Running an Email Marketing Campaign for Your Crowdfunding Project? Don’t Forget these Basics!
An email marketing campaign can be effective in more ways than one. And when it comes to crowdfunding, it’s all too often an underutilised tool. Perhaps a reason for this is that founders don't feel they have a substantial subscription base for email marketing to be cost-effective, or that they think this strategy is more suitable for businesses and brands that already have existing and past customers.
However, the truth is that emails are just another way for you to stay connected with your potential investors, partners and whoever else is part of your world.
You don’t need to be selling or promoting anything at all. Some of the best email marketing campaigns are designed to educate and entertain people, giving them useful snippets of information so that they can stay involved in the brand's narrative.
That’s what it’s all about — staying in the minds of your audience and giving them something meaningful and useful so that they keep strengthening their positive opinion of you and what you’re doing.
Based on our experience as a leading crowdfunding marketing agency in the UK, here are a few other things to keep in mind when considering your email marketing for crowdfunding strategy.
1. Build a Targeted Email List (It Doesn’t have to be Huge)
Highly qualified email lists are better than huge ones containing too many people that don’t care about you or your brand. If you start with a small group, that’s completely fine. You can use this as a base and employ various tactics to grow it.
The best way to build a targeted email list is to convert your website visitors into subscribers. This guarantees that people will already be interested in who you are. As 80% of people will leave your site for good after just one visit, even if they like the look of who you are, it’s important to capture their details before they’re gone.
Exit-intent popups are perfect for converting those abandoning visitors into subscribers and fans. After all, many might be in a rush or looking for something slightly different. By giving them a way to stay connected, you could also be doing them a favour.
2. Know Your Goals
Different businesses and brands will have different aims for their email campaigns. Therefore, before you go borrowing any templates or styles, define what it is you want to achieve.
For example, you may be very familiar with email newsletters from fashion or shopping sites like Amazon, but your goal is completely different to theirs as a crowdfunder, so you won’t want to replicate their product-focused campaigns.
Instead, focus on nurturing your leads and potential investors with engaging information about your project, what your values are, and what you’ve been achieving recently. This could be news of any developments or updates from your industry. You could consider giving people insights into your team or letting people know about your crowdfunding milestones.
Always keep in mind the main action you want subscribers to take, such as signing up for an event, following you on social media, or spreading the word to others.
3. Choose the Right Email Type
There are a few key email types.
- Promotional emails talk about offers and sales
- Relational emails give subscribers something you’ve promised, like a weekly newsletter, a free gift, access to the user-only media asset, or other relevant information they can use
- Transactional emails include things like subscriber signup confirmations, welcome messages, order or purchase confirmations and acknowledgements
4. Know Your Audience
Write emails based on what you know about your audience. If you’re just getting started, you’ll have to make some educated guesses but do your best to base your strategy on real data and insights. Google Analytics and your social media profiles might be able to help you get a better picture of your audience's demographics.
5. Find Tools to Help You
The days of manually executing an email campaign are long gone. Today, the best approach is to find a reliable tool or platform that can help you build great emails and send them out to a curated list, all with minimal stress and time wastage. Look for features like:
- Easy campaign creation and automation, including templates
- Ways to segment your audience
- Integrations with the software you already use
- Performance insights
6. Craft Your Subject Line
The subject line plays a crucial role in getting people to open and click your emails. It has to get attention so people actually want to read on. Most subject lines range from 41 to 50 characters and simply tell people what they can expect to read inside the email.
7. Craft Great Emails
In terms of length, think more pamphlet or print advertisement than blog or article length. Also, keep in mind that it’s not the kind of email you would write to a friend or colleague. You're going to need a combination of visuals and text, not long essay-like prose that will immediately turn readers off.
Remember to do these things:
- Always offer value to readers
- Avoid pitching your offer too early
- Address subscribers by name
- Personalized emails based on user needs and expectations
- Be human and try to make an emotional connection
- Choose a CTA that reflects what you want people to do when they’ve read your email
8. Focus on Design
If your emails look terrible, it doesn't matter what your text says. This will reflect badly on you and your crowdfunding project and can actually do more damage than simply not sending out any emails at all.
Also, with more people reading emails on mobile devices, make sure your content is 100% optimized for this. You can easily find great and responsive email templates on platforms like Mailchimp.
9. Test and Track
Like all good marketing campaigns, you should be testing everything to make sure your output is as good as it can be. This means creating different versions of a design, layout, marketing copy, subject lines and CTAs. You can also consider testing between different segments to see who responds better.
