Tim Ferriss Guide to Hacking Kickstarter in 2020: Raise 100k in 14 days | Press Farm
Tim Ferriss is undoubtedly the golden boy of the digital world. He has so many achievements under his belt that every entrepreneur on the planet seems to look up to him. For this reason, if you have a unique idea or product ready for the market, Tim’s guide to raise 100k in 14 days might be just the ticket.
Kickstarter is a global platform on which a community of creative people helps to give a boost to A new idea. For instance, you have an amazing and unique idea or product, but, you are unable to kick-start your project. You lack finances and trustworthy partners to get things moving. If that’s the case, Kickstarter is the best bet to materialize your dream project. It works on crowdfunding.
At the same time, in order to excel on the platform, it’s important understand the most significant factors behind a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Tim Ferriss Guide to Raising 100k in 14 days
Back in 2012, Tim Ferriss shared a success story about the founder of Soma on his blog. As part of the endeavor, he shared every nook and corner of his venture with Mike Del Ponte. Almost seven years have been passed, and we have seen a lot of variations in the trends of the market. But Tim keeps on inspiring dynamic entrepreneurs with his fantastic knowledge.
With this in mind, here’s what you can do to hacking Kickstarter in 2019 to raise 100k in 14 days according to Tim Ferriss.
1. Relevant Case Studies are Important
Tim Ferriss has always appreciated the efforts of his friends and fans in terms of his success. What’s more, he never shies away from accepting what he has learned from his contemporaries. On many occasions, Tim Ferriss has even acknowledged the contributions of his fellow entrepreneurs. For instance, Tribe of Mentors proves Tim’s acknowledgment of other successful people.
2. No Hard Work: Only Smart Work is your key to Success
According to Tim Ferriss, you should design your Kickstarter strategy to be “smart”. Due to the internet, the consumer market has become more intelligent and rational. He advises keeping the following things in check before getting too engrossed in the process of your campaign.
3. Pre-planning of Marketing Activities
Tim Ferriss always pre-plans the steps of his Kickstarter campaign. It gives Tim a competitive edge in his projects. As an example, you can prepare the drafts of your emails and marketing materials beforehand.
Also, according to the Kickstarter website, 165,971 projects have been successfully funded by the platform while 281,399 projects failed to collect funds.
But what made these 281,399 projects a futile attempt for their founders?
Yes, you are guessing it right. Slow execution and ineffective planning can be the downfall of any project.
In an interview with ZURB, Tim even outlined his primary strategy for marketing campaigns. What he did for his first Kickstarter was a brilliant move. First of all, Tim identified the demographics for his project and chose 1000 devoted fans who would then spread word of mouth at lightening pace.
4. Using the Principle of MED
A smart entrepreneur always pays heed to the delicate bond between input and output capabilities.
Tim Ferriss refers to the use of a principle called MED to produce successful results in the 100k campaign. MED stands for Minimum Effective Dose. He advises identifying the crucial factors for raising 100k in 14 days and then focusing on these factors the most.
How Can You Calculate MED for your Kickstarter Project?
Crowdfunding platforms give more privilege to projects which tend to bring more traffic.
While designing the campaign, Tim advises using all the referral resources to bring enough traffic to your project. You can assign the task of bringing traffic to your virtual assistant.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin are your best bet to bring mass traffic to your project. Tim Ferriss advises using website and blogs to market the project as well. Partner blogs and sites play a very healthy role in your Kickstarter campaign.
Email marketing is an old and reliable way to invite masses to your project as well. It may not be as effective as once it was because different social media platforms are also available now. But it is still considered a most critical communication channel for the Kickstarter campaigns.
2016 Consumer Adoption and Usage Study at Adestra revealed that 43% of the consumers provide their real e-mail for sign-up at a website. It’s a good indication of consumer behavior for your Kickstarter project. Tim Ferriss also considers e-mail marketing the most reliable source of traffic for a Kickstarter campaign.
The consumers of the age group 18–34 always check their emails on their mobile phones. But according to a study by Litmus.com, the percentage of e-mail checking at mobile phones dropped significantly in 2017.
- iPhone: decreased by 28%
- Ipad: decreased by 11%
- Android: decreased by 11%
It could be worrisome for the Kickstarter entrepreneurs in 2019. That could bring a delayed response from the consumers and maybe, that’s the reason to focus more on social media sites in 2019.
5. Virtual Assistants are the Need of the Hour
Tim Ferriss has given a new ideology to the dynamic entrepreneur. He encourages his followers to liberate themselves from conventional 9–5 and to use time and energy more efficiently. For this reason, virtual assistants are the need of the modern world.
In fact, the CEO of Hub Staff had made a statement that virtual assistants offer a better return on investment than the regular workforce. Tim Ferriss has also credited the success of his businesses and Kickstarter projects to virtual assistants on many occasions in his blog posts and podcasts.
6. Understanding the Role of Press
Tim suggests that 80/20 is the formula to get press on your side for a triumphant Kickstarter campaign. According to him, 20% of the efforts should result in 80% of the press coverage.
