kickstarter refresher with its focus on your own networks (and their networks):

• Timely repetition is essential. To have people back your projects, or buy your goods you must tell them what you offer and tell them more than once.
• A personal message in email is an effective and a nice way to notify close friends and family first about your project.
• Tune in everyone else who is paying attention by posting on your personal blog, your Facebook page, and your Twitter account.
• Remind your networks a few times during the course of your projects, without overwhelming potential supporters with e-blasts and group messages.
• Individual contacts can make the big difference in your success.
• Go ‘face to face’ and let people see your passion for your project in person – educate, promote, encourage fun get-togethers and organize pledge parties to let people join in–creatively.
• Tell traditional media! Your local newspaper, TV, and radio stations especially like DIY (do it yourself) stories.
• Request coverage from like-minded bloggers and online media outlets – and help fill the quest for content.

Be respectful of people’s pages both on Kickstarter and out in social media and don’t push people away by over posting. Begging or nagging is not a strategy towards success in the project process.

Next time, a short note on overcoming the “fear of shipping.”

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Realistic Reach

Setting goals is a real test of your own confidence in your project, don’t you find?

You’ve taken your idea from your mind to the market. You’ve followed logical steps that include, but are not limited to:

• Dreaming and daring
• Planning and plotting an outline
• Gathering your resources, allocating time and energy
• Imagining how to communicate your passion and project
• Preparing a video and word picture to take public

You’ve done all this in various degrees of privacy and sharing. When you dare to set actual goals, you really find out how committed you are and how organized you are. Get this straight in your mind, and you’ll return to your video script and redraft your messages to really get that confidence across.

Goals are for you to see and meet, and your backers to sense and feel secure supporting!

All or Nothing – a Kickstarter Goal

Because Kickstarter operates on an all-or-nothing funding model, projects must be fully funded at the end of the fund raising period, or no money changes hands. Your requirements:

• Set a funding goal based on what you need to complete your project
• Pick a length of time to reach your cash goal considering that you will be reaching out to virtual strangers, friends, family and your current and developing networks

Decisions are made individually as each project has its own personality and life.

Budget Basics

Your next steps hinge on how much money you need. Are you going for full funding, or a partial amount? Naturally, it’s not just an inflow or revenue you count. Consider production costs of the videos, materials, plus the rewards and delivering them to backers.

Getting to Goal

Set your funding goal, once you’ve tallied up all your research and listed all your costs. You can raise more than your goal but never less due to Kickstarter’s model. If you are working outside of this model, you want to be as close in the ‘ball park’ figuring as possible as most business models don’t allow for the kind of testing available at Kickstarter and fail safe protection of contributor’s cash in case the project is not a ‘go’.

Set the goal or a mark you can meet, or you’ll have nothing.

Timing Is Everything

As critical in commerce and communication as it is in comedy, so is timing your project outreach.
Project deadlines can be set for a one to 60 day range. It may seem natural to go for a longer period of time but then you run the risk of backers procrastinating, or thinking they will return. You lose urgency and therefore momentum.
You also don’t want to lose steam, yourself. It takes energy and attention to run a campaign, or monitor a Kickstart fund raising project. Statistically, projects lasting 30 days or less have the highest success rate according to Kickstarter. This period of time seems to convey confidence in your project and goal.

Staying on Track, Personally and Professionally

Set goals at the top of the project, and review them as you become wiser from experience or new information.

If you know what you are aiming for then you can take advantage of opportunities to tell your story. Promoting your project in various channels of communication becomes easy and natural with goals. Your goal (re)setting will both inspire you to action and prevent you from overdoing some aspect that might detract from your ultimate achievement.

Next time, your promotion channels.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Your Image and Your Project Page

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

We’ve seen that planning and preparing to present your project to the world is not a linear process. You are sure to revisit each component and to refine it, just as you would redraft and edit and refine any piece of writing attached to your project. You’ll always circle back, however, to the content of your message and the headlines and titles you choose. This ‘closes the loop’ and reinforces your essential message to help viewers focus and remember. This is your image – in words and pictures.

