The Board Game Design Course

Last week I talked about running your ad campaign to effectively grow your audience faster.

Since I’ll be launching Mayan Curse on Kickstarter tomorrow, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to talk about what you want to focus on in the last 24 hours before you launch.

So, let’s dive in!

What You Should Already Have Completed

First, I just want to briefly touch on all the things you should already have out of the way by this point, as you don’t want to find yourself scrambling at the last minute with any of these items.

Prior to your final 24 hours pre-launch, you should already have:

• Your campaign page ready to go
• Your trailer video loaded up on the campaign page
• All pledge levels finalized and your funding goal set
• Your start and end date for the campaign up to date
• All shipping costs by region figured out
• Stretch goals planned out (if you are including any)
• Manufacturers quotes so that you know how much it will cost to get your game made
• Reviews of your game
• A finished rulebook
• A Board Game Geek (BGG) page for your game
• Built up a solid audience that can’t wait to back your game on day #1

Oh, and you probably want to have an amazing game as well… but you already knew that!

With all these critical tasks behind you, you’ll be able to focus your time and attention on some all-important items to ensure you’re ready to roll.

What to do in the Last 24 Hours

With everything in place, you should be feeling confident and excited to hit that launch button.

Still, there are a few things you can and should be doing to ensure you’re ready to launch with success.

Make sure to have all emails and communications written, edited, and ready to go to notify everyone who is following that your game is now live.

Get all your images together so that you’re ready to post on social media after you go live.

Go over your campaign page one last time (or maybe a few more times). Look for spelling and grammatical mistakes, any sentences that don’t flow well, and anything else that might be confusing to backers.

Review your pledge levels and shipping charts. Make sure any graphics with pledge levels or shipping rates are accurate and that there are no inconsistencies.

Once you launch, you cannot change the start or end dates, alter your existing pledge levels, or adjust your funding goal. Most everything else on your page can be updated after you launch, so make sure these particular items are 100% accurate before you hit the launch button.

Send an email out to your followers reminding them that your game is launching tomorrow and post a message in your Facebook group if you have one. Maybe even stoke up a little friendly competition by asking who is going to be backer #1.

Right before you launch, you’ll also want to make sure the main image of your crowdfunding campaign is up to date. If you were using an image with a launch date on it or a note that it is coming soon, you’ll want to swap that out just before you go live.

Also, just before go-live, if you have any ads running, make any necessary changes to them to reflect that the game is now live and make sure these ads are directed to your live campaign page but don’t fire them off quite yet. Once you hit launch on your campaign, you can then publish the changes to these ads.

Ok, I’d best be going now to look over my campaign page one last time.. but probably more like seven. 😊

I’ll keep sharing my learnings and experiences throughout the campaign. I hope you find these helpful in planning your own campaign if that’s the route you’re thinking.