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Comment by cfederico | Hacker News Reader

Hi Guys, we are a hardware startup developing a smart LED lamp. We plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign late Q3 and now we are testing the product with our early adopters.

- What is the best way to get traction on the product before launching the campaign?

- How much money you need to set up a good marketing Kickstarter campaign ? Is it needed to use a good PR agency ? (Any suggestions about a good PR agency ? )

Thank you so much!

Federico

View on HN

Hire a PR agency halfway through your campaign when you're so overwhelmed with backers and attention that you can't handle it yourself. Until then, DIY:)

Build an email list! And try to pump up the subscriptions with different sales channels - you'll be able to know which ones work best for your business before launching your campaign

What was the best way for you guys to grow your email list (aside from paid ads)? Did you use Queue?

We created a lot of content and spread it guerilla way aka bombarding facebook groups that were relevant. On the other hand we through all of our network as word of month is still one of the best way to market your company.

PR helped but did not make the whole difference.

Interesting on the "FB group spamming", that's a great idea to expand reach!

Did you have any PR coverage pre-launch then to collect more emails?

It was scattered as we won some pitch competitions and had a few interviews but we didn't focus on it.

I'm going to have to disagree with part of this. Collecting emails is a good strategy when there's a concrete availability date and that date isn't too far off from the present. I recently had a client who was trying to sell a similar(ish) product. Collected emails for 6+ months. When they announced that their product was available, it took them 3 months to get to 50 orders from nearly 10k emails. Looking back, keeping the email subs engaged might have helped increase conversion from subscriber -> customer, but It ended up not working out nearly as well as we had hoped.

Don't get me wrong selling and getting real product validation is the best.

But emails are one of the most valuable resource for marketing. You can always email people. But even advertising to the people that liked your page will cost you money and will be competing with tons of information.

Gotcha! So, we could start collect email with our first early customer interviews and then email them once we open the pre-order campaign ?

- About Hykso, which sales channels worked better ?

- Is it better to launch a pre-order campaign on our website, before launching the Kickstarter campaign ?

Thank you

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