A well-defined image helps people to understand you quickly and to differentiate you from others. It makes you memorable. You have to start somewhere, so brainstorm with others or with yourself and write down catchy phrases and images that explain your project and will appeal to potential backers and ultimately customers and affiliates.

Your word picture is as important as your video voice. Your audience takes in messages in different ways. Your goal is to get your message across so that it captures and keeps the attention of visitors long enough to absorb it.

You want your words to help site visitors:

• Understand what you are doing
• Remember you
• Take the action you request

Remember that no matter how many clicks on your page, each visitor has a unique one-on-one experience of you and your message.  Visualize your ideal contributor or customer and talk to them as you write your message. Consider it a direct face-to-face conversation and make it personal and compelling as possible.

Consistency Counts

Your message not only reflects the essence of your project, it must:

• Inspire action by potential supporters
• Compete and stand out from the thousands of daily messages that bombard your viewers.

My smart marketing tips and Kickstarter’s guidelines form this checklist:

• Choose the words, clips, pictures, and symbols that will convey your message
• Use those selections consistently and  repeatedly to minimize confusion and maximize your standing out
• Title your project so that it is easily searchable and use the simple and specific words that are your actual project name
• Use everyday language to motivate, but stay away from words like: help, support or fund. You are offering experiences to value, not asking for a favor

More essentials:

Project description— Think ‘tweet’ size to quickly communicate what your project is about. Best to focus on what you hope to accomplish.

Write your bio— It creates trust and explains who you are, why you took on the project and can provide a record of previous work.

Your purpose is to engage and inform— Once you have offered sufficient information in a down-to-earth way you are on the road to influence and promotion.

Next time we’ll look at taking your promotional message a little farther afield.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Your Video Voice

Video is today’s essential though not only, mode of connection to an audience or customer base.

Video fulfills key requirements to help capture viewer interest and then influence action on their part.

Video is today’s essential. In a short presentation you:

• Convey your message ‘in person’ and assure authenticity
• Allow viewers to grasp details quickly and offer a fun way to assess your project
• Link to supporters directly by you showing your face and integrity

If you’ve planned out your ‘word picture’ your next natural step is to move you and your message to video.

Video before Text Content?

Does it feel counter intuitive to make your video first?

Yes, you are ready for video. How do we know? Because all along you have been telling your story. You’ve honed it in your market outreach plan, your first written drafts from brainstorm to business plan, in roughing out the rewards or incentives, and in response to people’s questions.

You intuitively know that you want your first video to be a natural, person to person presentation.  Youknow which elements are a ‘must do’ from a marketing standpoint. Compare the points you immediately thought to include with Kickstarter’s formal tips:

• Get it done, the sooner the better. Have fun and simply tell your story. Your passion will show!
• Show and tell. Show your face and establish a personal connection. Then let viewers see examples of your work or any visuals to make your message fun and memorable.
• In your ‘mini’ movie about you and the project, do:
  • Introduce yourself
  • Tell your project’s story
  • Ask for people’s support and explain why you need it
  • Reveal the rewards they’ll get for their money
  • Say thank you!

At Kickstarter, it may be useful to include a line or two explaining their protective all-or-nothing structure for newcomers to the site and its policies. Even with this checklist, moving early to video yields results and shows you in an earnest and authentic light.

As a creative person, you will want to respect copyright and not use others’ images or audio or visual clips.

Kickstarter offers a video guide with tech tips and preparation: here.

Next up, we revisit that text message.

Be in touch,

Be creative,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Guidance Before You Go Public with Your Project

There is that magnificent leap you must make in your planning whose chasm borders the creative concept and the market in whose hands the final product will be purchased and appreciated.

