This case study on our most recent LitRPG crowdfund marketing project is all about The Primal Hunter: Deluxe Collector’s Box Set (Books 1-3). The Primal Hunter is a fantasy LitRPG series with a very dedicated following. When it started, it was just a small web novel – a passion project that found its readers one chapter at a time.
We knew that bringing a project like this to the crowdfund space – alongside our incredible partners over at Vault Comics, Aethon Books, and BackerKit – would be a huge win for the LitRPG community, but we didn’t fully expect how massive this project would get:
- 3,573 Backers
- 10+ Stretch Goals Unlocked
- $1,191,496 Dollars Raised
Crowdfunding a LitRPG Project - The Background
The Primal Hunter was written by Zogarth, a faceless author with an audience that continues to grow to this day. Early on, we identified his audience, including fanbases on Reddit, Patreon, and Discord. The message was clear: We are bringing the first 3 books in The Primal Hunter series to crowdfunding as special, collector’s editions along with some other collector’s goodies (standees, bookmarks, stickers, and even a plushie).
We knew that the only way to hit our goals was to activate already existing fans. We needed to learn everything about LitRPG and the deep cut fandoms associated with it. Where do they live? How do they communicate? These are just a few of the questions we focused on to fuel our research and communication decisions.
The Prelaunch Phase of Crowdfunding a LitRPG Project
Our initial goals were to hit 10k followers and 5k reservations during the prelaunch phase. We ended up with 10,165 followers and 5648 reservations by launch day. Our main focuses during the prelaunch phase to hit these numbers included:
- Highly targeted, conversion focused social media advertising built around one extremely clear action for the viewer
- A highly visual, user-friendly landing page optimized and designed to capture interested parties
- An email marketing plan that consistently built hype and kept the project top of mind
- Targeted Discord communications with Zogarth’s server as well as Vault’s server
- Communications with relevant Press outlets
To dig in a little more – if we were going to hit our goals, it was going to be all about building a strategy that actually worked. For crowdfunds, we almost always take a customer journey approach. The strategy here was the good old “attract, convert, and engage” method. We attracted interested parties with advertisements and communications where they were at, and made sure we had a gorgeous (and informative) user-friendly landing page for them to land on. Once they followed, they were directed to a strategic launch party with messaging and incentives to convert them into reservations. Finally, we continued to engage with the community through regular email updates to keep the project top of mind (and give them a chance to be involved in the campaign before it even launched).
TLDR: We focused on four pillars, targetted paid social, a highly converting landing page, consistent email marketing to build hype, and direct community outreach.
Day One: Crowdfunding a LitRPG Project
The launch phase of any crowdfund can make or break the project. That’s why we coordinated a plan for Day One that hinged on momentum tactics.
We coordinated a series of boss fights where our backers could defeat various beasts from The Primal Hunter series for extra rewards. These were our first stretch goals. This allowed us to stay on theme playfully, holding our backers’ attention as the campaign continued to smash goals. It also gave ample opportunities for cross promotion on Zogarth’s, Vault’s, and Aethon’s channels. We coordinated the following:
- An extremely developed and well-thought out story page, as well as products designed with the tone of the series in mind
- A Reddit AMA set up by Vala and hosted by Zogarth (the most upvoted AMA in /LitRPG history)
- Regular updates and emails throughout day 1
- Communications through our partners’ social media channels
- First 48 hour backer rewards
- The boss fight series
- Interactive polls
- A Launch Day Press Release
We also capped the top tier that backers could pledge on, and slowly opened up more availability as the campaign continued to grow to keep FOMO high (until we actually, really hit the cap of what we could offer).
All of these tactics made for an explosive day one, at which point the project had already hit over $700k.
Mid-Campaign LitRPG Crowdfund Management
After the rush of day one, it was time to do a bit more interacting with the community. This included quite a lot of communication:
- Multiple updates and emails to followers and backers a week
- Polls and interactive content
- Ad optimization through retargeting efforts and creative refreshes
We also used this time to connect directly with the audience and ask them what exactly they would like to see. We utilized this information to create more stretch goals that were relevant to what the fans wanted, including an entire storefront of merch.
Our ads team wanted to have plenty of visually distinct creatives/images ready to go so they could be dropped into the account throughout the crowdfunding campaign. For instance, when things slow down, we made sure we had new, winning ads to keep purchases coming in and performance strong. Having fresh, updated ads really helped us during the typical “mid-campaign slump”.
Post Campaign LitRPG Crowdfund - What's Next?
Vala’s work with Vault, Aethon, and BackerKit on The Primal Hunter: Deluxe Collector’s Box Set (Books 1-3) isn’t done. We’ll be opening the storefront for Backers soon as of the date of this posting, sending communications on the post-campaign survey, providing post-campaign updates, and encouraging the community to stay-in-the-loop by joining Discord servers and following on social media. The more community retention, the better.
Key Takeaways
We always find takeaways for future campaigns at the end of projects like this, and The Primal Hunter crowdfund was no different. Here are a few of our biggest takeaways from this campaign:
- Full immersion! Doing a deep research dive into all the books, forums, subreddits, and wiki’s was crucial to developing a “brand style” that could combine the tone of the series with the actual design of the products and story page.
- Listen to your audience to guide your product! We leaned into the “Warning Danger Noodle” theme HARD when we realized that is was so big among The Primal Hunter fans. They pushed for more merch which lead to incentive ideas like the storefront.
- More polls, and other engaging content! These were huge for keeping fans involved and engaged in the campaign, which led to getting the project featured on the front page of BackerKit regularly.
- Prep everything possible before Day One of the launch. We had quite a lot planned, but the campaign moved FAST. If you preload updates as drafts and have graphics ready, launch day becomes much more streamlined.
In Closing...
The Primal Hunter: Deluxe Collector’s Box Set (Books 1-3) surpassed all of our expectations, landing at $1,191,496 – almost $400k MORE than what we initially planned. The LitRPG community showed up and showed out, making this one of the most successful campaigns Vala Marketing has worked on.
We are insanely proud of how well this project performed. The Primal Hunter is the next stellar, 7 figure example of our turn-key, fully managed crowdfunding services.
It was an honor to collaborate in a truly legendary partnership between Vault Comics, Aethon Books, and BackerKit.
