KickoffLabs On Growth: Recent Episodes
KickoffLabs
KickoffLabs On Growth is a podcast aimed to help you launch and grow your business. We’ll share our own stories and feature interviews with successful startup founders and marketing experts.
Maven Pet launched a waitlist campaign for their unique AI pet vet tech. Starting with a growing community, early adopters/ product testers, and a passion for helping pets live a better life- Maven Pet was able to grow exponentially before its official launch with KickoffLabs. Learn how product testing through a waitlist can lead to a wildly successful launch and the brand awareness you're looking for.
With the big holiday season quickly approaching, it's time to start preparing for your marketing strategy to stand out. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year's eve are great times to quickly generate leads with a holiday giveaway contest! Get started in no time with these helpful tips and ideas.
It doesn't have to be expensive
You can give away anything that you think your ideal audience will like, regardless of cost to you. Often times samples of your product, experiences, or just simply being the first to get something is enough to capture an audience. This also means themed simple items such as fireworks on the Fourth of July, or a limited edition of your own product to bring the audience back to you.
Give a full gift or experience
It is often best to offer a full experience for your grand prize as opposed to a discount or an item that requires add ons. For example, a boutique offering a gift card for the standard price of a full outfit or VIP tickets to a festival that includes any add on fees there may be.
Create a Budget
Stick to your budget. You can get creative with packages and prizes being items or services that don't cost you much as long as they are things your audience would be interested in. For example, if you want to stay low budget for your bakery's grand opening- offer a free cookie package for leads that are a fan of your product.
Have a friend win too
Encouraging referrals can look like offering "if you win, they win also" items and experiences. This can be a couples Valentine's Day themed dinner package, or a day at the spa for the winner and their friend, or could even work for a service like lawn care- one wins a freshly mowed lawn- they both do.
Exclusivity
When it comes to a waitlist for a new product launch, exclusivity can even be a prize in itself. Offering the top of your list to be the first to receive your product or a limited edition item can be enough to drive a competitive crowd. You can also offer a one of a kind style of your product for your winner for the extra bragging rights.
Launching a beta means getting your audience ready and excited for the release to be as successful as possible. Gambit Games chose to use a waitlist campaign to do just that. Learn why they chose KickoffLabs for this large-scale campaign and how Gambit games turned their waitlist into profit.
Get your giveaway started by using our quick launch guide, checklist, and brand new template quiz! Listen in to learn more about different contest types and find resources to get your next giveaway ready in just 10 minutes.
All Girl Shave Club grew their audience through a KickoffLabs contest with a Milestone Rewards Waitlist contest. Jessica gives advice on nurturing your audience and converting your email list goals into active subscribers in order to run your most successful prelaunch campaign. Listen to hear more about her success running a prelaunch waitlist!
Learn how NOBO uses creative advertising and a KickoffLabs giveaway to successfully market to a demographic surrounded by challenging advertising laws. Also, find out why clarity is key in your next sweepstakes.
Listen in to find out how Derek, host of the well-known business marketing podcast Social Bamboo, has used KickoffLabs not only for his own business but to help others grow through running contests. Learn more about his tactics, marketing advice, and what has been helpful for his clients in past contests along with why he recommends KickoffLabs to his followers.
Find out how Grizzly.fi keept their contest, actions, and communication simple which lead to results of amazing growth for their waitlist giveaway campaign. While they are still in the midst of their campaign, their lead generation is growing every day and is currently at 50,000+ new people with a 40% conversion rate. Listen to their advice on how to make it happen here.
Josh and Hannah discuss KickoffLab's recent contest results, goals, and advice for future giveaways. Get a full recap as well as screenshots, email copy, and our contest checklist from the full show notes here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/our-final-contest-results-and-advice
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/learn-how-to-use-smart-marketing-and-client-relationships-to-create-your-best-contest-yet
For the quick guide and an example of how we applied it to our own contest check out the post here: https://kickofflabs.com/blog/4-day-simple-giveaway-checklist
For pics of the landing pages used, key takeaways and a fill transcript go to https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-dappery-used-testing-lookalike-audiences-and-a-waitlist-to-promote-nfts
See the full show notes and transcript here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-customer-feedback-can-get-the-leads-you-want
For images of the waitlist and ads used check out the full show notes here.
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/waitlist-and-idea-validation-with-a-sales-webinar-signup
For the full notes check out our post here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-waitlist-campaign-helped-swingly-toys-raise-17k-kickstarter
Click here to get the full transcript, images, and other resources from the campaign.
Market Research
The Pronti.AI team spent countless hours interviewing hundreds of people and taking in all of the responses and reviews the app received.
Experiment
They experimented hundreds of times on social platforms leading to their TikTok platform going viral.
Dig Deep + Understand Marketing
Understand what works best for your brand and know the differences in what content to push for various platforms. Pronti.AI had amazing success on TikTok and pulled a lot of growth from the market they built there.
Be Agile
Start with what you have and continue to evolve with your consumer. Pronti.Ai put a lot of focus on continuous improvement within their app, which created a very communicative environment as the app developed.
You can watch the video for this episode on YouTube and get the images and full transcript on our episode page. Here are some key lessons from this episode...
Listen to CustomersListen to what your customers are looking for. Note their comments and use that data to refine your product.
Promote to Your AudienceMatt has an active YouTube following so when sharing about his campaign, he mentioned it in his YouTube content daily to get them engaged and sharing.
Audience Growth is SciencePay attention to what works for yourself and others. Matt paid attention to top videos from other popular channels to find their formula. He posted his own videos and kept tweaking the thumbnails, SEO, captions, and video itself until it worked etc, and got more views. Great content is only great if it's viewed.
Pay Attention to Your Highest ReferralsEven if they do not win the giveaway, notice the customer who had a high amount of successful referrals. Let them know you see them and that they are important to your brand!
Make Your Giveaway UniqueHaugen Racing gave away a drift simulator. Matt credits a lot of success from the uniqueness of this opportunity. Listen to how he plans to level up when he reaches 200k followers.
Make Winning Accessible
Consider making your contest actions weighted toward referrals. Matt chose to make this campaign referral forward as opposed to purchasing weighted, more followers had the opportunity to win. This caused more brand sharing across other followers' accounts and a more successful growth campaign.
Valentina Lin, from Woof 'N Meow joined me to share how they blew past their indigo launch, got almost 3k people into a private group about cat litter, and signed up over 10,000 people to their email list... before launch.
Get the full transcript, a summary of tips and tricks used, and the images from their landing pages on the episode page here:
Here's a short run down of things you'll learn.
*Call 10-20 signups a day*
Learn more about them and get them engaged.
*Do reach out on Instagram/Facebook*
Follow people who comment on competitors and suggest your product.
*Advertise on Instagram*
$10 a day bringing 200-300 signups a day.
*Make referrals worth it*
1 referral worth $30 credit. 2 gets early access to the card.
Get the full transcript, screenshots, detailed copy, and more here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-swheat-collected-over-20k-leads-kickofflabs-prelaunch/
Get the full transcript, copy, key takeaways, and landing pages used to build their audience here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-get-the-fort-raised-over-two-million-on-kickstarter
For the full transcript, key takeaways, and images from their campaign check out the episode home page.
Kelleigh Stewart is amazing. Her coffee roasting business could have disappeared after the pandemic killed off the hotel wholesale and local retail business. Instead they went online, grew their fanbase, collected over 18,000 emails with a KickoffLabs giveaway, and have now grown business over 460% since the start of the year.
Today I’m talking to Luke Rafla-Yuan from Travlwear. They had recently wrapped up a successful KickoffLabs campaign and launched their travel backpack for photographers on Inidgogo. By the time you’re hearing this they were successfully funded at 95 thousand dollars.
In this episode you’ll learn how KickoffLabs helped them validate the business, how they ran a referral campaign by keeping the rewards simple, built a product they wanted to buy, what percentage of your ideal crowdfunding raise you should spend on marketing, and how you could use Facebook Messenger to answer questions from potential customers during your launch.
Get the full show notes, key takeaways, and the transcript here:
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-passfolio-went-from-zero-to-16000-people-on-their-app-waitlist
Check out the full show notes including all of the emails, landing page templates, and key takeaways here:
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-esports-collected-25000-leads-without-advertising-with-a-kickofflabs-contest
For full show notes including all the images, emails, and landing pages used in their campaign check out
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-zenus-collected-25000-leads-without-advertising-with-a-KickoffLabs-contest
Thanks!
Confirm by Location - Don't Restrict Access
If knowing a leads location important for your business then ask in a dropdown with limited choices or confirm with a checkbox.
You Set the Rules
Consider making the rewards for referrals generous, but limited to the first 10-50 people that earn them.
A Winner Every Week?
Great idea! Conssider announcing weekly winners to your whole list to keep them engaged and excited.
Worried About Qualified Leads?
Have enough copy on your page so people understand who your product is for. They will qualify themselves from there.
For a complete transcript check out https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-do-i-make-sure-all-my-leads-are-qualified-and-tell-their-friends
For full show notes check out https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/launching-shopify-reward-campaigns-at-kickofflabs
For full show notes check out https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-do-i-improve-my-conversion-rate-and-get-more-people-sharing-my-landing-pages
For detailed notes, landing page screenshots, a full transcript, email copy, and more check out https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-to-build-anticipation-for-a-new-product-line-at-your-company
"I have a couple of questions about running a pre-launch..."
"Are there risks if the value prop changes a few times between now and launch with folks who have already seen this?"
"Is it ok if I do this 3-4 months?"
"I'm not sure what the right CTA should be? "
"What do you think is the best way to get audiences to the landing page?"
Get all the answers in this episode and find the full transcript at https://kickofflabs.com/podcast.
Full show notes, transcripts, and key takeaways can be found here:
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-to-crowdfund-a-100k-launch-without-a-product-yet
This was the hardest interview I've done so far. I take, for granted, so much knowledge that it's hard to look at things through the eyes of a complete beginner. Someone that's never done any marketing, built a website, or created a product for sale before.
That's exactly the task I set myself up for when I said they'd have a summer project like this. One where they create and ultimately sell something. The summer is winding down and we're getting closer to the launch. This conversation was taken the day we walked through setting up the first web site for their creation.
Enjoy and send any feedback to josh@kickofflabs.com
Full transcript and key takeaways are available here: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-would-you-teach-a-9-year-old-how-to-position-their-new-product
Today I’m going to share an interview we did with Rossa Shanks of Great Little Place from 2015. They ran a KickoffLabs campaign ahead of the launch of their first mobile application. Their KickoffLabs campaign ultimately collected over 100,000 email addresses for them with a significant viral boost.
Since we recorded the interview they’ve gone on to launch the service in 6 countries and over 100+ cities. They’ve also leveraged their larger audience as social proof to raise a larger funding round. It’s been a success and when you listen to Rossa you’ll understand why.
I learned a lot just editing this interview about writing great landing page copy, rallying an audience around a mission, facebook advertising, and how to hack crowdfunding and app launches.
If you enjoy this interview let us know subscribing and leaving a review in the Apple Podcast app. You can also send any feedback along to josh@kickofflabs.com.
Full transcript and key takeaways are available at: https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-did-rossa-collect-100-thousand-leads-crowdfunding-and-300-thousand-fans/
Key Takeaways:
Flip the script! Design a business with a revenue stream that supports your life and not a life that supports a business.
Bootstrap for freedom
No one gives you 20 million in funding without some sort of strings and expectations attached.
Understand your personal priorities
If it's important for you to spend time with your family then make sure your business is setup to support that as a founding principle.
Turn practicality into a strength
Eliminate debt. Save money in advance. Set goals and have a fallback plan, but don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.
Make money talk
If someone says they need a feature and are willing to pay for it's development... then others might too.
Keep your partner in the Loop
Consider your partner as an investor in your business that needs to be kept abreast of how things are going. Be open.
Your time isn't free
It may look like your business is making money... but can it afford to pay you what you're worth?
Read the full transcript here:
https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/how-to-build-a-business-that-supports-your-life-plan/
You learn how much they had to iterate on their product and how they made their prelaunch on KickoffLabs such a huge success, gathering over 18,000 emails with a conversion rate over 50% and a viral boost of 65%. They've passed their Kickstarter funding goal in the first 48 hours. All this for their version of a product you'll use every day.
Remember, if you enjoy this episode, write us a review in the podcast listening app of your choice and send any feedback to josh@kickofflabs.com
Full transcript and notes available here https://kickofflabs.com/podcast/can-capitalism-help-solve-the-american-gun-epidemic/
Set Marketing Goals
Do some research and understand what success would mean for you at the end and work backwards from that to set goals.
Get In Front of People
Tim never missed an opportunity to present his idea to school competitions, online forums, and even when he was pulled over by the police!
Build, Demo, and Iterate
Timmy has built 30 different prototype versions of their product before landing on the winner.
Disruption Requires a Different Message
Most of the gun industry peddles in fear so Vara Safety struck a warmer, family friendly, tone with their advertising.
Offer Discounts for Sharing
They drove a TON traffic to their campaign through the KickoffLabs viral tools by offering a discount for sharing.
Find Partner Communities
Timmy and his team built relationships with managers of facebook groups and other online communities.
Lauralee Flores is the designer at KickoffLabs. We're a tiny company so she wears a lot of hats... from user experience, design, to conversion rate optimization. Today we go behind the scenes at Kickofflabs and walk you through our design process for some of the recent feature releases.
During their KickoffLabs campaign they captured thousands of email addresses at a 56% conversion rate with an 88% viral boost… meaning 88% of their leads came from KickoffLabs sharing tools.
Here’s just a sample of what you’ll learn in this episode.
- Use Google Trends to Validate People Looking for an idea.
- Track cost for lead generated, conversion rate, and whether or not people shared using KickoffLabs.
- You can do influencer marketing without paying for influencer marketing. Engage communities where your customers hang out.
- Optimize your campaigns by testing fewer, but more meaningful changes to ads and landing pages.
- Take a pro-active approach to email (at least once per week) to keep your list engaged as you build your product.
- 7% conversion rate from the initial list. Made back the $350 worth of chocolate in the first month.
- A website that converts is more important than something that’s pretty. :)
You'll learn how they leveraged an existing audience, built out a referral program, and rewarded people for telling their friends to dramatically lower the cost of their app launch.
Mass adoption requires simplicity. If you are going for a mass market like the payment app space you need a dead simple message with a value proposition that's easy to explain.
You need to overcome objections. With a financial product people are going to be skeptical. Doubly so if it's a space like crypto. They needed to explain how a users money would be safe.
Early access waitlists work. "Having an early access leaderboard/waitlist worked pretty fantastically to get people sharing and referring friends."
Beta testing is a reward. People who are enthusiastic influencers are also the same people who want to be a part of your team and give great feedback!
Why should you stop to focus on the page speed, download size, and overall performance of your landing pages, application, and marketing site?
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A huge number of your first impressions are going to be from a mobile device with a slower browser and network than you think.
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If any part of your customer experience is slow it will impact the customer perception of your business. You want to get out of the way of your customer and let them get down to business ASAP.
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SEO. Google will rank you higher.
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When you improve performance you end up making things simpler to maintain by removing stuff you don't need and reducing complexity.
Give a listen and let us know what you think about how we went about improving the performance of the KickoffLabs customer experience.
It’s not an exaggeration. Glowforge raised $27.9 million dollars during their 30-day crowdfunding campaign. By any measure, it’s a phenomenal success.
To be clear, this was not on Kickstarter. There was no huge Kickstarter community to draw from. Starting from a small list, Glowforge needed to build up their audience size to good condition before the official launch.
They used KickoffLabs to generate more than 10,000 emails to seed their initial list and kickoff the crowdfunding campaign.
Here’s how they did it…
Lots of images from the interview can be found here: https://kickofflabs.com/blog/biggest-30-day-crowdfunding-campaign-in-history/
Will Russell has been running successful pre-launch campaigns on KickoffLabs for years to build an audience for his clients Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns.
Three years ago Will started his own agency that specializes in managing these crowdfunding launches for companies, has grown to 7 employees, and helped their clients raise millions of dollars.
We’ll go step by step through the system they’ve developed, how they’ve used KickoffLabs, and important lessons like how you get people to signup and share your campaign before you’ve even launched the pre-sale.
If you enjoy this episode write us a review in iTunes or your podcasting service of choice.
How do you raise over $700k on Kickstarter for a product that competes with something most people use every day?
Nicolas Aagaard and his co-founders learned from their previous mistakes to design a simple solution that's good for the earth and good for consumers. Then they went ahead with a referral campaign to generate emails ahead of their Kickstarter Launch using KickoffLabs.
Using the emails they generated from KickoffLabs they've gone on to raise a ton on money on Kickstarter for LastSwab. An easy to clean, sanitary, and reusable alternative to the cotton swab.
Learn how they failed first, tested headlines, and marketed their product through each phase of their launch.