Your leap needn’t be made alone. In fact it’s best interests to ‘try it out’ on what we call in the work of writing, “friendly readers.”

These are people you call on for guidance with all the details and decisions along the way. Ideally, they will understand you and your creative efforts and can be counted on to give you a fair hearing with tact and honesty. They should not be inclined to the extremes of telling you whatever they think you want to hear for fear of hurting you, nor of the sort to stomp on you with criticism severe enough to snuff out your spirit because they think it’s what is needed or perhaps have a hidden agenda.

Happily, Kickstarter offers valuable guidance on review of your project before you post, or go public. You are requested to share your project. This ensures that it fits into the guidelines and that it will take best advantage of the platform. While your creativity often feels unique and deserving of its own life, a quick look at projects that have been accepted in the past, and in particular, were successful in raising funds is a good idea. There are times in the marketing of our ideas that fitting in is as important as standing out.

• You benefit in fitting in to a business model and defining a project and stating its goals:
• You help your potential supporters to understand your vision – from beginning to its necessary end
• You figure out early what your most ‘saleable’ point are to differentiate you and your work
• You learn to engage your audience early

These are all smart marketing moves in any format. While the process of justifying and of clarifying your vision feels burdensome to some creative people, it does help you get an early jump on connecting to your immediate supporters and to the ultimate extenders of your success – collectors, distributors and customers.

The gentle merge from compliance with basics of business to the marketing lane, requires asking similar questions to establish the best route:

• What do I produce? Product or experience?
• Who will value it most?
• Why is it different? Important? Beautiful? Essential?

Understanding how your creativity is perceived helps you establish value and therefore pricing. We’ve at the moment where you must ask a “real world” realistic price from either your Kickstart backers on your rewards, or your actual daily customers.

Kickstart statistics bear out that small is successful.  Most popular pledges are $25.00, while the average is $70.00. Projects with a reward under $20 succeed more than half of the time.

So, before we get too many horses ahead of the (shopping) cart, we’ll next examine how to add the human touch to technology that connects creator and customer.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

How Rewards Keep Your Funding Coming In

In our introduction to Kickstarter, the innovative platform for seeking capital to make creative projects happen, we agreed that Step 1 naturally starts with the idea. The concept is closely followed by its being fleshed out.

Would you be surprised if I told you your next step with Kickstarter should be how to reward your supporters?

Engage Early and Satisfy

Indeed, Step 2 in Kickstarter’s suggested process is developing the ‘rewards’.  Since supporters cannot buy into a project for a percentage in return for capital, incentives are required.

You create a ladder of rewards, with different elements offered for different levels of support; you are doing something far more brilliant than attracting a flow of money. Your rewards are offering patrons:

• The experience of participating in your art and progress in your process of fulfilling it
• Engagement in the elements that make your work valuable
• An advance sample of your talent that you are testing and that your patrons will be talking about

What are the rewards doing for you?

Thinking about the rewards to offer, early, helps an artist see what essential experiences delight or privileged peeks a supporter might value. For some, it may help structure the work and motivate concrete results through a kind of accountability to a ‘waiting’ audience who have chosen to support you. The creation of awards and their enjoyment is a bonding experience that elevates everyone involved in a Kickstarter project – creators and supporters alike.

See Through Your Audience’s Eyes

Gain new perspectives about your work when you allow yourself to see and feel the excitement and interest your work stirs in someone else. The process of pleasing your supporters, without compromising your principles or direction, but rather delighting new initiates, might boost your own estimation of your work, its value and impact. All the better to increase your connection with your audience and enhance your creative energies.

Kickstarter reward suggestions include fun experiences – like visits to a studio or set, inclusion in the credits, attendance at an event hosted by the artist or tangible mementos such as copies of the finished album, CD, limited editions. Or, you can include your patron in the story, song, art or credits as thanks for their contribution to the flow of both cash and creativity.

