When to launch - two viewpoints

Before getting into the two viewpoints, there’s really a zeroth one. The most important one: you must actually launch.

It’s very easy to delay and kick your project down the road. You can think more time will allow you to be more ready, have a better Kickstarter page, a bigger mailing list, more press contacts. But the perfect time will never come. At some point you just have to do it.

The biggest enemy to your success is procrastination, inertia and fear of failure. As I said in a previous post, you need to actively keep things moving - create your draft project as soon as possible and maintain forward momentum.

So now we’ve got that out the way, when should you launch your crowdfunding project?

External factors

The first viewpoint is the one you’ll most commonly see if you google “when should I launch my Kickstarter?”

I can save you the time of doing that and tell you the answer you’ll get is: a Tuesday in May at 8am EST.

Now I’m not saying that is not a useful insight. It makes sense.

• Avoid December and January because people are busy and have less money.

• The start of the week is better because it gives the all-important first 48 hours more chance of reaching people when they’re online.

• But not Monday because people are busy catching up after the weekend.

• Early morning US time gives most chance of your audience being awake at the start of your campaign.

Other factors to consider are specific things about your target audience — time zones, paydays, public holidays, etc. Remember though that wherever you’re based, the US is quite possibly going to be your most significant target market just because of Kickstarter user demographics.

Digging into the data - via LaunchBoom

That’s all well and good, but don’t just blindly follow the generic collective internet wisdom. Apart from the fact that that advice has now probably become self-perpetuating, you need think about your project, not everyone else’s. Maybe you have analytics data from your own website or a previous project. You know your audience better than anyone, so take that into account.

Internal factors

Whilst all that data is valuable, I think it rather misses the point.

Far more important is when is the best time to launch your project, and when are you ready?

Your Kickstarter project doesn’t existing in a vacuum. You’ll have other things in your life going on that will have an impact on when you launch your Kickstarter campaign - a family, a day-job, managing a business, other projects or products.

Running a Kickstarter campaign is an intense and time-consuming endeavour. If anything, the pre-launch phase leading up to the campaign can be more full-on that the actual campaign itself. The middle of the campaign in particular can actually feel like a rest compared to the preceding few weeks!

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As well as making sure you have the space to focus on your campaign, there are some specific things to consider when deciding when to launch your campaign.

Incidentally, this post is not about whether or not your product is ready. That’s a critical subject in itself, but for another time. For now I’ll assume your project is ready for Kickstarter. You’ll have solid prototypes, decent photography, figured out how you’ll get your product made, how to ship it, and what price to set your rewards at.

Are you ready from a marketing point of view?

Once all that’s sorted you’ll need to make sure you’re ready to market your campaign.

There’s a common misconception that just getting a well-presented project live on Kickstarter is all you need to do. Sadly that’s not the case. The internet is a crowded place and Kickstarter is no exception. There are several thousand Kickstarter campaigns live at any given time and you need to put in the work to give your campaign the best chance of being seen by backers.

The bulk of this effort needs to be done before you launch. This will involve making sure friends and family, and any existing followers on social media know about the project and are ready to jump on it as soon as it launches. Then there’s your strategy for other marketing, PR, and any paid ads you might be running.

There are no hard rules about knowing when you’ve done enough of this. Some people will tell you you need x number of people on your mailing list, or y number of people following you via your Kickstarter pre-launch page, but every project and circumstance is different.

Kickstarter pre-launch page

Having said that, it is sensible to run some numbers on this. How many people will need to back you at an estimated average reward level in order for you to hit your target? How many friends and family do you think might back your project? How big is your mailing list and what percentage of them do you think might back you?

Building up to your launch is critical, but at some point you have to push the button. You could keep building your mailing list for months and keep adding new PR targets. Ultimately you’ll just have to make a call on whether you’re ready enough.

Project timeline

Another tactic when deciding when to launch your campaign is to work back from when you hope to deliver the finished product.

Let’s say for example that you want to get rewards to backers in time for Christmas.

Start by looking at your estimated lead times. Let’s say there’s a two month lead time to get your product made, which is realistic for a relatively simple project. Then you’ll likely have to get products from wherever they’re made to somewhere from where you can ship to backers (maybe even several locations globally). Then there’s the time for the last step to get rewards posted to each individual backer.

Before all that, there’s the Kickstarter campaign itself (which typically runs for around a month). Then the Kickstarter funds won’t come through for a couple of weeks after that.

That all ads up. In this scenario your Kickstarter campaign needs to start in June/July in order to deliver to backers in time for Christmas. And that’s assuming everything runs smoothly! For a more complex product you could easily be looking at a year from start to finish.

Working back from Christmas

You can never really predict exactly how well your project will do. Much of it will be in the hands of fate. But there are many things you can, and should, do to give you the best chance of success. Getting the timing of your launch right is a big one.

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This subject is very pertinent to me right now as I’m about to launch my seventh Kickstarter. Christmas delivery is a consideration, and I’m also seeing how this new Kickstarter will sit along side my ongoing work to market and sell my previous products.

As of writing, I haven’t decided on the exact launch date yet. I should figure out the answer in the coming days.

If you want to hear how that goes, and read more about product and launch strategy, make sure you’re signed up to my newsletter below.