132 days ago, these two best friends watched as their 2nd Kickstarter raised $45,250 in one day.
(which was over 4 times more than the 1st day of their previous campaign!)
Here’s how they did it.
Meet Mikey Hawryluk & Jason Ward – the co-founders of Accidental Cyclops and creators of Surviving Strangehollow.
They’ve loved playing games their whole lives and in 2012, they decided to start making their own. Not too long after getting started though, they realized making games was quite a bit harder than they initially thought.
Still, they persisted and over the years, they made a handful of games, but nothing felt complete enough to launch.
That was until 2022, when they had an idea for a tabletop RPG unlike any other. They were huge fans of the rock band Faith No More (if you don’t know them, they were especially big in the 80’s and 90’s). And they wanted to make an RPG based on their most popular album, The Real Thing.
Right now you might be asking… “but what does Faith No More have to do with RPGs?”
Well, before Mikey and Jason, nothing.
That didn’t stop them. They got in contact with the band and long story short, the band loved the idea. They were able to work out a licensing deal to use their brand for their game and in 2022, they launched their first Kickstarter.
With the confidence gained from experiencing a successful launch, they were ready for the next one. And this time, they were going to take what they learned, to make their launch even better.
Just like before, they wanted to incorporate another artist’s work into their next game. They loved the work of Emily Hare, an artist from the United Kingdom, and reached out to her with their idea: to create a tabletop RPG based on her incredible artwork.
She was in.
What I think is so cool and different about how Mikey and Jason make games is that they start with the art – it’s the foundation to everything about their games. And an artist now on board, they began working on their next game called Surviving Strangehollow.
They enlisted the help of Ed Greenwood (Forgotten Realms, and 400 other things), Dan Dillon (WOTC, Kobold Press), Elisa Teague, Erin Roberts (Paizo), James Haeck (Critical Role and Ghostfire), Bryan CP Steele (Renegade), and Dael Kingsmill (Ghostfire), with Shawn Merwin (WOTC, Ghostfire, etc.) leading the entire design team.
By the end of 2023, they were ready to launch it, but this time they wanted to upgrade their marketing strategy. So they joined LaunchBoom and we got to work.
The main difference between the marketing strategy of their first campaign and second campaign was focusing on their pre-launch marketing. We showed them our pre-launch playbook and it paid off big time.
Because on the the first day they raised $45,250 and by the end of the campaign they were at $116,299.
But how’d they actually do this?
Well, like I said before, the pre-launch marketing was a key part of their marketing strategy and also their success.
So let’s dive into what that was.
Contents
Surviving Strangehollow’s pre-launch marketing strategy
Making $116,299 in 30 days is no easy task. It requires a combination of different marketing tactics, with the most important one being the pre-launch. More specifically, building an email list of real buyers before you launch your campaign.
Here’s how Jason and Mikey did that.
1. Surviving Strangehollow drove traffic with Meta Ads
Meta ads are the first step to build a pre-launch email list. This is how Surviving Strangehollow drove traffic. They tested many different variations of copy and imagery, but here was their best performing ad.
2. Surviving Strangehollow 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. Surviving Strangehollow collected $1 reservations
This is an optional step that creators can take if they want to understand who on their email list is most likely to buy. It requires creating a “VIP Offer” where you give something valuable to the backer in exchange for $1 in the pre-launch.
Here was Surviving Strangehollow’s VIP offer:
- An art print
- Early access to digital content
- A place on the playtesting team
Surviving Strangehollow got funded on day one
Leading into the launch, Jason & Mikey had 714 people who had put down a $1 reservation deposit. We’ve found that “number of reservations” is one of the best predictors of how successful a launch will be. And just as predicted, the campaign took off.
On the first day, they made $45,250.
By the end of the campaign, they had driven $116,299 in revenue from 1,350 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.
Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what Mikey had to say about his experience working with us:
Do you have a product idea you want to launch?
We can help you turn it into a real business (or dramatically grow your existing business).
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.
