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Determine the Perk Strategy

Lesson 9 from: Launch a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Christopher Hawker

Determine the Perk Strategy

Lesson 9 from: Launch a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Christopher Hawker

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Lesson Info

9. Determine the Perk Strategy

Lesson Info

Determine the Perk Strategy

So the next key element super klm is park strategy and again, this is like when those topics where you can put a huge amount of time into something that seems on the surface to be quite simple, how much should I be asking for for the parks? So first off perk stratification you want perks at different price points, you don't want five different perks of fifty dollars that air just slightly different variations you want to have a park it twenty dollars, and I think statistically twenty dollars is like the most common perk it's hard to know exactly how that relates to every project of some products can't sell for twenty dollars, but you want, you know, you know a five dollars price point, you know, wave hello, you know, why do you offer that? Because if someone just wants to donate because they want to support your product or your campaign than they can do that and then they join your email list of supporters and then you can continue to remark it to them and they're more likely to raise ...

their contribution at a later date. If you continue to offer new perks that might be, you know, cause them to move later on at a higher price points, so you want to give people an easy barrett entry so they can be part of the party but once you've got so you want to you know, maybe five dollars one dollars perk even this relate less about the money they're getting the people connected and then like a single perk a double perk where you're offering a big discount and then you know, maybe it's like fifty dollars in one hundred dollars and one hundred fifty to fifty five hundred so you have different levels of perks and you don't have a huge amount of crowding at one level which is just confusing people yeah isn't such a thing as too many perks yeah, you want a ce few perks is you can while offering people a variety and you can add perks later so later in the campaign you can bring new perks in but at the start of the campaign in particular you don't want to confuse people with too many choices and I believe I've read like twelve perks is like the optimal number like you don't want more than twelve perks or you start to see confusion and some people start with unicef use six or eight perks so getting people limited numbers so they're not confused by that and that causes them not to back it. We talk about anchor perk which is where you set the price and people's value expectation which is one item so it's like ok, if I buy one item it's I'm not getting a very good deal maybe I'm paying retail for it, but if I buy two items you're getting fifty percent off it's like buy one for one hundred dollars by two for one hundred five well everyone's going by to no one's going to buy one but you're setting that value the anchoring in their minds the value of the product of one hundred dollars now that like one I can get to four hundred five so it shows up is a really good deal so setting the anchor perk of one unit and it might be the retails one hundred fifty and you get one for one hundred but you can get to one hundred five so now you've kind of created this even at one I'm getting a great deal but no one's going to buy one and most people going back to I don't recommend perks not related to the product generally I mean, I had that one thing where we're offering consultation but like if I'm selling a bottle cap opener, I'm not like, well, I've also got this cool steak knife you know is like and I see people they ask about that. Well, what about this other thing that I have access to that's not related, but people might still want I don't recommend it um low cost perks that's what I was talking about earlier just having a cheap entry level park to get people connected you can introduce new perks over time that could be new deals or special occasion deals like we did launch a campaign on right before thanksgiving and then we had a you know, black friday deal and then we had a cyber monday deals so you can have special perks that air for a limited time for people who catch it on those days or you can introduce new perks as time goes on to keep it fresh, keep people interested and engaged so it might be like a new variation that of products and now we've got, like, with a carbon flyer, we launched it and had a standard definition camera, then partway through were like now we can offer high definition camera and give us a reason to go back to people people upgrade a lot of different value and introducing new perks, okay, great people, the thing about perks, so keeping it simple is valuable because later now we gotta cross reference all the parts, so he upgraded, you know, it creates a lot of logistical and informational challenges of making sure everyone, you know, getting what they ordered properly. And when you've got thousands of people suddenly that becomes a big passed, you know, if you got a couple hundred, not that big of a deal, but you got thousands, something there's, a huge data challenge, that's you know you could definitely underestimate you touch on them like I see out back to a lot of different campaigns and I backed one recently it was like a technology cable plug in your ipad and after our back that I noticed they had a bunch of up cells right and you touched on like how do you do that? Because that's one thing I'd like to write well using you know there's services can use after the campaign's over we was backer kid in order to survey your customers make sure once it's time to delivery because a lot of people move you got thousands backers some of them are going to move and make sure it's going to the right address also some people if you're in the past now both kickstarter and indiegogo offer shipping options where people can pick their shipping option in the past it was common for people to you know add these shipping costs so that the perk price appeared lower and you could have different shipping cost depending on if you were in the u s or australia or europe right? And so then it be like ok, you didn't add your shipping costs now you could add your shipping costs if you want us to ship your product and also there's all these accessories you can buy so you can get significant you know you could get twenty percent more money potentially by offering the upgrades or even more just depending on what you're offering and it's a common practice to do because again, you may want to keep your campaign simple, but then when people are checking out and following up, they may want to add some additional items. So it's definitely a great strategy if you do it too much, people in some people may complain people may complain people will complain no matter what you do, but some people may hate you keep hitting me up for more money they are free to say no. So, um at the end of the day there's there's a little bit of a thing where, you know, in crowdfunding still there's this idea that people should be doing it not because it's you know there, but it's, not about the money, but that's kind of disingenuous because it's all you know, that's, what that's all about you're trying to raise money so like that don't mean you're greedy but like you need money to do the job and that's how we're born pays their bills and that's how the world goes round. So it's a little disingenuous to think that it's