Be in touch,

Be creative,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Kickstarter Funds Creative Projects and Fosters Communication

Since our last post we’ve dispersed to summer events and our various corners of creativity. In between enjoying face-to-face opportunities at markets and fairs, most of us are keeping in touch with our customers, suppliers, and interested supporters via social media and our contact lists.

Today, we’ll explore Kickstarter, a program that helps fund creative projects beyond our everyday activity in the selling of our current products and services.

Kickstarter success calls on the very skills we’ve been building together at Artisan Ally. Interaction and engagement impact the transparency that characterizes Kickstarter communication with a slightly different, though definitely interested, audience.

Classic Patronage Revisited

As the largest funding platform in the world, Kickstarter sees untold thousands of people pledging dollars totaling in the millions to projects each week in the creative fields it currently covers: music, film, art, comics, photography, dance, theater, technology, design, fashion, food and publishing.

Are they commercial partnerships? Not quite.

Here’s how it can work for you:

Begin by defining your project. Understand that Kickstarter centers on projects and helping others see your goals clearly, is critical to helping others choose to support you.

It has the feel of classic patronage blended with commerce. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Every viewer of your written details and a video making your case is like an independent banker who assesses and evaluates projects on their interest, merit and viability.

You need a clearly defined beginning and you must definitely have an end and a declared goal. Note that Kickstarter does not support business starts or operational needs. It helps fund projects. Each has a limited time to raise money and will not receive any funding on Kickstarter unless the intended goal is reached. This ensures maximum effort on the part of the fund seeker and protects voluntary contributors and their cash.

Each project must therefore be well thought out and offer creators the opportunity to test ideas at low risk and for contributors to be part of a dynamic creation. Both parties benefit. Both are rewarded.

Next time, more on the nitty-gritty of sample projects, pricing and rewards. We’ll also revisit hot marketing tips and how to apply them for potentially fast results within the Kickstarter system.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints

by Helena Kaufman

Clean and Control Your Social Media Contact List

Today, let’s look at the condition of your comment space. I’d like you to consider a visit to your settings. Close down access to your ‘wall’, or the opportunity for people to post random, unrelated or unwarranted messages on your ‘page’. The wall is a Facebook feature, but other social media venues have similar comment spaces.
Consider going beyond monitoring and approving before a comment goes ‘live’. Actively remove the option for others to initiate posts and here is why:

Audience Engagement in Social Media
“Whoa! Helena, haven’t you been advising Artisan Ally readers to increase their contact lists and be authentic community builders?”
Engaging your audience and managing your message are not mutually exclusive goals. Try it for 21 days and form a new habit! Don’t worry. You won’t be a passive censor of communication by doing this. Your new habit will naturally yield creativity and will result in more and conscious social media activity.
Yes, you do want to invite comments and interaction.
Yes, you want to engage with relevant information and links and to share useful, appealing and interesting posts.
Your goal is still to draw interest and offer quality, so as sole ‘poster’ on your wall your duties are now to:

• Post creatively
• Post mindfully with the goal of informing, provoking opinion and encouraging ongoing conversation
• Post often, or at least at regular intervals

Channeling engagement on your pages is a smart use of your resources. In a world where social media proofs or evidence of activity, responses and fan sign ups and ‘likes’ raise your profile with both humans and search engines, you can improve your profit and your reach when you concentrate your communications.

You are still providing your readers, visitors, customers and industry contacts who wish to contribute or comment on your page or offerings, or perhaps even praise you, an area to do so by responding in the comment spaces below your posts.

The advantage of social media – interaction and engagement – remains. It is simply funneled into the opportunities you offer in the comment spaces below posts that support your brand and illuminate your unique contributions to your community.

Post often enough and with energy and variety to elicit response. Don’t be afraid to take a stand and evoke participation in the conversation threads you initiate.

If you post it, and post well, they will come, and comment.

Be creative,

Be in touch,

Helena

Sovereigns and Saints