Content Blitz and Kickstarter postmortem

I’m calling what I did in March a “content blitz,” and it’s part of the marketing strategy I call “content marketing,” wherein one markets a product by producing content that people want to watch or read that also plugs the product. This may not be the most tightly targeted approach compared to something like Facebook ads, but it is by far the cheapest, especially when you consider the long-term benefits of the approach.

Put simply, you make content that targets the same kind of person who might buy your book (or album, or course, or whatever – you can think beyond publishing for this). YouTube will then show that content to the target demographic for free because the value is in the content. This is particularly effective for selling deep services. For example, if you were a psychologist, you would find an underserved segment of people who need your services, make yourself an expert in that area, write an expert book that helps those people, offer one-on-one services at a higher cost, and then make free content that offers value and also sells the book.

So, imagine you want to help people struggling with addiction of some sort.

First, you become an addiction expert through personal and clinical experience and research (in this case, this would probably already be in the past).

Then, you write a good book with strategies to help people overcome addiction and mention that you do offer small-group and one-on-one counseling services.

Last, you make content about overcoming addiction and some of your anecdotes, and in it, direct people toward your book and your high-value services.

Is this purely hypothetical? No! Here’s a guy I found on YouTube doing something very similar:

What is great about this strategy is that you can potentially make money at every step, all while giving people what they want. I say what they want because the point of marketing ought to be connecting customers to a product they are pleased with, not conning them into buying garbage. I write good books, but they are not for everyone.

So, how did it work for selling this Kickstarter?

In the last month, I made 31 videos (including livestreams), got 90k views and 11.2k hours of watch time, gained 407 subscribers, and made $346 in ad revenue. That is all less than points in the past (especially the money, which used to be much more on around 100k views), but it is better than usual for me by about 60%. Some percentage of that was views on older videos, which continue to be watched for years, but we can assume most of it was on the new content. Of those views, the new videos were viewed by about 2k returning viewers, which means my real target audience of fans is about 2k versus my subscriber count of 47k.

Of all those, 120 people backed the Kickstarter – about 5% of my deep fans, which is itself about 5% of my subscriber base. The point here is that you do not need 50k YouTube subscribers to have a successful Kickstarter. You need to build a true audience of 1-2 thousand, which is much more doable. It will still take time but don’t be discouraged if you are a new author or looking to build an online business. In fact, I think that 2k will be substantially easier if you don’t do what I do, which is make a wide variety of content, but instead focus on what your target audience really wants. For better or worse, I am my brand.

If you want a deeper dive on this and how it fits into a creative workflow, be sure to check out my book, Keys to Prolific Creativity, free for all patrons.

I am an independent artist and musician. You can get my books by joining my Patreon, and you can listen to my current music on YouTube or buy my albums at BandCamp.