I should have done up a post here for this a while ago since this is afterall my own Kickstarter project, but better late then never I guess!
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As some of you may already know, I’ve been working on a 3D CG animated web series for a while. We’re finally at the point where I feel comfortable doing a Kickstarter. Irregardless of whether or not the campaign succeeds, I’ve collected a lot of data for the stuff I’ve done.
A lot of people believe that you need to maximize your Kickstarter campaign and get as much money as possible, but I don’t think of Kickstarter as a way to generate pre-sales like most people do. My goal is to raise awareness and get funded by folks who really believe in what I’m doing and not just sell them something.
Being someone who’s done a lot on the post-campaign side of Kickstarter projects and not just on the pre-campaign and campaign stages which are typically what a lot of people study, I wanted to screen out the mass market that’s really only interested in the final product and only focus on the early adopters who in my experience, while may not be the most profitable in terms of funding a Kickstarter, they are the most loyal and actually have the highest tolerance for risk which leads to less headaches in the post-campaign stage.
This is my market segmentation curve. During the Kickstarter I’m only focusing on who I call the True Believers and the Visionaries. These are the folks who need the least amount of tangibility and to be totally honest, at this point in time I don’t want to give away too much in terms of story and plot line because it’s prone to change based on what I can get in terms of funding.
Unlike funding a film with live actors where I can just dress up someone as a new character, every additional character needs to be created so we have to work the script around what we have and not what we would like. That creates a bit of a rift between us and the early majority which is labeled as Pragmatists in the market segmentation. These are the folks that need to know the in absolute certainty fine details and have very little tolerance for risk and or change.
You don’t know how often I’ve had to deal with people during the post-campaign stage of projects who want their $10 back for a variety of silly reasons. From things like an update going out indicating that project story is going a slightly different direction or if the project is taking a bit of a delay because of production issues. Even if they only put in $10, a lot of them act entitled like they put in $1,000,000 and won’t tolerate anything other than exactly what they backed. These are the folks I’m trying to avoid at this early stage of the project, not because I think they’re wrong but mostly because the project isn’t ready for the mass market which is better catered to when we have all the episodes completed or have a whole season for them to watch to see if they like it enough to put in $10.
Either way, I’ll be posting my findings about the campaign once it’s done. I’m doing a lot of stuff that’s counter intuitive from what “experts” who have sorted out how to maximize funding for crowd funding projects, but everything done is intentional because this time I’m funding this project for my own project where I have to deal with the aftermath.
Cheers,
Budd