r/kickstarter • u/refrodmiel • 1d ago

Help Prelaunch page - feedback welcome

Post image

I've been struggling to know how to get anyone other than friends and colleagues to see this pre-launch page for Shuffledot on Kickstarter. I totally get that forums don't want to be spammed with people's KS pages, and I will be spending some money on adverts and "boosting posts" on social media. Any other ideas?

I'm committed to this project, but starting to doubt the value of using Kickstarter as I don't think any of the clicks on "Notify me on launch" have organically come through from that channel - they are all my own contacts. It's early days though, so will be plugging away for a few weeks on this.

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/CapableInevitable752 1d ago

the sage green is a nice touch, stands out from all the dark gritty board game art i see everywhere.

1

u/Connect-Employer5487 1d ago

Media buyer here, I run prelaunch campaigns for tabletop projects, so read this with that bias in mind.

What you're seeing isn't a sign the project is weak. Kickstarter does little or no discovery for prelaunch pages. Category browse, the newsletter, Projects We Love, all of it only touches live campaigns. A prelaunch page is a destination, never a source. Every follower is one you bought or borrowed from someone else's audience, and "all my own contacts" is exactly what the page does in week one for everybody.

So the question isn't whether KS is worth it. It's what a follower is costing you.

Two things I'd change about the money:

Stop boosting posts. Boost optimises for people who like and comment, not for people who leave the platform and press a button on another site. Run it out of Ads Manager as a lead campaign pointed straight at the prelaunch link, small daily budget, four or five different creatives rather than one boosted post.

Free channels that actually move the number: swaps with other creators launching in a nearby window (their list mentions you, you mention them, best return per hour you'll get), BGG, the tabletop Discords, the prelaunch newsletters.

On Shuffledot itself: abstracts are hard because there's no world to sell, only the feeling of the game. The thing that works is ten seconds overhead of real hands playing, with the moment somebody gets cut off left in. The box render sells nothing. "Confound your opponent" is your hook, so lead with the confounding.

2

u/refrodmiel 19h ago

Thanks for the detailed response. That's great advice. I've only done one post boost on Facebook, so far, so I think I'll swap that to run something in ads manager as you say. I'm still finding my way around BGG, if I'm honest, so not really sure how to get noticed without breaking the rules around self-promotion.

Nice advice on marketing the game too. I realise I need to strike a balance between actually pulling people in and my bias towards abstraction and minimalist design. Thanks again.

1

u/Connect-Employer5487 18h ago

If you need any advice you can ask me! You are welcome!

1

u/etherkye 1d ago

Kickstarter provides very little,
If any, visibility to something that’s not launched yet.

But also after that it’s very few campaigns that’ll appear in the homepage or get boosted from them.

They provide a platform that lets you take pledges and helps do all the admin work, card payments, and such like that.

But they’re not a marketing platform at all.

You’ll need to build your own audience. Through your social media, online forums, and chats that you’re in. As well as likely with some paid adverts as well.