How to Market Your Failed Kickstarter Effectively
When your Kickstarter campaign fails, it feels like a punch to the gut. All those late nights, the passionate pitches, the dreams—evaporated. But a failed campaign is not the end; it’s a beginning, an unparalleled opportunity to learn and rebuild.
Embracing Failure as Feedback
The first, most crucial step after a failed Kickstarter is to shift your mindset. See this not as a personal failure, but as invaluable market research. Your campaign provided data, whether it was low pledges, poor conversion rates, or a lack of interest.
Radio silence or blaming your potential backers is a surefire way to burn bridges and guarantee a second failure. Instead, embrace radical transparency. Communicate openly with everyone who showed even a sliver of interest.
Transparent Post-Failure Communication
Immediately after the campaign concludes, send out an update. Acknowledge the outcome directly and honestly. Explain that while the initial goal wasn’t met, your passion for the project remains undimmed.
This communication isn’t about excuses; it’s about setting the stage for future engagement. Thank everyone who pledged or shared your project. Reassure them that their support, however small, was noted and appreciated.
Re-engaging Your Community
After the initial post-mortem, your focus must shift to re-engagement. This involves more than just sending emails. Create dedicated channels for feedback.
Consider a public survey, a Discord Q&A session, or even direct outreach to high-tier backers. Ask pointed questions: What didn’t resonate? Was the pricing wrong? Was the vision unclear? What would they change?
Every piece of feedback is a golden nugget for your next attempt. Pay particular attention to recurring themes or common objections. These often highlight fundamental issues with your initial approach.
Leveraging Feedback for a Refined Re-launch
Now comes the hard work of sifting through all that feedback. This is where your game dev journal becomes an indispensable tool. From the very inception of your project, you should have been meticulously logging every idea, every design decision, every marketing attempt. This detailed game development log provides a complete historical record.
Imagine you’re reviewing feedback about your game’s core loop. If you’ve been consistent with your game dev journal, you can cross-reference this feedback with your early design notes. Perhaps the initial concept was too ambitious, or a crucial feature was overlooked. This historical context illuminates why certain aspects failed to connect with your audience.
Your journal should contain entries for all marketing efforts too. Did you run specific ad campaigns? How did your social media posts perform? What was the engagement like on your devlogs? Tracking this information helps you understand what worked and what didn’t in your previous marketing strategy.
When you’re planning your refined re-launch, you’ll want to pivot based on these insights. Did people want more gameplay footage? A clearer narrative? A different art style? Use your journal to outline these changes and then document the implementation process. This continuous loop of feedback, analysis, and refinement is how you effectively track game development progress and learn from past mistakes.
For instance, if your Kickstarter failed because the concept was too niche, your journal might reveal early entries discussing broader appeal but being discarded. Now, you can revisit those ideas with the benefit of hindsight and market feedback. If the problem was an unclear value proposition, your journal can help you trace back when that clarity was lost, allowing you to re-focus your messaging.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
Many failed campaigns fall into predictable traps. One is simply re-launching the exact same project with minor tweaks. This signals to your audience that you haven’t truly learned. Your re-launch needs to demonstrate a significant evolution, directly addressing the feedback you received.
Another pitfall is giving up entirely. While tempting, remember that many successful indie games have gone through multiple iterations or failed funding attempts before finding their footing. Persistence, coupled with strategic adaptation, is key.
A vital part of avoiding these pitfalls is maintaining a disciplined game dev journal. It acts as your project’s memory, ensuring no insight is lost and no mistake is repeated unknowingly. This consistent habit will allow you to learn more effectively.
The Power of Your Game Dev Journal
From the first spark of an idea to the final release, a game dev journal is your personal repository of knowledge. It’s where you record your inspirations, sketch out mechanics, track bugs, and, crucially, analyze your marketing efforts. This detailed record is indispensable for making informed decisions.
A well-maintained journal isn’t just a diary; it’s a strategic planning tool. It helps you identify patterns in your workflow, track your productivity, and maintain consistency with your devlogs. When you’re constantly writing, reflecting, and iterating in your journal, you’re building a comprehensive resource for future projects. This ongoing process of documenting allows you to refine your approach, not just for the current project but for your entire game development career.
For solo developers and students, this habit is even more critical. You are your own team, your own project manager, and your own archivist. Leveraging a structured method to track game development progress ensures you stay organized and never lose sight of your goals or the lessons learned.
To genuinely transform failure into fuel, you need to understand not just what went wrong, but why. This deep introspection, backed by documented insights, is what propels a successful second attempt. Plan your next move more effectively with our free game dev journaling tool. This will provide you with the framework to meticulously document your journey, ensuring that every lesson from your first attempt directly informs your triumphant re-launch.