Why Your Board Game Crowdfunding Needs TWO Types of Social Media Marketing…
How to Use Social Media to Drive Kickstarter Traffic to Your Board Game Crowdfunding Campaign
Once again, one big post turned into six (or more) smaller posts. And now I’m smack dab in the middle of part 3/6 in a series for board game creators…
Specifically, how to attract customers to your crowdfunding campaign page:
What crowdfunding does/doesn’t do for customer acquisition (read here)
Marketing channels NOT to use (read here)
Long story short, many board game creators misunderstand and overestimate what a crowdfunding campaign can accomplish for their customer acquisition. And too many devote their time and money to the wrong ones.
In this post, I’ll share how to use social media channels to drive more potential backers to your board game crowdfunding page.
At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two different types of social media marketing. And both are relevant to the tabletop industry:
1) organic social media
and 2) social media ads.
Social media is unquestionably the most common board game marketing channel. The rhetorical style, demographics, and entertaining nature make it a fit for the tabletop community.
Social media posta are great at getting customer attention, and then taking that attention and directing it to, say, your optimized crowdfunding page?
Sounds perfect, right?
But here’s the catch…
You need BOTH.
And unfortunately, reality is not in the mood to negotiate here.
Each one, without the other, is not worth your time, energy, or money.
And, coincidentally, SNORKELING is a great illustration. Both for an essential asepect of each type of social media marketing, and for the fact that you need both!
If you’re already 110% convinced you need both, go ahead and skip the story!
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Tropical Snorkeling “Social Media” Illustration
So a few years ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting a Polynesian island famed for snorkeling.
The trip was a blast! Great weather. Fun adventures. Island relaxation.
Except for that first time she swam out to snorkel…
It was day two, and I had already snorkeled alone a few times by now. I was more excited than my wife to get in the water, mostly because…
I FREAKING LOVE SNORKELING.
I love feeling weightless as the waves push you around
I love the anxiety of not being able to see very far (deep water is easily my biggest fear)
I love all the colorful fish and plants hidden beneath the surface
While we lived in San Diego, I made a point of going to La Jolla cove at least once a month.
But that was cooooold West Coast water and kelp forests… this was warm tropical coral gardens. No wetsuit needed!
I was so excited that months prior, I set apart some of my swim exercises to practice with fins and a snorkel mask.
So it’s no surprise that, during the initial two days of the trip, I had gone several times while my wife watched, sun-bathed, and read from the shore.
But in the hot afternoon sun of day two, she was ready to dive in!
Now the actual reefs were a couple hundred yards out from shore in semi-shallow water, so it was going to take some serious swimming to get to the good parts.
So we put on our respective masks, snorkels, and fins, and began to kick and paddle our way out.
But it wasn’t not long before I begin to notice a trend:
I swim…
I turn and see she is ten yards behind me…
I wait for her to catch up…
I slow my pace…
I turn and see she is somehow ten yards or more behind me…
An arrogant part of myself got the better of me, and I just attributed it to my better swimming conditioning.
So it takes a lot longer than I expected (which I find frustrating) but we eventually get to the glorious coral patches.
We’ve not out there five minutes when I see a fish I’ve NEVER seen before.
The stock photo doesn’t do it justice. It was some kind of Needle Fish, but, like, 3 feet long.
It was fascinating. And I was mezmerized.
Fixated on the Needle Fish, I began following around, swimming around coral beds to keep it in sight.
When suddenly, I get that sneaking suspicion…
Well… you know that feeling you get when you feel like you are being watched?
I was getting that feeling, but it wasn’t that I was being watched…
It was that I was being yelled at.
I lift up, and my wife 30 yards away is YELLING at the top of her lungs for me to help.
I swim over, and she coughing up a little bit of water, angry at me for leaving her.
But thankfully, most of her wrath was directed at someTHING else:
HER MASK.
Her mask didn’t fit, and it had been a problem:
Every time she would swim…
And water would leak in little by little…
Eventually completely filling the mask…
And she would stop swimming to readjust everything…
Which the ocean used as a perfect opportunity to lap up in her face and get in her lungs.
Turns out her “slow swimming” was actually stopping to readjust her mask.
It had been bothering her since we started. But now that we were a few hundred yards out, and she had tried everything she could, she was no longer comfortable and desperate to head back in.
And that desperation rapidly escalated as she shouted out to me and didn’t get an answer.
Needless to say, we promptly headed back to shore, and threw away her stupid mask…
And bought a complete set that actually fit her.
Ok…so I didn’t just share this story to show you what a jerk I can be.
And I didn’t share it as an example of testing smething befor eyou use it (though it’s also a great story demonstrating A/B testing, but I digress…)
There is actually a relevant board game social media marketing message contained in the tale:
snorkel : snorkel mask :: organic social media : social media ads
Just as it is pointless to try to snorkel with only some of the gear functioning correctly…
So is it pointless to have a social media strategy that doesn’t include both kinds of social media marketing.
