How to Use Social Media to Create Awareness and Attract Interest in your Crowdfunding Campaign
One of the fundamental aspects of a successful crowdfunding campaign is to build an audience of followers before you launch. These followers will be your advocates and will support your campaign when you are live. They are the lifeblood to your campaign success and your business goals. But how can you build an audience of raving fans and followers? That’s where social media comes into play. A solid social strategy can be the difference between a successful crowdfunding campaign and a campaign that fails.
If you want to use social media to build your audience then you can get help from your crowdfunding marketing agency or you can manage the campaign yourself. Here are some tips and advice on what you need to know and do.
How can you use social media for your campaign?
If you already have a presence on social media then continue to build and promote your channels. If you are starting from scratch then choose a platform that suits you and also is where your target market is located. Posting regular updates is the key to building a following. Be consistent, post each day and nurture a relationship with your fans. This will lay the foundation for converting them into backers and paying customers.
What social media platforms can use for your campaign.
Facebook is the world’s No1 social media platform, with 7 billion users. It is recommended you have some kind of presence on this platform as most target markets can be found here. Bear in mind most ages group on Facebook are 30+, (whereas younger age groups are on social platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok). Set up a Facebook business page to represent your business or product. You can also set up a private ‘community group. Both are great ways to build a following and spread the news about your product and crowdfunding campaign. Most successful crowdfunding campaigns use Facebook Ad campaigns to advertise the campaign and build a database of leads.
Twitter is a great platform to find supporters, journalists and people of influence who are interested in your niche and may want to write about what you are doing. Building an audience can be done quickly when posting regular content and by using certain hacks to find people who have an interest in your topic.
Instagram is great for sharing images of your products and behind the scenes of your campaign. Instagram (owned by Facebook) has a young and old audience and includes great features like Instagram ‘Stories’, where you can upload short recorded videos. These are really handy for posting quick content to capture a moment and let your audience know about it.
Is the social media site for business, predominantly B2B and is a great way to search for prospective investors to support your equity crowdfunding campaign.
Pinterest is not often viewed as a social media platform but it really is and is a great way to source traffic and leads for your campaign. Similar to Instagram, you can post images and video. Pinterest is a great way to build up visual content related to your topic using other peoples imagery. Pinterest has a very big ‘female’ following.
Your Social media Strategy
It can be important to use different social media platforms to connect with your audience. It’s likely your audience is spread out across multiple platforms - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In etc. So, it’s critical that you publish relevant material and syndicate across the platforms in order to reach as big an audience as possible. Use syndication software like ‘Buffer’ to automate sending the posts out each day.
Pro tip - keep your branding the same across all of your social channels, so the public can easily recognise you.
Content Creation Strategy
In order to market your campaign effectively develop an effective social campaign that engages with your audience and gets them to interact with your brand. The content you share should be insightful, entertaining, educational and most importantly well presented. Start by sharing useful industry-related information, news about your product or cause and share stories about your team and the obstacles you have faced during developing your product.
Here are the goals of your content creation strategy:
•Increase awareness and engagement with your target audience
•Drive traffic to capture leads interested in your crowdfunding campaign
•Create a buzz and galvanise support for your project
Create Specific Hashtag
Pro tip - create a hashtag that is unique to your crowdfunding campaign and use it in all social media articles and posts. By doing this people can quickly find all discussions surrounding your campaign and access more content about your campaign which they may not have seen.
Pre Launch Posting Schedule
You should keep in mind these points when creating a social post schedule for your Pre-Launch
•Create a schedule that outlines, at minimum, a plan for two weeks. Ideally, it’s better to create a social media plan for the whole duration of your Pre-launch campaign.
•Aim for 5 posts a day, sent out across all social channels
•Schedule three posts in the day and two posts in the evening.
•Mix up post content use images, text and video
•Share stories on Facebook or Instagram.
Monitor Results
Track your social media campaign’s results. Analysis of each post to gain better awareness of what content receives more interest. Check for shares and feedback and access interaction. Search for mentions and retweets on each social platform. See what is working and getting the best engagement. Then create more of this content and share it with your audience.
Conclusion
Social media is an important part of promoting your crowdfunding campaign. When implemented correctly it is incredibly effective at building a following and buzz around your project. Concentrate on developing content that resonates with your target audience. Create, test and repeat. Build awareness and in the process a community of followers who love your idea. If you need any support, as an experienced crowdfunding marketing agency we can help. Get in touch with us today and let’s crowdfund your BIG idea.