Monitor things like open rates, clicks, unsubscribes and forwards. And remember, it’s better for email marketing open and click rates to have fewer active subscribers than large numbers of inactive ones.
Building a Crowdfunding Marketing Campaign?
If you’re looking for new ways to engage your audience and build followers, consider working with a leading crowdfunding marketing agency in the UK that can help you tailor your marketing activities to grow a bigger and stronger base of followers. Get in touch for more tips and advice!
What Kind of PR Strategy Works Best for Crowdfunding Campaigns?
Behind most successful crowdfunding projects is a strategically planned and executed PR campaign. However, the process of getting highly authoritative media outlets and reporters to feature you in their content isn’t simple.
While some founders might be naturally talented in this area, other crowdfunding projects will have to think very carefully about their approach when looking for coverage.
Why Does Press Matter?
- Credibility - Validation from an authoritative reporter is a key factor in generating trust with people and building your reputation. With good PR published online, an article written about your vision and journey from a respected publication is a sure way to improve your credibility.
- Raise brand awareness - A PR campaign with decent amplification will undoubtedly help spread the word about your campaign to a larger audience.
- Drive better traffic - Traffic that comes from a third-party post will yield much higher conversion rates than simply publishing the content yourself, with people more likely to trust your brand.
Why Is It Difficult?
The best PR is earned, not paid for. While you have the option of hiring professionals to handle your PR outreach activities or paying for access to various digital PR tools, you will have to ensure that you are still offering something valuable, original and genuine to potential publications and journalists.
Sometimes this is hard because you haven't made it to the final stage of product development yet, making it less appealing for journalists to cover your story. At other times, you may find it hard to reveal to people what is so groundbreaking and interesting about your project.
Having a niche product also makes it harder to appeal to platforms that cater to a more general market. For instance, if your project is deemed to be too specific, people might not want to cover you at the risk of too few of their audience showing interest.
In the end, media outlets need something that will interest and educate their audiences, so you’ll need to find a way of providing this. If you have a product that is truly groundbreaking, however, it should be more than possible to be featured by respected outlets with the right PR strategy.
Target Specific Outlets with Dedicated Content
While planning your outreach campaign, make a selection of outlets you want to target based on their proximity to your market and the kind of audiences they have. This will enable you to spend time where it matters, with news about your project having the potential of driving the most traffic.
Next, try to create unique content for each publication, rather than just generic information about your product. For example, you could offer individual interviews to writers in your industry. Remember that journalists want fresh content and are not interested in writing about a product that has already been covered by their peers.
If you have something very special to give away, such as new data about your product, news about a shift in your strategy or the fact that you’ve reached a crowdfunding milestone, save this information for specific publications that have a greater impact.
Establish Relationships Before Your Campaign Starts
It’s good to start working on your PR strategy and implementation a few months before you want to make a big push on this side of things. Waiting until one week before your launch of your Kickstarter could leave you with very little press when it matters the most.
If you are not hiring a crowdfunding marketing agency that already has established connections with a network of journalists, you’ll want to start building relationships as early as possible. You can do this quite easily on platforms like LinkedIn where you can tap into your professional network and look for journalists in your sector that could be willing to cover your campaign.
Remember, building relationships takes time and effort, but journalists are always in search of good stories so if you pitch the opportunity in the right way, there’s no reason you can’t get some prominent voices to speak about your upcoming launch.
Create a Solid Press Kit
A press kit contains must-have information that reporters should receive about your product and campaign. This helps entice them as well as gives them the basic facts that will help them write a story.
This should include things like:
- Bios of the key people of your crowdfunding campaign
- Facts and figures on the industry your project belongs to
- A comprehensive press release
Looking for a Crowdfunding Marketing Agency?
If you want to learn more about running a successful PR campaign for your crowdfunding project, get in touch with us at Wow Your Crowd. As well as helping founders create engaging crowdfunding videos, we can offer our expertise when it comes to the best ways to achieve good press.
Why You Need to Build a Powerful Online Community for Your Brand
Whether you’re launching a niche product or something you hope will cater to the masses, the benefits of building an online community for your crowdfunding project are undeniable.
Digital communities can turn the initial curiosity of potential customers into a long-term love affair, with loyal followers even promoting your brand to others. And often, the community you first establish will last far beyond the launch of your first products and can form the foundation of future digital marketing campaigns.
