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Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

videopixie.com

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Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#11

Post by conesus »

its4tom wrote: post #10
conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I agree the video is well made. The quality is on par with what you'd expect for that budget. And it hits on all the recommendations we derived from the video benchmark data. Can you tell us more about your campaign tactics, other than video? eg. How big of a mailing list did you have prior to launch? did you advertise? any PR?

The only ads I bought were about $2k of Facebook ads, which converted into about $1.6k of pledges. Not a winning strategy. I hired a couple people with experience in FB ads to help me with the audience, but the CTR of 3-4% at $0.25 CPC did not convert well.

As for mailing list, I had 1,000 people signed up and I sent an email newsletter to 55k people who use my other service (which is compatible with this hardware), so it was relevant for them as well.

Of the lessons learned, building up the mailing list is quite possibly the biggest. Just having ads running that you optimize for months beforehand is a good setup for running ads during the campaign itself.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#12

Post by Retric »

conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

No offence, but that seems like an ultra niche product which may be part of the problem. Clearly some people like the idea but home automation + wood seems iffy to me. Worse only 4 buttons seems like a poor fit for home automation. One button suggest getting as many as you need, 4 is kind of an odd compromise.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#13

Post by conesus »

Retric wrote: post #12
conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

No offence, but that seems like an ultra niche product which may be part of the problem. Clearly some people like the idea but home automation + wood seems iffy to me. Worse only 4 buttons seems like a poor fit for home automation. One button suggest getting as many as you need, 4 is kind of an odd compromise.

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons.

Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the heater/fan kicks on (wemo), temp gets set (nest), etc. So you have lots of control but only have to change the battery once a year, so you can leave the remote out on the coffee table and feel like its part of your home.

But we're talking more than an order of magnitude difference raised here between campaigns, which is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#14

Post by its4tom »

sadface wrote: post #9

Interesting information! I really like the analysis of video content, particularly the "founder presence" info. However, I think that the headline results that isolate video cost when looking at raise results is a bit of an odd way to do this analysis because it leaves out the rest of the marketing mix. I'm actually preparing a crowdfunding campaign myself (first time), and I'd think that the main levers for success…

Totally agree. I think that's what we are seeing from the other comments as well. Video is only part of the battle, and a more complete study would look at all the variables together.

Video is interesting in that it accelerates your efforts in other areas. The time you spend making a better video should also help you reach a bigger audience (A), increase conversion thus making advertising (D) more effective, it probably helps with PR too (E) since media outlets prefer to show interesting videos, and with page quality (C) to a degree since you can reuse frames from the video for the page.

So back to your question! how much to spend on video is you have $20k budget overall. From an execution standpoint, we certainly see a sweetspot ~$3-6k for video, in that it allows you to get a clean professional video that looks legit. That's enough to hire a director with a small crew for a day and simple editing. If you spend less then you'll have to take on some of the director's responsibilities to make sure you hit on the requirements we found in the benchmark (location scouting, quality images, tight narration...) We wrote more about this here https://www.videopixie.com/how-much-does-a-kickstarter-video...

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#15

Post by Retric »

conesus wrote: post #13
Retric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, but that seems like an ultra niche product which may be part of the problem. Clearly some people like the idea but home automation + wood seems iffy to me. Worse only 4 buttons seems like a poor fit for home automation. One button suggest getting as many as you need, 4 is kind of an odd compromise.

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons. Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the h…

You could do unlimited selections with 1 button using Morse code, but that's terrible UI. Anyway, it's not that I think 4 buttons can't work it simply seems like a poor compromise like setting a clock on your VCR.

Can X work? Sure, but this is not the conversation you want to have with someone buying your product.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#17

Post by conesus »

Retric wrote: post #15
conesus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need. It's a 16 button remote. Hold a button down to switch to that button's app, and each app has its own four buttons. Buttons can also perform multiple actions at once. So you step into your home and press a button and everything welcomes you home: the lights fade up (hue, lifx), the music fades in (sonos, iTunes, spotify), the h…

You could do unlimited selections with 1 button using Morse code, but that's terrible UI. Anyway, it's not that I think 4 buttons can't work it simply seems like a poor compromise like setting a clock on your VCR. Can X work? Sure, but this is not the conversation you want to have with someone buying your product.

That morse code product is called Knocki and it raised $1.1M on Kickstarter a few months ago.

I don't think it's only the UX of four buttons. You can use them as only four buttons as well without having to remember that each button has its own app. I'm going to try again with a less expensive product (minus the wood most likely) and a better marketing strategy of signing up interest for months beforehand. But I still worry that the conversion rate will still remain low, even with the additional traffic.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#18

Post by kingling »

I never saw the economics of crowdfunding before, but this confirms what I suspected: crowdfunding isn't really about getting your project funded by the crowd, but about buying a structured platform to launch from.

It looks like a 10% non-refundable deposit is the entry ticket, plus a bunch of non-refundable marketing work on top. And you can't tell the truth about how much money you actually need for fear of not hitting your target.

I'm not saying there's a problem here, but this isn't how I envisioned crowdfunding in the beginning. I thought it was a promising way for makers without money to get started. But it seems it's become a place for people with money to advertise and execute market analytics.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#19

Post by Retric »

conesus wrote: post #17
Retric wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do unlimited selections with 1 button using Morse code, but that's terrible UI. Anyway, it's not that I think 4 buttons can't work it simply seems like a poor compromise like setting a clock on your VCR. Can X work? Sure, but this is not the conversation you want to have with someone buying your product.

That morse code product is called Knocki and it raised $1.1M on Kickstarter a few months ago. I don't think it's only the UX of four buttons. You can use them as only four buttons as well without having to remember that each button has its own app. I'm going to try again with a less expensive product (minus the wood most likely) and a better marketing strategy of signing up interest for months beforehand. But I still…

Whoa, that Morse code idea was meant as a joke. Edit: ahh ok that's not how Knocki works.

Anyway, conversion is all about what percentage of people seeing an advertisement want your product. Having a great pitch only goes so far.

Re: Benchmark of 100 crowdfunding videos reveals what works and how much to spend

#20

Post by sadok »

conesus wrote: post #4

Ok, there's a chance I'll gain some valuable insight from posting this, which beats the cost of putting myself out there, so here goes... I just completed a 30 day hardware Kickstarter last week and spent $22k on the video ($18k for main video, $4k for founder interview) and raised $57k, which is an outlier to this data. I can tell my campaign is not in the Video Budget / Amount Raised graph because it would stick ou…

I agree with the "super-niche" product perspective and why it didn't have the success you wanted, although it did succeed after all.
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