This board game veteran tried something different for his 11th Kickstarter.
A new pre-launch strategy that helped him raise $55,849 in 1 day.
Here’s his story.
Meet Milan Tasevski – the founder of Archona Games.
Like many designers, Milan’s love for board games started in his childhood. But there is something unique to his story.
Growing up in Macedonia, Milan’s father was a karate instructor who traveled across Europe for tournaments.
Every time his father returned from his trips, he brought back a special gift – a board game. These weren’t just any games; they were thoughtfully chosen from different parts of Europe, each with its own charm and story – creating a deep passion for board games within Milan.
Despite this passion for board games, Milan took a slight detour and started his career in video games.
But after only a year at a video game company, he quit. He couldn’t ignore that deep-down, he just wanted to create board games. So he went all-in.
In 2015, he started his own game publisher called Archona Games and got to work on his first game. It was called Small Star Empires and launched on Kickstarter in 2016, raising $21,617.
Now, he was off to the races.
He kept making games (some years launching 2 campaigns on Kickstarter) and by 2023, he was ready to launch his 11th game, Philharmonix, a Space Orchestra Management Board Game.
You’d think with nearly a decade of experience launching games that Milan wouldn’t want to change anything, but that’s not how Milan thought. He wanted to upgrade his pre-launch marketing, so he joined LaunchBoom and we got to work.
Only two months later, he pressed the launch button on Kickstarter.
He raised $55,849 in one day… and by the end of the campaign the campaign had raised $130,504 (amounts raised were converted from Australian dollars).
Milan’s new approach to the pre-launch was a big reason why he raised so much in one day.
Let’s dive into what that pre-launch strategy was.
Philharmonix’s pre-launch marketing strategy
The crux of Milan’s pre-launch strategy was to build an email list of “Superfans” before he launched his campaign.
There’s a few different strategies we like to use at LaunchBoom to do this, but Milan chose to use the Reservation Funnel.
Here’s how it worked.
1. Philharmonix drove traffic with Meta Ads
Meta ads are the first step to build a pre-launch email list. This is how Milan drove traffic. He tested many different variations of copy and imagery, but here was his best performing ad.
2. Philharmonix collected email addresses on a landing page
The landing page is where they explained their product and collected email addresses. The landing page looked like this:
By the way, this is a screenshot from our LaunchKit software that all LaunchBoom Creators get access to.
3. Philharmonix collected $1 reservations
This is the most important step and why we call this funnel the Reservation Funnel. Someone can reserve something valuable by putting down a $1 deposit in the pre-launch. We call this a VIP Offer and here’s what Philharmonix’s looked like:
- A bonus VIP mini-expansion called Galactic Festival
The most important thing to know is that people who put down the reservation were way more likely to buy, which is why we call them Superfans.
Philharmonix got funded on day one
Leading into the launch, Milan had 356 people who had put down a $1 reservation deposit. We’ve found the number of reservations to be the best predictor of launch success. And just like we thought, their launch took off immediately.
On the first day, Milan made $55,849 and by the end of the campaign, he had driven $130,504 in revenue from 1461 new customers.
This was all possible because they followed the LaunchBoom system. Our goal is not to launch a successful product, but to launch a successful business.
Do you have a game you want to launch like Milan?
We can help you launch it.
We’ve worked with over a thousand product creators. If you want to be the next one… Click here to talk with a LaunchBoom expert.