not at some level about the money it's not just about the money though it's about what you're doing, what you're excited and passionate about, so grading creating more opportunities, general revenues valuable and then talked about the scale of discounts want to give thirty to fifty percent off retail is typically what people is going to move people ten percent off it's just not a good enough deal to get people excited. We've tried campaigns where we're working corporate clients didn't want her offers big discount, and then it clearly shows up in the results. People are just not excited about okay deals when they're paying for something that doesn't exist, yet they want a really, really good deal and experience last in cause campaigns again, you're not selling products so you can be real creative about experiential stuff, so if you're doing a movie for example, like you know, a party with the cast or, you know, special screenings, things like that you can you can get really creative again look at similar campaigns, see what other people are doing and emulate the best ideas again here you can see some perk great examples that we've used that sort of help lay out the different types of values khun give people and driving people towards, you know, backing at the highest level that you can so that's what you want to do in the more value officer, typically your margins go down as as the price goes up, so they're getting a better deal and you're getting overall profit, and one of the ways to figure that out is by doing some analysis, african switched to the computer a quick oops, I'm going to show you a spreadsheet we call the perk analyzer it's very exciting, so I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I'll just show you real quick. I've come up with some sample park ideas on the left these may not be your perky ideas, you can change the names of these part, depending on what you want to do, and then we've got several rows of possible perks you can fill in just so that they're there already, but let's, just look at one row real quick of possible perks there. I'll highlight this rose so it's, easy to follow, so now let's say you're perk price is forty nine dollars you're saying I'm going to do a single product. It's forty nine dollars my cost of goods sold is twelve dollars, and normally these would be the shaded brown shaded sells my extra cost a great so let's say, I'm giving you one unit plus a t shirt, and then you would put your t shirt cost an extra cost of goods sold or if you're not, including shipping if you're not charging for shipping, you could put the shipping costs in their extras there. Your platform fees was typically about seven percent could be eight percent, depending on your platform and that's, like the platform team meeting indiegogo are kickstarted, plus the credit card charges, and then the total perks available in the missile. So this first part generates okay, if I got one perk and I'm charging forty nine dollars than they're paying forty nine dollars per perk down below. If I'm doing buy one, get one free, you can see that they're paying forty nine dollars, but they're getting too, and they're paying twenty four fifty parade. Um, this is an example of an early birds of these air. The anchor perks up the top and then, if it's, twelve dollars per perk platform piece seven percent, you're paying three dollars and forty three cents and platform fees for your total cost good soldiers. The twelve dollars, plus the seven percent is fifteen forty three in your total park margin is thirty three dollars and fifty seven cents of someone buys that anger perk, making thirty three dollars if they buy, too, with the full price for making sixty seven dollars, but if we're doing early bird perks down here, what you can see is that well, typically do a couple of rows earliest bird and then earlier bird and early bird, we might do several layers and then there's a specific number, but if let's say the first people are getting one product at twenty four dollars, then we'll see we're making ten dollars and thirty two cents, then we can say, ok, well, if they were buying the main park, they're getting thirty three fifty seven, but at the earliest they're getting we're making ten dollars and thirty two cents if they're buying two were making twenty one fifty seven, but at the next level, we're saying thirty four dollars, a perk we're making nineteen dollars and sixty two cents. There is just a way to analyze all the perks and make sure that there's logic and as your going down and they're spending more money that you're not making less money that's really what we want to service, mate, you're making more money even as your percent margin potentially goes down and this good, and then you can map out all your different perks for your campaign. You're early bird perks and then your standard perks as well as downbelow. We've got your special perks like the big thank you or a sticker t shirt, and you can change all these names and left if you want off to the right than what we've got is like, ok, let's, say, we're in offer fifty eight. Fifty percent off seventy five at this next thing, etcetera, center. And then they will tell you your total revenue that you would get if you sold all those perks, the total cost. Six, good, sold in the total profit for all those perks. And down at the bottom, you'll get a total of if you sold all the perks that you're offering at a specific number, how much revenue you would be making. So this is an extremely, extremely valuable way to just analyze your perks and understand what money can be made from the different perks. And you don't accidentally sell something, have perks where you're losing money, which is definitely a real possibility.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Patent 101 Videos
Campaign Page Examples
Campaign Page Wireframe
Launch Day Checklist
Campaign Video Checklist
Financial Calculator Spreadsheets

Ratings and Reviews

Dyan deNapoli
 

Really helpful class for anyone planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign! Christopher was a great presenter (very comfortable and relaxed), and he clearly knew the topic extremely well. His presentation was very thorough and well thought out. One thing I would've like to have seen is more questions taken from the virtual audience. There were quite a few on the thread, but the moderator only passed along a few of them to Christopher to answer. Another thing that would have been very helpful is advice about creating successful crowdfunding campaigns that are for projects or experiences or ideas, rather than for physical products (which this class was focused on). Maybe Christopher can do a short crowdfunding part II class?? But I still give this class an A+!

Elizabeth Best
 

This was very helpful. I feel like it answered so many of my questions. It made me realize what a huge commitment crowdfunding is! As an entrepreneur I can see how this video saves trident a lot of time on calls and emails explaining what needs to be done. Great idea! I am amazed at how much technology is involved and online or social media marketing. I better develop a stronger team with millennials who know how to make it happen. Thank you.

David McNichols
 

Chris goes into the depth required to own this material in a way that is both essential and inspiring. Although my best friend launched 10 out of 11 successful Kickstarter projects, I could not learn from him through osmosis all the amazing material Chris has covered here in detail! The patent research information alone makes it worth the price! I highly recommend this course.

Student Work

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