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Starter thoughts on future iCatsles crowdfunding campaign
Hi, Jack.
You will find my considerations below. Let me know if that makes sense to you. We might meet again and discuss every point in details.
Research
Jack, I researched not only cat castles but ‘cat furniture overall’. You can check page for details.
I would say that all project that got over $50K were heavily marketed during campaign live period. I will need to exercise more research to get more information during prelaunch.
I see that these projects were executed in LB accelerator:
If we will move forward it’s good idea to request from Launch Boom detailed benchmarks for this projects:
Platform
Status
Platform
Link
Screenshot
Goal
Pledged
Backers
Median contribution
Status
Kickstarter
16
Successful
14
Unsuccessful
2
Kickstarter
Unsuccessful
Risks
ROI expectations & LB
Jack, I know that LB provided you with project budgeting benchmarks as ~15% of the funding goal.
I won’t argue with that but I need to point out that it is close to x7 ROI (you get ~$7 for every $1 spent) that is pretty ambitious even for direct sales to consumer or any business in operation. I saw results like that but you want to see ‘very good lift’ from kickstarter side that doesn’t happen all the time.
My point here is that LB business is consulting with high number of clients who are going through it. Like any business of this type they own and share the success cases but are a bit shy about the disasters.
So being on the safe side I suggest the correct the expectations about the budget up to ~$30% of the funding goal.
Let’s discuss that. I don’t mean that you will definitely pay that amount but I want us both to be slightly pessimistic before we see first result of prelaunch performance.
Usually I work on pricing strategy having bill of materials on the table. We want that to see what is the room for breakeven marketing spends. If you are sure in pricing I won’t dig into it.
Digital properties
Any fresh business account in Meta ecosystem is at risk of being suspended. I’m able to lower that risk but I can’t control their inner policies.
Product (ability to wash)
I did quick customer research for this product on direct to consumer market. One of the major requests/comments from the customers is to be able to clean/wash product easily. I can perfectly relate to that as cat ‘father’ with 20 years of experience.
I don’t see any references to that on the landing page draft and not sure if it would be easy to do looking at materials.
I think that might block people from conversions but again this is my subjective consideration now. Let’s discuss.
Manufacturing and Funds
Jack, you mentioned during our meeting that you had very successful businesses before. I do not remember if it was software or related to physical goods.
The items below are up to you to consider. They are not blockers to move forward but I believe they make sense:
Overall risk of crowdfunding
There is some chance that it won’t work. I like the product and believe that it has great potential but we might discover something along the way that will block us no matter my skills and proficiency.
I will cover risk mitigation approach on strategy section.
Strategy
I suggest the following approach:
Financial validation — we spend $800-1200 here to see real, not benchmarked cost per lead and cost per reservation also we will see results about initial ideas about positioning and messaging.
After review of this stage we decide about further strategy: either we like performance and want to keep getting leads or switch to the idea of campaign live promotion.
Financial validation is the tool for risk mitigation. If we won’t see the cost per lead below $2 and cost per reservation below $15-18 we are doing something wrong and should question scaling prelaunch.
Scaling prelaunch — we enter this phase if financial performance during financial validation is good enough. We aim here to get maximum VIP reservations with the cheapest price possible. My considerations about budget split between prelaunch and campaign live promotion is 60/40. We can review this later according to success level we see.
If we get into scaling prelaunch stage I believe that email marketing would be huge thing. I know LB are not focusing on it and ask to send 1-3 email sequences to subscribers and only 1 to VIPs but with this approach open rates on the campaign launch day are below 30%. I want to be over 60%
Campaign live promotion — I believe supporting email list conversions with third parties is great way to scale campaign. I mean here backer communities newsletters and niche crowdfunding traffic agencies like jellop
Content
I believe you are in great shape in terms of content. I will need to dig deeper and sort it out. The only thing that I’m not clear yet is ‘what is in the box part’. I see ‘icon approach’ in one of the folders. Maybe this is the right way to go.
I will cope with AI voiceover for ads during prelaunch ads but I think we will need voice talent for kickstarter video later on. Let’s discuss it later after see first results of the prelaunch ads.
Digital properties
I need to get access to
I want to make sure that these are owned by you.
Budget and timeline
Timeline
I will need a week or so to process all the content and produce initial ads creatives and set of email campaigns.
Potential major blocker for the start is the status of Meta business manager. If it is not set up yet it might take some to verify and warm it up to lower risk of restrictions.
I’m thinking about making landing page more visual and less text based. It might take 2-5 days. Let’s discuss it.
So optimistic estimation lead time to the start of the prelaunch ads is 10 days after we seal the deal. Pessimistic is about 20.
Budget estimation
Fix part is $3K
Sliding commission structure:
If we get over $120K in any scenario I suggest commission is 5%.
Body of the commission is the funds that arrive at your bank account minus third parties fees.
I’m open for discussion here.
Input information
Goal: $100K and more
Media budget: $15K
Pricing: $150-350 | three offers
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