After intense preparation, we were ready to launch. Everything was about to become real which was a great feeling. Indiegogo was our crowdfunding platform of choice. They were nice, helpful, and the process was easy to understand.
I was very nervous when the moment came to click on the launch button. I was wondering "have I missed something? Have I made the right choices? Is the message clear enough? Will people notice this small detail in the video? Is the pricing strategy good enough? Have I done everything right..."
See what I mean? Are you like this too?
If you plan on doing a campaign, you must check two important parts before pressing the "go live" button, why? Because you cannot change them once everything is live which is very scary.
1/ The campaign duration (one month is the most common choice and we went for this one too).
2/ The campaign funding goal (we went for 15.000 Australian dollars. I'll tell you more about this point in the next article).
Our campaign was immediately live after I clicked on that bloody button. All our hard work was finally public, and we were about to get validation, or not.
Here is the original Indiegogo campaign.
And here is the original campaign video:
The first week of the campaign was a lot of fun. We knew exactly what to do and it was interesting to see the direct result of our actions.
All the tasks we had to do after the launch were planned. All the emails were written and ready to be sent, the Facebook ad campaigns were ready, our family and friends were aware of the launch, and our community of 2000 people was informed... We just had to follow the path.
Here’s what ended up happening:
- We had a chance to read all the feedback from people about the project, mission, product, prices, etc. It was helpful to read both the positive and negative responses.
- One picture, in particular, got a lot of attention and a lot of comments (I will come back to this in another article).
- Our funding goal was reached in three days, which was a great feeling.
- Our friends and family were really involved, and we are super grateful for that. Thank you all again. You made this victory possible.
- We enjoyed the intensity of our day-to-day during the campaign. It was amazing to see results from our hard work happen so quickly.
The following two weeks were calmer, as it usually is with a crowdfunding project. The beginning and the end of a campaign are usually the most active moments and the biggest challenge for every campaign maker is to keep the momentum going during weeks two and three, which is really hard, to be honest.
And then finally came the last week, which was as exciting as the first one because we had a lot of reactions, feedback, and people purchasing. Our community was very active until the end and we finished everything on a great note.
The final result…
45.000 Australian Dollars raised, great visibility was gained, tons of feedback to make our future strategy stronger, amazing support from our family and friends, and a solid start to joining the golf community.
Even if the final amount raised was not as high as we expected, we were very satisfied with the degree of interest around the project and we had enough money to go further. After the campaign, we ordered all the materials, organized the shipping, and began production on our signature golf jackets and golf polos.
What lessons do we keep from this campaign? What would we do differently today if we had to start everything again? I will answer these questions in the next article.
This story has been written from my perspective, my name is Arthur, and I am the founder of Untraced. If you have any questions or comments, I invite you to get in touch with me directly: hello@untracedgolfing.com