Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Pecota.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Mark. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
The story of LaunchBoom started in 2013 with a product called EcoQube. At this time, LaunchBoom was a full-service marketing agency called Label Creative. Kevin, the creator of EcoQube, was one of Label Creative’s first clients and asked for our help launching his first product on Kickstarter.
We had heard of Kickstarter before but never had any experience using the platform. It sounded like a great opportunity, so we took the job. Flash forward a couple of months and we raised $79,026 for EcoQube on Kickstarter.
After seeing the success of the first campaign, we quickly launched a new product for another client, 1Hour Break on Indiegogo and raised $105,343. Shortly after that, Kevin came back with a new product called EcoQube C and we raised $375,058 on Kickstarter.
At this point, we realized that there was a much bigger opportunity here…
By the end of 2015, Label Creative rebranded to LaunchBoom with the mission of building the most effective system for launching new consumer products worldwide. And it’s that mission that has been driving us forward ever since.
Today, we are proud to say that we have launched more successful crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo and Kickstarter than any other agency in the world. As a result, we are only one of a select few to be recognized as a Certified Expert on Kickstarter, a Certified Expert on Indiegogo, and a Facebook Marketing Partner. We have helped thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide make their dreams a reality and we’re only just getting started.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
No.
We knew we had something with our concept because of the success of our early crowdfunding campaigns, but building our business to consistently produce successful campaigns was difficult.
One of the major benefits of crowdfunding is that it mitigates much of the risk of traditional product launches for entrepreneurs. Creators only need to create a functional prototype for us to create all the marketing. This allows the entrepreneur to risk much less capital and time upfront to bring their idea to life – because, on crowdfunding, backers are essentially pre-ordering your product. This means entrepreneurs can get all the funds they need upfront to validate their business idea and make their first purchase order.
Still, we realized very early on, that the launching a six/seven figure crowdfunding campaign still came with too much risk than what we were comfortable with. There were multiple campaigns in the first year of business that partnered with us to launch their idea and very early on in the pre-launch advertising, we realized it was going to be an uphill battle.
To solve this, we created a program called TestBoom.
Using our TestBoom system, we are able to predict with a very high degree of accuracy whether or not a campaign will be successful in crowdfunding before they launch. We do this by developing the product positioning, building basic marketing assets (product photography and website), and then drive traffic through Facebook/Instagram to gather leads and $1 deposits which we call Reservations. If someone puts down a $1 deposit, they are reserving the product at the best discount if we go to launch. We’ve found that those that put down a $1 deposit are 30x more likely to buy than those that don’t. Using this information we can test the product in the market and feed the data into our predictive model which allows us to make a data-driven to whether or not we should move into the full product launch. We are able to do this with only $2,000 of ad budget which is a very small investment to gather very valuable data.
We are constantly improving our system to make more accurate, data-driven decisions, but at this point, it’s an extremely accurate and robust system.
So now, we had a two-phase system: (1) TestBoom and (2) LaunchBoom where we’d actually launch on Indiegogo or Kickstarter.
The next big challenge was figuring out how to best support our clients post-crowdfunding.
This has been a major focus of Q3 and will continue to be for Q4. We are calling this new phase: ScaleBoom. Now, LaunchBoom can take the clients that have very successful crowdfunding campaigns and help them scale through e-commerce.
This has closed the loop in our service offering as we are now able to Test, Launch, and Scale brands that matter in the world.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the LaunchBoom story. Tell us more about it.
LaunchBoom is the most effective product launch system for launching consumer products to a worldwide market. With clients in over 40 countries, we partner with entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life.
LaunchBoom is broken down into a three-phase system.
Phase 1: TestBoom
Through TestBoom, we test product demand in the market before we launch through crowdfunding. We do this by developing initial product positioning, creating key marketing assets (product photography & website), and driving traffic through Facebook/Instagram. After only $2,000 of ad spend, we are able to plug the data into our predictive model to assess whether or not the product should move onto Phase 2 (LaunchBoom) and launch on Indiegogo or Kickstarter.
Phase 2: LaunchBoom
Products that pass TestBoom, automatically go to our LaunchBoom program. During LaunchBoom, our team is primarily focused on building a pre-launch email list before the crowdfunding campaign launches. We use this community to have a “LaunchBoom” which means to hit your crowdfunding goal within the first day. Besides digital marketing, we have a full in-house creative team and studio to create additional key marketing assets such as product photography, advertisements, campaign page design, and campaign video production. A successful LaunchBoom program will yield 6 and 7 figure crowdfunding campaigns in the course of a few months.
Phase 3: ScaleBoom
Once a campaign is successful through LaunchBoom, we take the best products into our ScaleBoom program. Our team is now the experts at marketing the products and we use our knowledge to build an e-commerce website through Shopify, develop additional marketing assets, and drive traffic through Social and Google advertising. The goal is to ride the success of the crowdfunding campaign and scale and build the brand.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Love it or hate it, luck is just a part of life.
Instead of trying to control everything (which is impossible), we focus more on building our team/business to be able to roll with the punches. That means we are constantly measuring our KPIs and seeking feedback from our customers to adapt and iterate on our business.
Contact Info:
- Address: 740 13th St Suite 326 San Diego, CA 92101
- Website: https://www.launchboom.com
- Email: hello@launchboom.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/launchboom/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/launchboom
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/launchboom_
- Yelp: https://goo.gl/maps/eFazLjWzkZiB7AnQA
- Other: https://entrepreneur.indiegogo.com/directory/experts/launchboom/
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