One is long-term, builds your brand, and even plays a role in nurturing new customers.
The other is short-term and essential for extending the reach of your brand when your Kickstarter is building momentum.
Let’s discuss more in depth.
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Organic Social Media
This is where every board game creator starts, well before you get the funding from a Kickstarter campaign.
Thankfully, you do not need a lot of money to start.
But what you do need is lots of time.
Let me repeat that for the people in the back…
Organic social media takes TIME.
And while the best time to start was yesterday…
The second best time to start is right now.
So select a social media channel you hate the least, make a profile for your game or company, and get to work:
Share teasers, videos of playtests, and stories from behind the scenes… anything to excite people.
Find other similar profiles, follow and connect with them, and comment on their posts.
Like every comment, welcome every follower, and respond to every comment.
Organic social media is the foundation of your long-term social media marketing strategy.
Will it lead directly to backers?
Maybe… but probably not.
But that’s because it is all about CUSTOMER ATTENTION, not customer conversion.
Ultimately, your website and emails are responsible for nurturing, not your social media.
So engage every single day for months leading up to your Backerkit board game campaign, bringing more and more people to your site, some of which will subscribe to your emails.
This is the way you will grow your all-important email list; these people will be your initial supporters you count on to reach your funding goal.
However, there is an exception to this rule.
Organic social media will convert if you do A) long-form content and B) for YEARS.
I promised that both types of social media marketing would have snorkeling analogies, and my mama didn’t raise no lier…
Free divers do several things differently from normal snorkelers and scuba divers:
They do not have a snorkel
They do not have any scuba gear
They have much longer fins
They follow a rope down
They hold their breath for minutes at a time
They do VERY deep
In marketing terms, this would be the same as not having a website, email, or paying for ads.
You’ve removed every other distraction and cost in order to focus everything on organic social media: just a facebook page or pre-launch crowdfunding page and LOTS of posting and commenting.
Simply put, iorder for organic social media to be an all-in-one marketing tool…
You have to commit the way a free diver commits to going hundreds of feet underwater. You are ALL IN.
However, at that point you are basically just content marketingm which I have in a separate (upcoming!) post and I define as an entirely different sort of social media marketing.
Paid Social Media Ads
But to do social media right, you should use both unpaid posts and paid ads.
Organic strategy builds trust and creates strong ties over time. A paid ad campaign gives your project quick visibility when you need it most.
Social media ads need to get users to stop scrolling and click within seconds. Their goal is to grab attention of users unfamiliar with your brand.
With that attention, you lead them to visit your crowdfunding page (or direct them to quality content).
Those pages do the heavy lifting of persuasion… these ads only need to excite and stir curiosity.
For this to happen, you’ll need three things:
Rock solid copywriting
Engaging graphic design
Exciting imagery
Strategic targeting
The first three are just “Advertising 101”, which is beyon the scope of this post. Let’s focus on point number four. But quick summary: good ads for creative projects or board games should not feel pushy. They should match what your project is about. They also shouldn’t try to do too much.
In order to make every dollar of ad spend worth it, you’ll need to target the right users; people predisposed to be interested in your board game. A social media professional can easily target your ideal target audience, particularly if you already have an email list several hundred strong.
The same professional will also help you do one of the most important things: A/B testing.
Quick rewind… remember the snorkel story?
How my wife decided to visit a tropical paradise?
And snorkel all across the island?
Without ever testing her snorkel in a pool?
Testing guarantees you avoid “disasters” like that.
You should NEVER invest thousands of dollars in an ad campaign before you have tested whether or not those ads actually work. Using the analytics provided by social media platforms, these same professionals will be able to test in small batches and adjust your ads in real-time.
You’ll need to run ads in the weeks immediately leading up to the crowdfunding campaign and throughout the campaign. The highest intensity of ads should take place right as your campaign is launching and as it is ending.
“What are the best social media platforms for promoting a Kickstarter campaign?”
Some platforms work well for Kickstarter campaigns, but how do you know which ones really deserve your time? Here’s a quick look:
Instagram: The visual side will bring in fans with smooth product photos and show playtesting moments.
Twitter: A cheap, easy-to-use ad system that involves minimal development.
TikTok: The fast pace and fun videos can get younger people to take a look at your idea.
YouTube: You can use how-to videos or longer clips to show the gameplay to your backers and let them know what the game can do. The most time-consuming medium and hardest to jump-start.
Use a mix of these that fit your campaign and make your funding goal easier to hit. Cross-promote whenever you can. Do not stick with just one when you can use more and get better results for your Kickstarter and backers.
But even social media is not enough of a customer attention strategy to fund your board game crowdfunding campaign. In the next post, we’ll talk about using the influencers and press!