Tips on How to Create a Landing Page for Your Crowdfunding Campaign
Did you know that it's best practice to build a landing page to collect leads before you launch your crowdfunding campaign?
Many people believe they can create a project page on a crowdfunding platform and then launch. Well, you can, but we wouldn’t advise it. You need to build your crowd before your campaign goes live and a landing page plays a leading part in building your crowd.
Landing pages have an important role to play, and that is to give interested supporters a glimpse of your project and capture their email address so that you can continue to communicate with them and keep them up to date about your campaign.
So how do you build a landing page that generates better crowdfunding results?
The answer is fairly simple: design and messaging.
If you want to build more leads then create a professional-looking landing page with strong relevant imagery and enticing messaging. A poor-looking or badly made landing page will have a negative impact on your brand image and reflect in fewer leads signing up to be included on your email list.
If you are running a paid advertising campaign to send traffic to your landing page then a poor looking lading page will cost you money as potential leads will bounce off your page and go away forever.
Therefore, if you want a good launch for your crowdfunding campaign, a high-quality landing page should be created.
Essential tips for your landing page
Tip 1. Searchable with Appealing Design
People will find your landing page through various ways, such as an internet search, social media search, and advertisement campaign. It's not vital how they arrive at your landing page. What is essential is the first impression project has on them. Make sure the site looks great and draws the viewer in to find out more. Use relevant keywords within the page copy so the website is easily found by search engines.
Some of the important elements of the landing page are:
Tip 2. ”NO" scrolling
If a person on your site has to search for a signup form, they usually won't take the time to do this. When you design the landing page, make it easy to find the signup form. One tip is to keep the form above the "fold" so that the consumer doesn’t need to scroll to find it. Place the most important information about your project in the first half of the home page. This is the most viewed part and captures the most significant interest.
Tip 3. A picture says a thousand words
Choose relevant images that showcase your product or niche. Professional looking lifestyle imagery that can involve actors or models is a great way to communicate how people will feel when they interact with your offer. Less is more. 1 great picture will work better than a few mediocre pictures.
Look at the imagery well-known brands use to promote their products and services and try to do something similar. Hire a professional photographer if you have the budget for it. It's well worth it.
Tip 4. Clear concise messaging with a call to action
Your 'offer' is the most important message to show on your landing page. Spend the time to create a headline and sub-headline that encapsulates what your project is about and why people should be interested. The most enticing headlines and copy focus on the benefits your offer provides and how the user will feel.
Add short paragraphs of body copy that highlight the main features and any other additional benefits the user may receive. Keep the messaging short and concise. Once again less is more.
General practice is not to mention any specific pricing at this point. Although we would recommend mentioning that there is some kind of discount e.g. “get 50% off when you sign up”
View the messaging on the landing page as an ‘overview’ to gain interest and create intrigues so viewers are eager to find out more.
Include a call to action, make it clear that the audience understands they should enter their details into the signup form to join the email list.
Tip 5. Mobile-friendly landing page
Ideally, make sure your landing page is optimized so it loads quickly on a mobile easily. Today. most people will access your site from their mobile, so make it a pleasant experience. If there is any delay in the website loading the user will not stick around.
Tip 6. Split-test and measure
A successfully designed landing page will capture leads easily and quickly. If your page isn’t converting as well as you like then try changing the imagery and messaging or layout to see if signs up improve. When testing only make 1 change at a time.
You can also try A/B split testing - create two sites with different messaging and send traffic to both - see what converts the best.
Ideally, you want your page to convert at least 25% of the people who view the page.
Here are some landing page platforms that make building landing pages easy:
kickofflabs.com
leadpages.com
mailchimp.com
unbounce.com
How can a video help you?
Adding a cut-down version of your crowdfunding video can be a great way to build trust and encourage more people to sign up on your landing page. You can boost conversions by 80%! This is a huge number!
At Wow Your Crowd we provide crowdfunding video production and can help you with your video requirements. To find out more simply arrange a free ‘crowdfunding success strategy call’ and we can help get your campaign ready for launch.
How to Set up a Successful Crowdfunding Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for crowdfunding campaigns. In this blog post, we’ll explain how to set up a successful email marketing campaign, so you can nurture a relationship with your crowd and improve the chances of successfully funding your campaign.
