Category: Marketing

Marketing your board game.

Top 5 Tips for Relaunching Your Kickstarter Campaign

The second game we ever crowd-funded was New Salem, which ended up raising $19,492 USD from 630 backers. Not bad. 4 years later, we launched a Kickstarter campaign for an expansion to it called New Salem: The Constable Expansion, which raised almost that same amount, coming in at just over $18,436 from 397 backers, which was 92% of our goal — so it did not fund. Then we made quite a few changes and relaunched it as New Salem 2nd Edition and it ended up raising over $58,000 with 982 backers. We’re going to use these campaigns as a case study to provide some suggestions to other re-launchers based on what worked for us.

In that dark and smelly time after our failed campaign ended, we sadly contemplated some possible next steps, which are probably the same ones you are considering if your campaign recently failed:

  • Give up on the game. Move on to something else. Maybe the world doesn’t want or need this as much as we thought they did.
  • Re-launch immediately with effectively no changes, maybe we’ll lower the funding goal a bit.
  • Make some major modifications and re-launch when we’re ready.

What’s right for you depends on you, your products, and your goals, but we ended up going with the latter option. The rest of this article takes you through top 5 tips that we learned that may help you through that process if you choose that option too. These aren’t in order of most important, but more in a loose order of when you would probably end up tackling them.

1. Ask for feedback from EVERYONE. After your campaign ends in failure, send your backers a survey to figure out what they wish was different about the campaign or product. They ended up backing, so there were no deal-breakers for them, but I guarantee there are things they wish you did differently that were deal-breakers for others who did not back. You need to find those.

Not only will your failed campaign backers be more likely to come back when you listen to them and improve your offering, but you’ll get a bunch of backers who decided not to back previously join the new campaign because you resolved their deal-breaker issues. Your outreach will also raise awareness for the re-launch, which can’t hurt either. Here’s the survey we used, selling it as a 1-question, anonymous survey:

After you get initial feedback from backers, expand your surveys to those who did not back. This could be friends or others in the industry who will give you critical and constructive feedback — or even more general circles like social media followers or your newsletter subscribers. For example, we got some big help from the Double Exposure Heralds we work with, some industry friends, and we also received some great advice from some board game Facebook groups.

Also, make sure you share your progress with your backers as you go so they know you’re working on it and that you care. Here’s a link to the update where we laid out all the feedback we got and what we were going to do about it. They really appreciated being kept in the loop and seeing how seriously we were taking their suggestions. This chart puts the feedback we received into general categories to help visualize what we needed to improve:

2. Look at the data. As helpful as getting verbal and written feedback is, it’s not as telling as cold, hard numbers. Those who mean well will often tell you how they think they or others would behave, but it often doesn’t match their actual behavior, so you need look at the numbers to find the truth.

Our favorite places to get data are Kicktraq, the Kickstarter dashboard, and most importantly, Google Analytics. Note: you must include your Google Analytics ID on your campaign page before you launch to get useful data.

The table below is an export of some crucial data we got from those sites. As a reminder when you’re looking at it, the 3 campaigns you see are:

  • Barker’s Row – One of our previously successful campaigns (1,362 backers) for a comparable product with the same artist.
  • New Salem: Constable – Our failed campaign.
  • New Salem: 2nd Edition – Our successful re-launch of the failed campaign.

The “Unique Pageviews” we got from Google Analytics to tell us how many people visited the campaign page. The most telling part here is that you can see that the failed campaign only had 16,189 people land on the page to consider backing it but it had a higher conversion rate than a previous campaign that got 1,362 backers. Ding ding ding! The key to our problem is that we just needed to get more people to the page!

As you can see in the re-launched campaign on the last row, we successfully got roughly the same amount of people to the page as our previously successful campaign. Now our conversion rate (the number of visitors who became backers) dropped significantly, which is why we had a lower number of backers in the re-launched campaign than on Barker’s Row, but it still allowed us to greatly over-fund.

