This post is about something that all of us Kickstarter creators do (probably way too much): Share our project on Facebook (and other social media)! I’m just as guilty as other creators in doing this; we all want our projects to succeed and the least we can do is post in all those Board Game Groups on Facebook. I mean after all, we all believe our game is the greatest and will naturally just go viral and break the $1 million mark. Well I went super granular with my last campaign and wanted to share the results because my conclusion is that it doesn’t yield many backers.
For the chart below, I created a custom referral link in Kickstarter for every Facebook Group, my twitter, BGG forum, and subreddit for my Gothic Horrors campaign:
| Referral | Backers | Percent of Total KS | Revenue | Followers | Conversion Rate |
| mgnade Twitter/FB | 5 | 0.09% | $209.00 | 1149 | 0.44% |
| BGG Prelaunch thread | 2 | 0.05% | $128.00 | NA | NA |
| FB The BG Group | 1 | 0.02% | $39.00 | 32397 | 0.00% |
| FB Board Game Exposure | 1 | 0.02% | $39.00 | 3112 | 0.03% |
| FB Retailers that back KS | 2 | 0.02% | $36.00 | 450 | 0.44% |
| r/crowdfundedboardgames | 1 | 0.02% | $39.00 | 2500 | 0.04% |
| FB BG Revolution | 0 | 0.00% | $0.00 | 21657 | 0.00% |
| FB BG Spotlight | 0 | 0.00% | $0.00 | 9667 | 0.00% |
| Total | 12 | 0.22% | $490 | 0.14% |
That’s right a measly 0.22% of backers came from me posting around on my Twitter, FB groups etc. As you can see the conversion rate is abyssal and it directly yielded only $490 worth of pledges. Now maybe this $500 is worth the ease of sharing things on social media, but to me it seems to indicate that everyone does it and everyone is desensitized to it. I don’t know about you, but I ignore so many of these posts myself and at worse am annoyed by them. I don’t have a solution, I would just tell any creators out there in the mid-campaign slump to relax and don’t go posting links to your campaign all over the Board Game groups on social media because it’s not going to put a dent in your campaign. Now sure, Kickstarter steals referrals and obviously you should post to your own Twitter and personal Facebook because a Kickstarter is a big deal and it’s what you’re doing…but leave the groups out of it.
Rob McBride
Good info mike and thanks for sharing. I sponsor some of the very same folks on FB pages you mentioned on a monthly basis and I don’t even get a like from them on my FB page, etc.
I really does seem like FB is an “its all about me” syndrome and trying to crack that, have that help my business or even get cross over support is nearly worthless.
Good work and great recap. Thank you!
Christi Milligan
The problem with those particular Facebook groups is they cater to other Kickstarter creators and not particularly people interested in board games. There are board games groups on facebook for selling and buying board games or local groups for playing games. I would think that those are the groups to target on Facebook. The masses on Facebook aren’t members of any of those groups you mentioned because if you are a person interested in Kickstarter games, well then you’d go to Kickstarter itself and search specifically for games to get the latest and greatest. Furthermore, if you are really interested in finding out there, you’ll start following all of the game KS creators so you get notified when they launch but also when they themselves support another project.
I’m curious if contests like you find on gleam.io are good for drumming up sales during a KS? I do find out about some games because I’m part of a few groups that promote board game contests.
kabeiser
I wouldn’t expect dropping a link into a FB group to be very successful for direct referral sales on KS. But that might not mean that nobody cares about those links. I know that some of those FB groups had several other mentions of your KS and several of them (probably paid for) linked up to your Kickstarter on the page or did playthrus in the group (I watched one). And then who knows how many referrals were stolen by KS (you mentioned) by people that saved the project and later on backed it because of the reminder.
It would be fascinating to know the best sources of referral though. Very difficult information to get unless you could get some of the bigger KS link droppers to use a referral. For instance the big Reddit thread, Tantrum House KS review on youtube, BG Spotlight pinned thread of launches and every thing else. And even then many go direct to Kickstarter and search for the project.
I am also curious about the contests and their effectiveness.
Cool info though.