Why does some email marketing not work?
Some people say "email marketing is dead," but research shows that 72 percent of people are more receptive to promotional content via email over other types of marketing channels.
If your email content isn’t working and It’s not generating the results you desire. Then this could be due to a few things:
- A poor quality email list
- Poor email content
- A Poor call to action
If you are sending emails to a list of people who aren’t your preferred target audience then the campaign is starting on the wrong foot. Poor quality, non-original or salesy content is a big turn off. As are campaigns that push readers to low-quality products or an offer that isn’t as good as your competitors. It may seem obvious to you, but you’ll be amazed at how important it is to tell your audience what you would like them to do. Use a call to action and encourage your audience to act.
What we experience?
From our experience, email marketing is an effective crowdfunding marketing technique that when implemented correctly encourages your crowd to support your campaign. Campaign data shows there is a correlation between sending out an email to your list and then seeing more donations or sign-ups take place. However, there are some crucial points that you should follow to increase the probability of your campaign’s success.
Before Pre-Launch
Before you launch your ‘prelaunch’ campaign you and your team should use your existing networks to build a list of contacts. Take the completed list and upload it to your email software of choice, for example, MailChimp. Connect your landing page’s ‘email sign up form’ to MailChimp. So any leads that sign up through the form are added straight to your main contact list.
You are now ready to start emailing your contacts.
Welcoming Email
It's best practice to have a ‘Welcoming’ email, which is sent out to someone when they join your email list. On signing up, an automated email is delivered to them straight away - welcoming them to your community. The ‘welcoming’ email is an ‘overview’ of your campaign and a chance to recap on the messaging included on the landing page or elsewhere.
Points to include: reintroduce your project vision, explain key benefits, highlight links to any related groups e.g. Facebook community group and give a good CTA at the end of the message. For example, information about the launch date.
During Your Pre-launch Campaign
The emails you send to your list during the prelaunch phase are intended to build and nurture a relationship. Use the opportunity to create interest and intrigue in your cause or offer and get people excited to be part of your project’s community.
How many emails you send during prelaunch depends on how long your prelaunch is. If your prelaunch is 4 weeks then we’d recommend sending an email every week for the first 2 or 3 weeks and then as you get closer to the launch date you can send a few more emails.
Wondering what you should talk about in your emails here are a few ideas:
Chat about your back story, your project’s history and your reason why highlight features and facts and keep your contacts notified about the launch date.
Reminder Email - ‘Launching Tomorrow’
As you get closer to launching you can send out more emails (every couple of days) to encourage backers to support you when you launch. The most important email is the ‘reminder’ email sent out the night before your launch. As people will join your email list at different points throughout prelaunch the ‘reminder email’ helps to put everyone on the same page. Notifying you are launching tomorrow.
Launch Day Email - ‘We are Live’
On the day of launch send an email to your list to let them know that your campaign is now live. Encourage your list to support your campaign straight away. For ‘rewards’ campaigns where you are offering a product at a certain price you can encourage your list with an ‘Early Bird’ discount offer which is available for a limited time. This strategy will help to encourage your list to support you straight away.
Live Campaign
During the live campaign, it's important to keep messaging your main contact list. Keep them updated with the latest campaign news, the milestones you have achieved, for instance when you hit your funding target. As the campaign draws to a close you can send 3 or 4 emails counting down the final days and hours of the campaign.
Generally, you’ll find the most amount of action for your project is in the opening and closing days of the campaign.
Important Things to bear in mind
When creating a list, keep in mind where your emails will go. Will, they hit your user’s inbox, promotion folder, or spam folder? All of these are dependent on your IP credibility and domain history, and credibility.
The best way to make sure your list is receiving your emails is to remind them when they sign up to add your email to their ‘contact address book’.
Their email client will then know to trust your email and you can relax knowing they are receiving everything you send out.
Make your emails come to life
Whether you need help with designing your email marketing or other areas of your marketing campaign or even Kickstarter Video Production then get in touch with us at Wow Your Crowd. We’d love to hear about your big idea and help your campaign to get funded.
Best Tips on How to Use Video for Social Media Marketing
You have created a marketing plan for your product launch campaign, but it’s not creating the results you desire?
Why is this? Are you missing something?