3. Re-think your marketing strategy. Another common cause of a campaign not succeeding is that your marketing was not effective for one reason or another. Are people telling you they didn’t even know your campaign was live? Are they saying they didn’t see anything about your game in a certain place? They probably won’t be able to articulate exactly what the solution is for this, but if you listen closely, they’ll give you some clues you can pull together to improve your marketing plan.

You can see in the previous section that our biggest opportunity was to just get more people to the campaign page for the re-launched campaign and we knew they’d back us. That was another clue we needed to improve our marketing so we invested more heavily in ads, particularly on Facebook and Board Game Geek, which ended up doing the job.

It’s worth noting that our conversion percentage (the percentage of people who backed after visiting the page) dropped significantly in the re-launched campaign, which is likely because the Facebook ads were not bringing traffic of the same quality as our grassroots marketing from the failed campaign. Ummm… maybe “quality” isn’t the right word… they weren’t as ready-to-back as those already in the Kickstarter or board gaming community.

4. Consider re-positioning your product. If your campaign didn’t fund, there’s a good chance your value proposition wasn’t quite hitting home for those who visited your page. If the feedback you’re getting is telling you that the product you’re offering isn’t the one your potential customers want, you’re probably going to want to either change it, or at least change how you are presenting it.

In our example, we realized that some people didn’t even click on the campaign because it was for an “expansion” and they didn’t have the base game so it didn’t really interest them. In the re-launch, we stopped talking about it as an expansion and started talking about it as a 2nd Edition of the game. Now people who don’t have New Salem will take a serious look at the campaign because it’s a “new” product rather than an extension of a product they do not own and probably haven’t played. We then offered an upgrade kit rather than an expansion so our 1st Edition owners could upgrade their copy to 2nd Edition to avoid alienating them and giving them a reason to join the party.

5. Do not lose your shirt. Failure doesn’t taste very good, and when it’s lining the inside of your mouth for the hours, days, and weeks after your campaign ends unsuccessfully, you may feel like you’ll do anything to wash it all away with a quick success. Things you may be tempted to do:

  • reduce your funding goal below what you really need
  • reduce the cost of your rewards below what they will cost to make
  • reduce the shipping price below what it will cost to ship
  • direct a large sum of money straight into the black hole of marketing

Doing these things may lead to a successful campaign on paper, but it could mean you lose a lot of money by the time all the bills show up in your inbox.

If you take time to do it right by asking for help, figuring out what’s wrong, fixing it, and building a tribe that will be there on re-launch day, you can realize true success. You got this.

Do any of you other re-launchers out there have tips that worked for you?

Episode #86: Top 5 Tips for Advertising Your Board Game

We give you our top 5 tips for advertising your board game and how to learn which sources are best for you and your game. This is a little more focused on ads for a Kickstarter campaign, but is applicable to any type of advertising for a board game.

References:

Thanks to Mark Edwards for editing this!

Audio Direct Link:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP086.mp3

Episode #85: Mailbag on US Manufacturing, Recovering from Disaster, and Component Cost Considerations

Today we dig into the Patreon mailbag and answer these questions:

  • How do you recover from being punched in the gut?
  • What is a unique enough selling point for a game?
  • What are some component cost considerations to take when manufacturing your game?
  • Should I fulfill my Kickstarter campaign myself?
  • Is it possible to manufacture games in the US?

Thanks to Mark Edwards for editing this!

Audio Direct Link: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP085.mp3

References:
– Cardboard Edison Playtest Groups

Episode #82: Top 5 Ways to Build a Crowd for Your Game

When you’re trying to build up a crowd for your game before Kickstarter or to build your resume for selling your game to a publisher, there are a lot of places to put your time and money, but some are better than others.

