Content-Marketing Lessons From 4 Successful Kickstarter Campaigns To successfully raise funds for a project, follow the steps taken during these funded efforts.
By Aaron Agius Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Why do some Kickstarter campaigns succeed while others fail? The secret may be effective content marketing.
Here are four examples of Kickstarter campaigns with great content marketing.
1. IAMMAI is an athletic apparel brand. Its recent Kickstarter campaign is for a new shirt touted to be "The coolest workout shirt you will ever own."
Look at IAMMAI's Twitter page and you'll see that it works with other brands and individuals.
Related: Everything You Need for a Winning Crowdfunding Campaign (Infographic)
For example, it partnered with Charity Miles. Charities are a great way to give back, but they also offer a great branding partnership opportunity for your business.
Action step: Partner with others to expand the reach of your content-marketing efforts. Tell your story in a way that gives others a reason to cheer for your success.
Make yourself part of a community. Say that you're "Proud to be part of [city, state, online group, etc.]." Then share your content and mention influencers in those communities. Hopefully, they will re-share your content.
2. Coolest Cooler. Ryan Grepper struggled to fund the Coolest Cooler. It's now the most-funded Kickstarter ever.
Grepper shared everything he tried shortly after his first effort -- everything from promoted tweets to Facebook ads and more. Grepper discussed initially that his personally-constructed press releases showed potential when he reached out to target bloggers.
This time around, the Coolest Cooler rose up the press coverage ranks all the way to The Today Show during its record-setting run on Kickstarter.
Action step: Get more shares for your content by starting small. Find a niche blog. Then reach out to a larger blog and say, "We were featured on this blog ..." Then do it again, going bigger each time.
The tactic, "Trading Up The Chain," was outlined by Ryan Holiday in Trust Me, I'm Lying.
3. Noke, a Bluetooth padlock, exceeded its goal during its Kickstarter campaign.
Related: 4 Ways Kickstarter Can Boost Your Brand in Addition to Raising Money
It was created by designers who had already released some products. This gave them insight into how to build buzz for the campaign so they could easily reach their goal.
On the Noke Facebook page, the team shared regular updates that built anticipation. They would share a photo showing sneak peeks at the upcoming product.
By the launch date, Facebook followers were in a near frenzy trying to figure out what the product was going to be.
Action step: Start building your social audience now. Create content and share it using popular industry hashtags. Create guest content on popular industry blogs. Participate in industry podcasts.
Build your audience now and when you launch a new piece of big content or a big product in the future you can build anticipation because your audience is already built and waiting.
For more, read The Complete Guide to Building Your Blog Audience.
4. The memobottle is a sleek container that fits in your computer carrier.
The photos on the official memobottle website are fantastic. It makes such a huge difference when you use professional photography.
Action step: Hire a professional photographer to take top-notch photos for all your content. To go to the next level, hire professional videographers.
Start with freelancers on Fiverr. Find good people and pay them well to keep them around as you do more content marketing.
Final thoughts. Every Kickstarter campaign needs great content -- videos, descriptions and more.
But you also need great promotion. Each of the campaigns above had great content and great promotion to build their successes.
That's the secret to content marketing of any kind.
If you have a favorite Kickstarter campaign please share in the comments section.
