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There’s a moment in every Kickstarter campaign when the early excitement suddenly fades. After the initial boom, the flow of backers slows down, notifications become less frequent, and it feels as though the project has slipped into a sort of limbo. This is when many creators begin to worry: “What’s happening to my campaign?”

Crowdfunding agencies refer to this phase as the valley of death a vivid, deliberately dramatic expression that nevertheless captures the critical nature of the moment. (source)

As shown in the supporter charts featured in the first post, even in successful projects the number of backers drops immediately after those initial enthusiastic days and remains at significantly lower levels for quite a long stretch.

In this phase, both prolonged and delicate, success lies in the ability to win new backers every single day, ensuring steady, if not explosive, growth.

How to Overcome the “Valley of Death”: Organic and Paid Acquisition Strategies

To prevent your campaign from losing momentum during its most critical phase, your retention and growth efforts can follow two main paths: organic strategies or paid strategies. Below is an overview of both.

Organic Acquisition

Word of mouth and continuous community growth

One of the simplest yet still most effective tactics is word of mouth. Asking your community openly for support can make a real difference: involving friends, family, social media followers, and even existing backers, inviting them to share the project through a post or a direct link, helps reignite interest and reach new people in an authentic, organic way, also because it allows them to take part directly and actively (source).

For example, the French duo behind Botany, in an Instagram post published one week after their Kickstarter launch, directly encouraged their followers to tag their favorite botanical garden or the one they had visited and loved the most (source).

Observing what has worked for other projects is another valuable step for generating new ideas and strategies. Reaching out to creators who have already launched successful campaigns in the same category and asking for insights allows you to learn directly from their experience.

Moreover, joining or creating communities on platforms like Discord or Reddit can become an effective hub for engagement, where people can discuss shared interests and keep the conversation around the project alive. This is exactly what Caleb Gannon did with Algomancy. On his Discord server, originally focused on Magic: The Gathering, Gannon gradually added several channels dedicated to his own game. This structure enabled continuous interactions among users and leveraged the fact that his server, already very active before the crowdfunding launch, continued to grow throughout the campaign.

Stretch Goals

Another common tool in Kickstarter campaigns, and one that works particularly well alongside word of mouth, is the use of stretch goals. The term emerged within the community to describe additional objectives that allow creators to “push beyond” the initial funding target. Through new content, expansions, or creative add-ons, stretch goals encourage further funding and keep backers’ attention high.

Since the additional content unlocked through stretch goals becomes available to all backers, this mechanism motivates existing supporters to promote the campaign and help attract new ones (source).

Once a certain threshold is reached, whether it’s a funding amount (standard stretch goals), a specific number of backers, or even a number of likes on a page (social stretch goals), the creator “unlocks” an extra piece of content, such as an expansion, a bonus, or a product upgrade.

The Kickstarter blog suggests five key best practices for structuring stretch goals effectively (source):

1. Accurately calculate the production and delivery costs of each stretch goal.
2. Involve the community by asking which rewards excite them the most.
3. Announce new goals progressively, only after the previous ones have been reached.
4. Set realistic, achievable targets and avoid overextending.
5. Limit the total number of stretch goals to avoid spreading resources and attention too thin.

Here’s an example of some of the stretch goals unlocked during the Botany campaign:

Q&A Sessions, Live Streams, and Themed Events

To refresh the Promotion Strategy, creators can introduce a variety of promotional activities, such as Reddit Q&As, Instagram Live streams, or themed events designed to interact directly with the community and address questions, doubts, and curiosities.

One particularly effective move was the participation of the Shasn team at Gen Con in Indianapolis (August 1–4, 2019), the largest tabletop gaming convention in the United States. In the middle of their campaign, the Indian creators leveraged the visibility of the event to reach new international backers.

Another exemplary initiative from the Shasn team was the Shasn Invitational Cup: a competitive tournament organised across several Indian cities, featuring eight finalists from all over the country. Launched during the Kickstarter campaign, the event acted as a true countdown challenge, reigniting community interest at the most critical moment of the campaign (source). With its participatory nature and competitive tone, the tournament boosted supporter enthusiasm, generated fresh social content, and sparked a second wave of attention during the final weeks of the project.