5. Create a Facebook page or group

4. Build/support your local gaming community

3. Use other’s crowds by getting your game to reviewers and other influencers

2. Send infrequent newsletters

1.Create a landing page and funnel people to it through flyers, ads, social media, and everywhere

Audio Direct Link: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP082.mp3

Episode #76: Going to Conventions Without Going to Conventions

(podcast direct download link)

Today Brian interviews Erik Dahlman of Albino Dragon about the convention services he offers where his team will demo your game at his booth at various conventions throughout the year. You can get the exposure that conventions offer without the million headaches of actually doing it. To get more information from Erik, email CONVENTIONS@ALBINODRAGON.COM.

Episode #71: Saving a Failing Kickstarter Campaign

Podcast/Audio: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP071.mp3

Today we talk about how to figure out why your Kickstarter campaign is failing and how to fix it.

Brian’s magic recipe for a successful campaign:

  1. A page that converts visitors into backers
  2. Get backers to your page

Converting: The video, explaining the hook, providing the content people really want to see

Getting Visitors: Social media ads, building your crowd before launch, connecting with influencers, creating awareness during the campaign

Do I Need to Go to Conventions as a Publisher?

Well, today is Gen Con exhibitor setup day so normally I would be covered in sweat in the Indianapolis summer heat pulling muscles I didn’t know I had while setting up my booth for the big show, but I didn’t go at all this year so instead, I’m in an air conditioned apartment writing this to you. We have had an Overworld Games booth at Gen Con for the previous 3 years, and for a couple years before that, I went to the show to demo our games and learn more about the industry.

Will I miss not going? From a nostalgia perspective, heck yeah. I don’t get to hang out with my convention friends or immerse myself in the gaming culture that gathers there — plus, I missed that moment where I get to see the beautiful Indianapolis Convention Center carpet for the first time.

But from a business perspective, I won’t really miss it. I won’t get the face-to-face networking time with industry colleagues and potential localization, manufacturing, or game design partners, but I can accomplish 90% of that through email. We don’t have a game coming out this month so we won’t be missing out on many sales or a lot of buzz because of it. I’ll admit that we are missing out on that incredibly hard to calculate brand awareness improvement we would get out there, but I don’t worry too much about things I can’t calculate. So overall, I figure it just didn’t make sense to go this year and I’m glad I’m skipping it. Here’s why.

Booth Cost

The costs of having a booth at a convention are immense if it’s not local to you. For each 10ft x 10ft square in the exhibition hall at Gen Con (~70,000 attendees), it will be about $1600. You can get a deal if it’s your first year and you get into the Entrepreneurs’ Avenue, but it will still be at least $1000, even for that. If you go to a smaller convention, it will be much cheaper. Our booth at a local convention with 2300 attendees earlier this year was $200 for 4 days, so then it becomes more of a time investment than a financial investment.

Freight Shipping

Freight shipping games to the convention will cost hundreds of dollars and will likely eat up any profit you would make from sales. If you have games you didn’t sell, don’t forget you’ll have to ship them back too. If you live close enough to get yourself a truck and drive them there yourself, you’ll save some money on both ends and estimating correctly won’t be as critical.

And man, it’s surprisingly hard to estimate how many games you’re going to sell! It depends on so many factors. Over the last 3 years at Gen Con, we have sold between 50-200 games each year, depending on how hot the games are, how much attention our releases get in pre-con media, and the types of games we’re selling there. At a con like the 2300 attendee one I mentioned, I’ll sell more like 20-30 games over a weekend.

I usually ship too many games when I exhibit at a con, so that’s something I need to improve. I gotta remember that it’s not that bad to be short because people can find your game somewhere if they can’t get it at the show and having a sold out game is exciting news that helps promote your game. Shipping is so expensive so you need to spend some serious time estimating how many you’ll sell to reduce those costs as much as possible.

Booth Volunteers

If you get a 10ft x 10ft booth and you’re a small company, you’ll probably want 2 people there at all times. One person can demo and the other person can sell. Having 3 allows for easier bathroom breaks, meals, handling rushes, and general stress reduction. Doing ~4 hour shifts seems to work pretty well so people don’t get burned out and they can go enjoy the convention for part of each day. My first year, I made the rookie mistake of running the booth all by myself. That was a disaster (ha!), but luckily Noah from GameTrayz bailed me out and pitched in to help for most of the con. You will have to decide if your time is best spent at the booth or at other convention activities.

