My wife Katie and I are building a new kind of STEM kit, designed for kids and anyone curious about learning microelectronics. It’s a project we’re really passionate about, and we’ve been pouring a lot of effort into getting it right.
Right now, we’re in the final stages of building our prototype, with beta testing just around the corner. The goal is to launch on Kickstarter towards the end of November. And, if you’ve read any advice about Kickstarter, you’ll know the golden rule: build an audience before launch. So, we turned to social media.
Over the past 10 days, we’ve gone from 10 followers to 610. Along the way, 12 people have already joined our pre-launch mailing list. For us, that’s a fantastic early result and well beyond what we expected. All in, we’ve spent about £120 on ads to get there.
We've learned a lot in a short couple of weeks, which may be useful to non-marketing people wanting to market their product. This post breaks down each phase of the experiment and what we learned.
We kicked things off by making a few short, reel-style videos to show off the product:
Organic reach was basically non-existent. A handful of supportive likes from family, but nothing that passed the mum test. Nobody was queuing up to watch our reels, and the algorithm certainly wasn’t promoting them. Which makes sense I guess.
We did get our first piece of good feedback though. My sister said 'your videos look great but I don't really know what you're making, maybe i'm thick'. Interesting.
Learning: Don't rely on organic reach. You're literally shouting into the void.
We took my sister’s feedback to heart and made a new video. This time, painfully obvious about what we were building:
All of this played over footage of the kit being built and used.
The production value wasn’t great (poor lighting, quick cuts), but the difference was night and day. The message was clear: here’s what we’re making, here’s why it’s interesting. People could immediately decide if it was for them.
We were desperate for some unbiased feedback, so we 'boosted' the reel. I told Katie we’d validated the idea if we could reach 100 followers in a week.
Instead, we got 100 followers in a single day. Four people joined our mailing list, no small feat given how awkward Instagram makes it to get people off-platform. We were over the moon.
Learning: Be painfully obvious about what you’re selling. You have way more context than your audience. A message as simple as “We’re making X, it’s different because Y” beats any clever production tricks.
That momentum carried us for another two days straight.
Note: On both Instagram and Facebook we 'boosted the reel', which means it shows up in peoples reel feed amongst other content. We selected Meta's 'automatic' setting, so we just showed it to anyone and everyone. The most basic setup going.
Instagram:
Validation: achieved.
Facebook:
TikTok:
Disclaimer: I thoroughly dislike TikTok. I had never downloaded it before last week but people had always said 'you'll get addicted'. I haven't. It's the most vapid garbage I've ever seen, so the following information may be biased. Maybe I just don't get it.
It seems impossible to measure how well you're doing on TikTok. People don't really 'follow people' on there, they just consume wholesale from the algorithm and like stuff occasionally. But what good is a like to me really? How do I reach that person when we launch? I have no idea.
We got about 80 likes, 15 saves and 10 followers. I don't know what this means.
With some proof that people were actually interested in our product, we started researching what worked well for others. The common advice boiled down to:
On a personal note: I hate all of this. A 60-second deep dive? I couldn’t deep dive a bloody boolean in 60 seconds. How am I supposed to convey anything meaningful?
But, we tried it. We created:
We’ve since deleted the first two because they were unbearable. Shout if you want to see some true cringe.
A wasteland. Almost no organic reach. Boosting didn’t help. The reality: we’re not funny, and it shows. We’re also not selling Labubus or Dubai chocolate. Nobody is lining up to watch “random electronics guy prat about on camera.”
The IKEA one did moderately well, but again we're back to the tried and true 'tell them what's different' approach.
Also, I hated myself throughout the whole process, and Katie nearly went into meltdown mode trying to scrape together something, anything, to post every. single. day. 0/10, would not recommend.
Learning: Don’t get distracted by trends. You’re trying to drive considered purchases, not become TikTok famous.
Learning: You're trying to sell a product. Don't pretend you're not trying to sell a product. Show people your product and why its cool. Literally nobody is saying 'loved seeing that guy get wet, I'm gonna go buy his STEM kit'.
Learning: Don’t let content creation eat all your energy when you should be building the product. Especially if you’re not naturally creative. The slick vision you have in your head will look amazing, the reality will almost always look like garbage.
Mostly out of defiance of the whole TikTok-brainrot phase, I decided to ignore all the “rules” and make a video my way.
The result:
We knew it would bomb, but posted it anyway.
Over the last week, it quietly became our most organically viewed post. Ten people shared it. Plenty watched it all the way through. Fifteen even followed us on TikTok because of it.
It hasn’t driven anyone new to our page, but I think it’s done something more important: it built credibility with the people who were already interested.
Learning: Be authentic (again). This is just me doing what I do naturally, rambling on about stuff I find interesting. It shows I think.
Learning: Attention alone isn’t the goal. You need to give your existing followers reasons to trust you, stick around, and eventually convert.
We’re just under two weeks in, and now it’s time to get serious. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running proper A/B (and maybe C…) tests on both creative and audiences. I’ve set up analytics so we can finally see who’s actually signing up for the waiting list, not just liking posts. I’ll share an update soon with real numbers from each test.
If you’re curious about why we’re even bothering with all this in the first place, check out:
If you have any tips or hard won lessons, please send them to me: [email protected]