Just so you know, the founders of Linjer Chong and Roman raised 100k in six hours for their startup at Kickstarter. More specifically, they designed their pre-launch campaign on Tim’s guidelines and garnered 100k successfully from crowdfunding.
In Tim’s collaboration with Mike, their campaign caught the attention of biggies in media in 10 days. Media houses like Huffington Post and Forbes gave fantastic coverage to Soma. For successful media output, Tim Ferriss gave us a 4R principle to make the media list.
- Relevance: target the audience with similar beliefs and needs for your project. (You can quickly build a media list by using Pressfarm’s up-to-date database of journalist contacts spread out across USA, UK, Canada, and Australia)
- Readership: what is the status of a particular media website in terms of visitor turnover.
- Relationships: how many media houses can you approach through personal contacts?
- Reach: are your partner blogs going to send direct traffic to your Kickstarter project?
7. The Great Importance of Project Research
According to Tim, you can divide your project research into five parts. Each step of research brings value to your project.
- Potential Blog Partners: You must an in-depth look at the successful people who did the same Kickstarter campaigns like you.
- Site Traffic Record: you must keep a track record of the blogs which can be a potential publisher for you. It will help you to get the bigger picture of your media coverage.
- Make a Record of the Reach of your Promotor Blogs: ask your VA to make an excel worksheet to record the activities of visitors on a blog.
These steps can provide a more clear prospect of your press coverage. When you are done with creating a media list, you can use virtual assistants to carry out the activities. Ferriss claims in his blog that 90% of his press campaign activities were managed by virtual assistants.
8. Friendly Collaboration with Other Bloggers
Blog posts bring a significant amount of traffic to your Kickstarter projects. Tim believes in making amiable collaboration with other bloggers. For the project Soma, he and Mike got an enormous amount of support from their friends. Instead of the formal collaborations with bloggers, you can rely on your blogger friends to give a shout-out to your project.
Your Kickstarter page should contain all the necessary information about your project. The more in-detail you post about your project, the more manageable it will be for the bloggers to write about it. You can upload high-quality images, videos, and embed codes for the convenience of writers.
9. Maximize the Reach of your Project
Tim suggests using your time and efforts smartly. You do not need to do everything by yourself. You can ask your virtual assistant to formulate a list of relevant bloggers. Reverse image search can give you the close results about the pro bloggers in your field.
Your virtual assistant will make a list of top 5 or top 10 bloggers. These are your possible partners in the marketing campaigns. You can approach these bloggers through a formal email. If agreed, these bloggers can give a massive shout-out to your project. Tim Ferriss was able to collaborate with a lot of bloggers by his fantastic pitches. Your Kickstarter page is the key resource for the bloggers.
Now, your job does not end on gathering the support of the blogging community. Tim Ferriss emphasizes to convince the bloggers to publish a story about your project on weekdays in the morning time. The best bet is to publish all the stories about your project on the launch time.
Simply put, your promotional activities should aim to increase the visibility of your project on the internet — the success of your project banks on the success of your promotional activities.
10. Utilizing Personal Contacts the Right Way
Kickstarter projects are based on crowdfunding. So every single penny should be spent on a more valuable aspect. You can hire expert marketers to design launch event for your project as well.
Tim advises making sections of your contacts. These personal contacts can be grouped based on their role in the promotional campaign of your project. According to Tim, your contacts will be divided into three categories.
- Friends who could spread a big word of mouth for your projects a.k.a influencers
- Friends who are already helping you out in your project
- Friends who need to be involved in your project but they aren’t aware of it.
Tim Ferriss usually made three categories for his projects, but you can create as many as you need. You need to prepare a different pitch for every group. Personalized e-mail which shows how close and valuable the participation of your friends is a great way to activate your network. Tim suggests using all the e-mail marketing tools to get a quick turnaround in activating your private network.
11. Why you Need Landing Pages for a Kickstarter Project
Tim Ferriss started to create landing pages for his projects to avoid the lengthy procedures of Kickstarter project pages for the visitors. Nowadays, a Landing page is a reflection of your project. According to Tim Ferriss, landing pages are proven to boost the sharing campaign for your project.
Tim generated 300k e-mail contact list from one of his first landing pages. That was the breaking point when Tim realized the value of a useful landing page in a Kickstarter campaign. According to Tim, that landing page wasn’t perfect. It had a lot of distractions, but it still managed to get him email sign-ups in bulk.
In fact, this landing page also inspired other entrepreneurs and marketers and according to Serpstat, 48% of expert marketers build a new landing for every new marketing campaign.
Final Thoughts
At first, it may sound unrealistic to raise 100k for your company in 10 days. But Tim Ferriss Guide to raising 100k in 14 days had made it possible for the average entrepreneur. It’s true, Tim has gifted his followers the best practices of successful people around the globe in his recent books and also the best way to create a successful Kickstarter project in the above guide.
Originally published at https://press.farm on October 29, 2019.
