I’m a planner. It’s in my nature. So, since this is the last week of my Kickstarter campaign for 14 Frantic Minutes and I’m getting ready to wrap up the campaign on Friday, I thought this would be a great time to talk about what you could be doing in the last week of your campaign to end strong.

While you may think you’ve done everything you can to promote your game up to this point, you’ll want to keep focused and do your best to bring any potential backers who have been on the fence on board. Give them a compelling reason to back your game now.

So, let’s talk about a few things you can still do in your final week to get the best results.

Unlock any remaining stretch goals

If you decided to use stretch goals in your campaign, you can keep up the excitement by showcasing your final stretch goals, with reasonable targets for meeting them.

This is a good way to get people to jump on board or to encourage your existing backers to help you promote your campaign. If you have a compelling stretch goal or two to unlock, backers will be more likely to share the word and try to draw others in to help get over that last hurdle.

Continue to promote your game

You should continue posting updates regularly on social media, in your Facebook group if you have one, and to your backers. Share anything new and interesting with your game, any new artwork, info on upcoming stretch goals, or anything else of interest.

If a late review arrives, add this to your page, include a quote from the reviewer, and use this on social media to promote your game as well.

Hopefully, you arranged some interviews and podcasts prior to your campaign, so you may be appearing on these or they may be going live up to the last week of your campaign. This is another great thing that you can share with others.

If you chose to run any ads during your campaign, update them to reflect your ending date, making sure potential backers are aware that their time to back is coming to an end.

Reminders

In the final days, you’ll want to send out reminder messages to your friends, family, email list, and any other followers to let them know that this is their final chance to back your campaign.

Let them know that any support really helps. Even those who support your campaign for a dollar now may end up upgrading their pledge later on.

The last 48 hours of your campaign are really important. Anyone who was following your campaign but hadn’t pulled the trigger yet will be notified that this is their last chance to back your campaign.

You’ll be making your final push. Make sure that your reminders include a sense of urgency, letting people know when their last opportunity is to back and giving them a compelling reason to do so.

Get ready for post-campaign

If you are using a pledge manager after your campaign, which I highly recommend, you can get this set up so now with all your pledge levels, shipping costs, etc. so that you’ll be ready to activate it after the campaign ends and you feel the time is right.

Some creators open this as soon as the crowdfunding campaign ends, which ensures you won’t miss any late pledges, while others wait until after they have received their funds from the crowdfunding campaign (which takes about two weeks). Note that waiting allows you to avoid any confusion from backers who are not set up in the system right away, including duplicated orders and answering a lot of questions.

You can also prepare your digital files for submission to your manufacturer if you haven’t done so yet. The review process for digital files and the physical sample proof can take longer than you’d expect, so getting the jump on this early can be beneficial.

However, if you’ve made any changes during your campaign or haven’t completed all the art and design yet, you’ll want to hold off on this step until everything is ready.

Wrapping it up

The last week for your crowdfunding campaign is a big deal. You’ll be bringing in around one-third of your backers and funding amount in the last 4-5 days most likely.

You may have a lot of followers still thinking about whether to back your campaign or not. Give them a strong reason to jump on board!

What has another campaign done in their last few days to turn you from interested into a backer?

Please leave a comment and let me know!

Also, if you like puzzle-y games that make you feel smart when you figure something out, make sure to check out 14 Frantic Minutes, which is in its final week on Kickstarter (the campaign ends this Friday).