Say goodbye to soggy sandwiches and melted ice! GoSun Chillest is the ultimate outdoor cooler because instead of using ice, it cools food and drinks using the power of the sun.
The 45 liter cooler prepares you for any outdoor event with a built-in battery and all-terrain wheels plus thoughtful extras like inside lighting, tie-down straps, and organization baskets. It also has a built-in compressor that lets you set the temperature right where you want it with a range from -4°F to 68°F (-20°C to 20°C).
Without ice, you can use 100% of the cooler’s volume. GoSun Chillest has nearly double the room for food and drinks when compared with coolers of equal dimensions. Check out their campaign on Indiegogo InDemand!
Contents
Phase 1: TestBoom
Like the majority of our clients, we started them on our TestBoom program to test demand for the product before we committed to a full launch together. In TestBoom, we use a proprietary system and predictive model to determine how successful a launch will be with minimal upfront investment of time and money.
Messaging & positioning
TestBoom begins with our messaging and positioning process. During this phase, we developed the initial ways we wanted to position GoSun Chillest in the marketplace.
We started out with a pretty big advantage with this campaign: Chillest was GoSun’s fifth launch with us. This means that we already had an idea of where to start, and we knew we could leverage everything we did in their past campaigns to knock this one out of the park.
From this process, we came up with 2 to 4 angles to test in the market. There are many ways to communicate the value of a product. An angle can be thought of as one of those points of value that we want to lead with. Here’s what we came up with for GoSun Chillest.
- Temperature controlled
- Organized
- Feature-packed
- Sustainability
Next, we identified 2–4 audiences we wanted to test on Facebook
Think of an audience as a type of person — what are their interests, their age, their gender, etc.?
Here are a few audiences we came up with for GoSun Chillest:
- Off-Grid
- Top outdoor brands
- RVs
- Doomsday preppers
Test using our Reservation Funnel
Using the angles and the audiences, we’ll next want to program advertisements and send traffic down our Reservation Funnel (pictured below):
The ultimate goal of the reservation is get the user to put down a $1 deposit to reserve the product before you launch. Why? Because those that put down $1 to reserve the product before you launch are 30x more likely to buy.
You can learn more about what we call our Reservation Funnel by clicking here.
By putting down $1, users were able to reserve GoSun Chillest at $579 (57% off retail price). Using our predictive model, we had strong reason to believe that GoSun Chillest was going to do extremely well. They passed the TestBoom program and moved into Phase 2: LaunchBoom.
Phase 2: LaunchBoom
Once a product reaches Phase 2 of the LaunchBoom system, we are committed to having a massive launch. There’s a lot of small details that go into the process of preparing the launch. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to focus on the most important details.
Scaling pre-campaign advertising
During TestBoom, we only used a $2,000 ad budget. For LaunchBoom, we increased the budget to $21,514.24 for the pre-campaign. We diversified the ad budget by targeting additional audiences and testing new ad creative. You can see the results in the screenshot below.
Here are the notable metrics:
- Ad spend: $21,514.24
- Leads: 5,106
- Cost per lead: $4.21
- Reservations: 348
- Cost per reservation: $61.82
Although a $61 cost per reservation might seem high, keep in mind that the lowest possible backer price was $579. When taken in that context, it’s actually a great cost!
VIP Facebook Group
We call those that put down the $1 reservation deposit a “VIP.” One of the benefits of being a VIP is they are added to a private VIP Facebook group. The Facebook group allowed them to interact with the GoSun team as well as the rest of the GoSun Chillest VIPs. This is a great way for us to create an engaged community of people before we launch.
Having a “LaunchBoom”
With a pre-campaign email list built, we emailed the list when we launched to get funded extremely quickly. You can see in the graph below, the spike of sales on Indiegogo over the first 48 hours.
[get this screenshot for the campaign in question]
On the first day, we raised $188,149. On the second day, we raised $37,839. In 48 hours, we were already at $225,988 in funding.
Keeping the campaign momentum going
I like to compare a strong LaunchBoom at the beginning of a campaign to building a strong foundation for the rest of the campaign to build upon. The credibility gained by getting funded so quickly makes future visitors to the campaign more likely to convert. Here’s how we were able to capitalize on the strong start and keep momentum going.
Facebook & Instagram Advertising
The best way to continue to drive consistent and profitable revenue is through Facebook & Instagram advertising. For GoSun, we were able to scale spend even better than we did in the pre-campaign because we now had the credibility of getting funded quickly. In the screenshot below from Facebook Ads Manager you can see the results from the campaign.
Here are the important metrics:
- Amount spent: $67,916.73
- Revenue: $527,928.00 (Total Revenue – Client Revenue – Tracked Pre-Campaign Revenue)
- Return on ad spend: 8.25x
Another reason why the advertising was so effective was because Indiegogo lets you add the Facebook Pixel (Kickstarter doesn’t allow this). By having the Facebook Pixel you can let Facebook do what Facebook does best: optimize the advertisements using their algorithms. Since we know if someone purchases from an ad, we can tell Facebook to optimize the ads and show them to more people like the person that purchased.
Our Best-Performing Ad
Our best-performing ad during the pre-campaign and live campaign is the one shown above. The interesting thing about this ad is that it’s very similar to the winning ad for the GoSun Chill campaign, which we ran with GoSun 2 years prior. See below:
We tested other things, but when you have an ad that works… stick with it!
Indiegogo Promotions
The Indiegogo team did a great job supporting the campaign with promotions. We were able to unlock many of the promotions because we had funded the project so much through email, Facebook, and PR. Here are some of the ways Indiegogo promoted the project:
- Email newsletters: $81,076
- Homepage placement: $47,181
- High placement in the category listing: $53,313
Because of these promotions and visibility on the platform, Indiegogo directly contributed 28% of the total funding to the project.
Indiegogo InDemand
Indiegogo has a great feature called Indiegogo InDemand which allows creators to continue to sell products on the platform after the campaign ends. This is how GoSun is continuing to fund the project.
Through the campaign funding we raised $908,927 and through InDemand we’ve already raised an additional $29,151 (and we’re still funding!). InDemand is a great way for us to continue to scale on Indiegogo’s platform until the creator is ready to transition to ecommerce.
To wrap it up, here are some of the biggest takeaways:
- GoSun used TestBoom to predict likelihood of success
- Built a pre-launch email list using our Reservation Funnel to identify people who are 30x more likely to buy
- Used pre-launch email list to have a “LaunchBoom” and get funded extremely quickly
- Live campaign Facebook ads drove $527,928.00 in revenue from $67,916.73 in ad spend (a 8.25x return)
- Indiegogo promotions directly contributed 28% to the project
- Used Indiegogo InDemand to continue to drive sales after the campaign ended
Are you looking to launch a product soon? Apply to work with us so we can learn more about you and your new product!
