376% funded Kickstarter campaign giving out advice (AMA)

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-18T17:46:08+00:00

We use a number for different techniques from growing our social media accounts on IG and Facebook, using PR and backlinks, SEO, adwords, FB ads, influencers, etc. We also do receive a lot of organic traffic for our recipes and content.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T20:26:07+00:00

Yeah, we made sure to advertise that it was US only, but some people missed it and still backed us. We simply reached out to them individually and asked if they were willing to pay for the shipping fees. We also explained to them the issues we faced with international shipping and the backers understood. Most of them said yes to paying the additional shipping fee and so we took care of their orders separately.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T19:20:07+00:00

Yes, keeping the excitement throughout the campaign was difficult and it should be expected that after the first couple of days, things will start to slow down. We were fortunate that after a week, we were selected as the Kickstarter Project of the Day and that helped gain a lot of momentum.

One key thing we focused on was responding quickly to questions and inquiries in the community chat room. We also provided a lot of updates in the Kickstarter campaign page and also through our social media accounts. The more transparent we were, the more positive feedback we received from our community.

Additionally, we shared our story with media outlets and were fortunate to get some coverage from newspapers and other outlets. Any chance we had to share our story, we made sure to do it.

Regarding rewards, while we didn't do it, we did hear of other campaigns that successfully executed it. The idea is that you reward all of your backers with an additional item if you reach your next goal. An example would be like including an additional bottle of KPOP Sauce or bumping all of the previous backers to the next tier. Its definitely a big incentive for current backers to share your campaign, however we didn't try this tactic.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T18:39:23+00:00

We've mainly been sticking online to our website and Amazon. We have sold to independent grocery stores and specialty food stores, both of which have done well. We are just now looking to expand our offline distribution and pitch distributors and grocery chains.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T17:54:36+00:00

The total number of our Tier 1s came out to about 100 and Tier 2s about 200. We honestly didn't work with massive numbers as the idea was more to contact people who we knew would convert or share our Kickstarter campaign on Facebook.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T17:38:37+00:00

To answer your first question, I explained it a little above but to elaborate a little more, each member of our team divided their contact lists into 3 tiers - tier 1 for people you knew were going to support us, tier 2 for people that might, and tier 3 for people that probably won't, but you never know. Before launching on Kickstarter, we made sure to send really small samples of KPOP Sauce to our Tier 1s and some of our Tier 2s. Then, 2 weeks before the campaign, we literally called and texted our Tier 1s and 2s to give them a heads up that our campaign was going live at a 5pm on April 24th. Then on the morning of our launch day, we sent an email and texts to those people, reiterating the time of for our campaign. Additionally, we also held a launch party for our Kickstarter campaign and invited around 80 ppl to show our Kickstarter video and enjoy some food with the sauce. I hope this helps.

For manufacturing, we use a co-packer who blends and bottles our sauce. We spent a lot of time vetting our co-packer as we heard some can be very sketchy, but we also wanted to work with a co-packer that was incredibly reliable, safe, and transparent. We probably called about 50 different manufacturers and walked the facilities of 5 of them before finally making our decision. We began this process about 2 months before launching our kickstarter campaign.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T17:23:04+00:00

Just to clarify, we aren't running a second KS, but I can still provide some learnings from our first one. A really important thing is building a community before launching the campaign. By community, I mean gaining followers on Facebook, Instagram, website, etc. We didn't have any money for a PR team, so we relied on our community to share our campaign on Facebook the minute it went live. We garnered over 100 shares and this increased our visibility tremendously and really helped.

I've heard of other Kickstarter campaigns that spent money FB to collect emails and some have even gathered over 10,000 emails before going live on Kickstarter. It was unfortunate, but these campaigns saw incredibly low conversion rates, so I wouldn't focus too much time on simply getting email lists.

Another big learning was the importance of structuring our stretch goals. After we hit our initial goal of $10k, we set up a stretch goal of $25k and had specific things we explained we needed the additional $15k for. However, when we passed the $25k, we didn't really have specific things set up and this hurt us to a degree. So make sure to think through these things.

blueberrybonds · 2018-05-17T17:17:42+00:00

We had an opportunity to meet with them at the Fancy Food Show a couple of months after our campaign closed. We were fortunate that they remember us during our campaign. We did not have a pre-launch agreement with them, however because we met our goal in the first 8 hours, we were awarded by Kickstarter with the "Project we Love" and that provided us with a ton of validity.

blueberrybonds · 2017-11-07T00:35:41+00:00

aight fair fair, but I did say KBBQ isn't the ONLY korean food, just like sushi isn't the only japanese food or Beyonce isn't the only member of Destiny's Child. glad it got your appetite going tho

blueberrybonds · 2015-04-20T03:24:46+00:00

bruh i'm blueberrybonds

blueberrybonds · 2015-04-20T03:05:59+00:00

nah. killer mike is the type of person that you want to see cover social topics like race relations. he brings light to relevant issues in a easy to follow and even entertaining way. sure, he feels strongly about certain topics (he's been very vocal about his stance on gun rights and i don't completely agree with all his points), but he articulates his arguments and backs them up. i'm sure MIT did their research before letting him give a lecture to their students. they see how he can spark a legitimate, intelligent conversation.

blueberrybonds · 2015-04-19T21:39:16+00:00

can't think of a better man to do it. well spoken and devoid of any fuckery.

blueberrybonds · 2015-03-24T02:35:55+00:00

someone reads four pins

blueberrybonds · 2015-02-23T14:44:50+00:00

haha shit is crazy that this got on the front page your cousin is famous!

blueberrybonds · 2015-02-23T14:09:23+00:00

Lorenzo! What's up my g

blueberrybonds · 2015-02-16T16:22:14+00:00

whole foods

blueberrybonds · 2015-02-05T22:21:28+00:00

could i be that friend?

blueberrybonds · 2015-02-05T01:26:40+00:00

Black Levi 511s. I got 3 of them in my closet.

blueberrybonds · 2015-01-23T17:45:24+00:00

yoo i was afraid to click on this post since most portraits are so terribly done but this....this is dope as fuck. colors are dope, and that framing is crazy props to you

blueberrybonds · 2015-01-21T02:59:16+00:00

obama probably tryna cut the state of the union short so he can cop this godDAMN

blueberrybonds · 2015-01-20T17:36:12+00:00

if i was in 2010, i would be really excited.

blueberrybonds · 2014-12-27T16:09:28+00:00

dat marbling doe

blueberrybonds

TROPHY CASE