We have paid for help at cons by giving a couple free games, free exhibitor badges, a meal each day, and sometimes lodging. Lately the debate over whether booth helpers are volunteers or contractors/employees has been heating up, but the line of delineation is very blurry. Whatever you do for compensation, it will add to your expenses in some way unless you have some very generous friends.

Flights and Hotel

If you’re flying to the convention, you’ll spend a few hundred dollars on a plane ticket and then hotel rooms add up too. In the Gen Con hotel block, you’ll probably pay about $800 per room for the full 5 days. Whichever convention you go to, you can usually find a far cheaper room further away, but the last thing you want to do on the long, exhausting exhibiting days is get up early to travel to the convention center.

Other Costs

You’ll likely be buying some things like signs, tablecloths, flyers, and you may have to pay for vendor liability insurance (you’ll pay about $90 for that at Gen Con). I’ll usually buy my signs from buildasign.com for about $75 each and I’ll get tablecloths and other supplies from Amazon. You might pay for extra tables, chairs, or other furniture as well. A smaller convention might give you that for free but a convention like Gen Con will charge you ridiculous amounts of money for tables and chairs, so much that it would be cheaper for you to buy what you need from Walmart or Ikea and then give it away after the convention.

All in all, you can easily spend $5000 to exhibit at a major convention. How many games will you have to sell to make up for that? If you make $10 profit on a game, you need to sell 500 of them to break even and only the biggest hits will do that — most games will be lucky to sell 50 copies. So don’t worry too much about making money because conventions are mainly just a marketing expense. These are expenses that you can deduct from your taxes too, so make sure you keep track of exactly how much you’re spending.

Value

Overall, despite all these costs, going to conventions provides a lot of value too. You get to have face-to-face interaction with folks in all parts of the industry, which builds a stronger connection than communicating online. You create greater brand awareness from people seeing that you’re exhibiting or attending and that allows people to learn more about you, your products, and your company. You can also build up buzz for upcoming games or feed the buzz for existing ones.

But is it worth all the time you’ll spend preparing for it, going to it, and all the costs above? In my opinion… sometimes. There’s no question that going to a convention will move your company forward in some ways, it’s just whether the costs make it worth it for you at the time the convention hits. What I mainly wanted to get across here is: Even though you’ll feel peer pressure to go to a big con, you never need to go. You can redirect all that time and money you would be spending on a convention into development or just avoid those expenses entirely.

So what do you think? Is it worth it?

The Roll [sic] of Randomness

Today we talk about how randomness affects our enjoyment of games. It’s slanted towards game design, but also has some crunchy publisher/indie creator perspectives as well. Topics:

  • Low-randomness games
  • High-randomness games
  • Is randomness in games good or bad?
  • How does it affect your target audience?
  • Harnessing the power of randomness

Audio/Podcast:

How Not to Get Burned on Amazon

Today we discuss how to use Amazon to sell your board game.

– Fulfillment by Amazon
– Amazon Marketplace
– Vendor Express
– Amazon Launchpad
– Getting Burned Stories
– Amazon Marketing Services
– Improving your search rankings
– Sales on Amazon
– Pricing on Amazon
– A+ Content
– VINE Reviews
– Ads on Amazon

Audio/Podcast Version: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP059.mp3

How Should You Be Using Social Media?

Today we talk about social media and how we should use this in the board game industry. Specifically, here are some of the questions and topics:

  • How should a game designer use social media?
  • Which social media platforms should a game designer be using?
  • How should a game publisher use social media?
  • Which platforms should they use?
  • Using social media as a phone book or for ease of contacting.
  • What’s the wrong way to use social media?
  • Are there other less traditional social media platforms we should be using?
  • Are there any tools that help you more easily manage your social media accounts?

Podcast/Audio: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/BGBP058.mp3

Resources: