Why you should NOT launch your crowdfunding campaign during the holidays

The best time to launch Kickstarter or Indiegogo projects is top of mind for product creators.

Your product is finally ready, and after all your hard work, you want to ensure it has the best launch possible.

It might seem intuitive to launch during the holidays, since so many people are shopping and ready to buy, but data shows us this is not the case for crowdfunding.

I’m going to explain why the holiday season is the worst time to launch your product via crowdfunding. You’ll also learn when is the best time to launch a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign.

Why the holiday season is the worst time to launch a crowdfunding product

When you think of the holidays, it probably conjures images of busy stores, decorations and wrapped presents. It’s the time of year when everyone is buying like crazy, so what gives? Why is it any different for crowdfunding products?

There are two main reasons:

Higher advertising costs

During the holidays, CPMs (Cost per impression – A metric used to measure the cost of advertising) increase dramatically.

This is because all the companies in the world are pushing ads heavily for gift giving and increased holiday purchase intent.

The cost of advertising works off basic principles of supply and demand. There are only so many users that you can advertise to (supply), and when everybody is increasing their spend on advertising (demand), the cost of advertising goes up—or way up in the case of December.

Lower purchase intent

Normal e-commerce and retail brands continue advertising during the holidays because the higher advertising costs are offset by higher purchase intent driven by people who are shopping for gifts.

However, for crowdfunding, you don’t have the increased purchase intent to boost your conversion rate because people are looking for gifts that will be delivered before Christmas.

Here’s what that tells us:

1. Crowdfunding campaign products don’t make good gifts inherently because of the long delivery timelines.
2. Most of the disposable income consumers would use to back a crowdfunding campaign is dried up because they’re buying regular gifts.

These two negative factors combined make it really difficult to successfully advertise crowdfunding projects during the holidays.

Higher cost of traffic + lower conversion event = really expensive Cost per Acquisition.

When to launch your crowdfunding campaign outside of the holidays

So if your campaign is ready and you were thinking about launching around this time, what should you do?

Wait until late January or early February.

You generally want to give consumers ~2 pay cycles to recover disposable income and get ready to buy things again.

If you have a product that’s highly relevant to New Year’s resolutions (fitness products, health products, personal productivity products), then you may want to launch earlier in January. Otherwise, most consumer products should wait until the end of January to let CPMs go down and consumer wallets recover.☺️

What to do if your campaign is already live or on Indiegogo InDemand

If your campaign is already live or you’re on Indiegogo InDemand, you can still try to take advantage of holiday purchase intent, but it won’t be as effective as traditional products that deliver in time.

I recommend testing out Secret Perks or special discounts to incentivize people to purchase. A Holiday/New Years discount can get increased performance that may still be profitable for your campaign!

If you try this strategy out and it doesn’t generate the returns you need, be open to slowing down or pausing your ad spend until January, rather than forcing traffic unprofitably to your campaign. You can save up some money to push harder in the new year.

Conclusion

Now that you understand why you should wait until after the holidays to launch your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, I’ll fill you in on the ideal time to launch a crowdfunding campaign.

• The best month to launch Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns is May, but only marginally. So, it’s basically any month other than December.
• The best day to launch Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns is Tuesday.
• The best time to launch a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign is 8am EST.

Do you have a physical product idea or physical product that’s ready to launch?

Book a slot on our calendar to talk to one of our launch specialists. No pressure, no sales – just a quick call to get to know each other and learn if there’s an opportunity. Either way, you’ll get helpful tips on what to do next!