Throughout a campaign, it is also essential to publish themed content aimed at niche audiences aligned with the project, with the goal of attracting and engaging new supporters.

The analysis of the backer chart for Algomancy shows that after the initial peak, new spikes occurred on August 16, 17, 23, 25 and 30. These surges align with the release of short posts and videos by Caleb Gannon on his social channels, especially YouTube. In these clips, each under one minute, Gannon showcases specific cards, explains key mechanics, and offers quick insights into how the game works.

Finally, a simple but essential rule: communicate well, always. Clear communication through quick replies and frequent updates to backers is neither a detail nor an extra cost, it’s the foundation of every successful campaign. Even if listed last, it’s a practice that must stay active from beginning to end, especially when introducing new elements such as polls, stretch goals, or fresh content.

If you decide to introduce a change while the campaign is ongoing, you must always explain the reason behind it and reassure backers that the original promises will still be kept. Simply announcing a “New goal unlocked!” without acknowledging the milestones already reached together can weaken empathy and erode trust within the community (source).

Paid Acquisition

When it comes to paid marketing strategies, here are some effective practices to keep momentum strong throughout the campaign.

Meta Advertising During the Campaign

Platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram Ads) remain among the most effective tools for reaching new backers. During slower periods, small ad campaigns with well-defined targets, such as lookalike audiences based on existing supporters or retargeting users who visited the Kickstarter page without pledging, can generate meaningful increases in traffic and conversions. The goal is not only to boost sales, but also to maintain a steady perception of movement around the project.

Additionally, project creators can collaborate with marketing agencies like Jellop, Kickstarter Performance, or Backerkit to keep advertising efforts fresh and dynamic, improving ad performance and minimizing ad fatigue (source).

This was the case for Botany, which partnered with Jellop to fully leverage Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) as well as Google Ads (YouTube, Discovery, Search, and Display). Thanks to the game’s broad appeal and highly precise targeting, focused on fans of Victorian aesthetics and botanical themes, the campaign maintained a positive ROAS and attracted thousands of supporters, especially drawn to the striking visual artwork featured in the ads.

Cross-Promotion Strategies

This category includes collaborations with organizations or notable figures whose work is connected to the game’s themes, an effective way to expand visibility and reach new potential backers.

A particularly strong example once again comes from Botany. During the middle phase of the campaign, on May 22, 2023, the creators shared an Instagram post mentioning floral communication experts such as Melissa Richardson, Amy Fielding, and Ambra Edwards, as well as institutions like Kew Gardens and the New York Botanical Garden. Through these tags and implicit collaborations, the project’s visibility increased significantly.

The post also took the shape of a true behind-the-scenes moment: the creators revealed parts of their research and development process, showing the sources that inspired the game. This approach helped maintain attention and expand interest within their core audience, enthusiasts of botany, history, and floral craftsmanship, while strengthening their authentic connection with the community (source).

Another effective cross-promotion tactic involves mutual visibility exchanges between campaigns running at the same time. For example, two complementary projects can mention each other in an update or social post, generating curiosity and encouraging their respective backers to discover the other project. In some cases, creators even offer small rewards or exclusive bonuses to incentivize this “audience cross-over” and broaden their community (source).

Final Considerations

Across all three campaigns, one principle clearly emerges: the launch is not the finish line, but the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with the community.

Whether it’s the organic, community-driven momentum of Algomancy, the paid-media engine powering Botany, or the participatory social activation of Shasn, the key to success lies in sustaining attention and nurturing interest day after day.

Consistent support, even if modest, can generate lasting results: every update, post, or initiative becomes an opportunity to reignite enthusiasm, strengthen bonds with supporters, and inject new energy into the campaign all the way to the final day.

In the end, during the mid-campaign phase, consistency beats noise. The strength of a successful campaign also lies in transforming initial hype into a relationship of trust and participation that carries the project through its longest and most challenging stretch.

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