The main reason is genuinely due to the lack of content that engages your audience. Data shows that video is the best medium to attract and communicate with your audience online. If you have not already made significant investments in social media video content, then it's time to start investing.
It's not just video platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram that are more focused on video, for example with ‘stories’ and ‘IGTV’. Other platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn also provide video options, since this is the way users expect to digest content.
Different types of video for social media marketing
There are various types of video you can create to promote your product, business or personal brand. Here are a few ideas:
- Animations
- Brand Promo
- Commercial
- Sales video
- Educational How to
- Product Explainers
- F.A.Q. videos
- Expert Opinion videos
- Vlogs
- Live Stream videos
- Event highlights video.
So, what's the best? It depends on your specific goal, your budget and your level of experience with making videos. For a strong consistent social media campaign, we’d recommend making various videos from the above list, try them out and measure the response you get from your target audience. Then make more of the videos that work the best. Use the videos to build trust and nurture a relationship with your followers and customers.
The ideal video length
The ideal video length is a bit of a myth. It really depends on how engaging the video content is and what the video is used for. As a guideline, we’d recommend the following:
- Promotional video for your website - 1- 2 mins for brand content
- Facebook & Twitter - Up to 1-minute promotional brand content
- Instagram - from 15 - 30 seconds for promotional brand content
- Youtube - Up to 2mins for promotional content and up to 60mins for long long-form educational and entertainment content
Use different social media platforms effectively for your video marketing
YouTube
YouTube is the ‘social media video’ website. A place to learn and be entertained, which is different to posting messages on other social media platforms. Building a strong YouTube channel with great content relevant to your subject matter will allow you to attract subscribers and fans, which you can then turn into customers. Get good at YouTube and be great at video marketing.
Important points to keep in mind when posting videos on Youtube
- Use keywords relevant to your topic in the description and video title
- Post videos regularly (at least once a week)
- Use the YouTube Ads options like Pre-roll to sell and attract people to your business
- Always remind viewers to like your video and subscribe to your channel
Facebook is a perfect place to promote your product to your target market. You can upload videos easily, use them as advertisements to reach niches, or launch a Facebook Live stream and speak with your audience directly.
Important points to keep in mind
- Make sure the video is engaging, with the right style of content for your audience
- Upload your videos directly to Facebook; don’t link to them from other websites
- Include your videos into playlists, labelled for easier search
- Include a call to action at the end of your video
- Host live Facebook Q&A sessions, to forge a closer personal relationship with fans
- Re-share your Live streams for fans who may have missed the original live broadcast
Twitter is just as good as any other platform for sharing videos as part to your product launch and social media marketing. Creators will typically upload videos as tweets or pay for video ads. Both options are available.
Important points to keep in mind
For Twitter posts and advertisements, a common rule for posting is that shorter messages create better results. Twitter research reveals that advertisements that are less than 15 seconds work better and viewers retain the messages more often.
- Don't forget to use hashtags related to your niche and "join the talk," (as suggested by Twitter) in your posts.
- Add descriptions and keywords
Instagram is very popular and is promoting more video content based on its new functionality. In addition to video posts and advertising, a new live streaming option was started with Instagram Stories and IGTV, which functions similarly to YouTube.
Important points to keep in mind
- Create your videos with a clear topic, with related visual design
- Keep your captions short and include the right message in your video
- Instagram videos have a 60-second time limit so keep your video short
- Instagram ads are much like Facebook ads, so try it here if you have noticed things that work on Facebook
- Instagram Stories have a limited time length, such as 15 seconds, and disappear forever after 24 hours, similar to Snapchat
- IGTV operates like YouTube and is a great place for Vloggers to share their content
Snapchat
If your target audience is a younger market say 16 - 30 years old then your social media content marketing campaign should include Snap Chat, which allows for informal exchanges with your fans through Snapchat posts.
Important points to keep in mind
- Keep your Snapchat posts short and simple
- Use and create Snapchat filters and lenses to upgrade the look of your posts and advertisements.
Finally!
To enhance your product launch or crowdfunding campaign It is essential to implement a video marketing strategy on social media. Wow Your Crowd can help to produce what you need. So, when you need marketing help or a sleek, professional crowdfunding video that promotes your product, give us a call and in the meantime feel free to reach out and ask us any questions you may have. We’ll be happy to provide some insight and advice on how you can promote your products online.