Among the many benefits, such as driving traffic to your website and helping you retain customers, online communities also allow you to stay up-to-date with the thoughts and opinions of your fans so that you can adapt your products to be more relevant and user-focused.
What is an Online Community?
An online community is essentially a group of individuals joined by common interests, opinions, and goals, who meet in a virtual space, like a social media platform.
For example, one of the simplest communities you can build is a private group on Facebook. However, depending on your brand and business goals, your online community might be best suited to another platform or channel like LinkedIn. Some online community platforms include:
- Facebook Groups
- Disciple
- Hivebrite
- BuddyBoss
- Mighty Networks
- Circle
- Tribe
Your community might be an open forum where anyone can come and share their views and opinion, or an invite-only space where entrants are vetted first.
For brands who want to establish a community before or during the launch of a new product or service, an online community often includes a mix of customers, partners, and employees who are brought together in one place to share developments, news, ideas and establish a stronger emotional connection between members and the brand.
This initiative could be led by your crowdfunding marketing agency, by yourself, or even by a chosen follower in some instances, who are willing to lead the group thanks to their simple love of your brand.
What Happens in Online Communities?
Whatever your platform of choice, the major activity that should be taking place within your online community is the development of a meaningful connection between an individual and the brand, as well as between member individuals. A few things that encourage this are:
- Discussions on topics relating to the brand, product or community theme
- Direct feedback and opinion sharing about product elements (especially useful during the testing and development stage of new products)
- Sharing of interesting content that relates to the community (videos, articles, personal reflections etc.)
- Fan based projects and artworks (you can set up a competition where fans develop artwork for the brand for the chance of winning a prize and having their work published)
- Sharing of industry news
- Useful advice and tips for group members
Why Are Online Communities Important?
When launching a crowdfunding project, there are several unique ways your community can benefit you.
- Communities can attract new followers to your brand who will eventually turn into paying customers when your product or project is launched
- It’s a cheap way to gather market research data from real people without commissioning interviews or surveys
- Creating a strong connection between people at an early stage will often inspire long-term loyalty ad individuals may become your greatest advocates
- When partners or investors see the scale of your community they are more likely to believe in your project and get on board
- Online communities are a direct way to communicate with your customers, which can support sales inquiries and other activities
- Running an online community lets you be seen as a leader in your space and you’ll have the chance to shape the conversion as you go
- Having a regular dialogue with your community helps you stay up-to-date and improve your products
Investing In Your Community
Whether you plan to handle the growth and management of an online community yourself or seek help from a crowdfunding marketing agency, this activity is far more than just a social media strategy that can improve your brand awareness potential.
Successful online communities can be a vital tool when developing your product pre-launch and can give you a deeper insight into the mindset of your customers.
If you want to learn more about how you can promote your Kickstarter with community building or other marketing initiatives, get in touch with us at Wow Your Crowd.
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.
Pro Tips and Advice for Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign Successfully
In this article, we share some useful crowdfunding tips and advice designed to help you launch a successful campaign. These are ‘inside pro’ crowdfunding tips and come from our experience launching various campaigns successfully (and unsuccessfully) over the past few years. Crowdfunding can be tough and the more information you have at your fingertips the better placed you are to launch a successful project.
1. When is the worst time to launch a crowdfunding campaign?
The leading platforms will argue that there is never a ‘worst’ time to launch a campaign, however from experience, there are certainly times in the year that are likely to make a launch harder than others.
Probably the most difficult time to launch a campaign is in January, followed by August. Why these months? Well, January is one of the hardest months to crowdfund in as people have the less disposable income to spend after Christmas and many people are away for summer break during August.
This ultimately means if you plan to launch in either month you will have to work even harder to get people to support you and make your campaign a success. It’s not impossible, and launching in January may be vital to the success of your campaign e.g. delivering a product for springtime, but compared to if you launch at any other time of the year it will be harder.
2. What information should I include on my campaign page?
Your campaign page has 1 purpose, to convert people into backers. How do you decide what information to include on your page? Simply, think from the ‘backers’ perspective. Why would a backer desire to support your project? What needs and desires does a backer have that your campaign offers them? How will their support make them feel? What visual and written content do they need to see to help compel them to trust you and support you? What messaging is going to evoke the right response of support from them? These are all questions to think about and answer when designing your page.
Some simple tips to help increase conversion are:
- Make your campaign personal by including information about the team behind the project.
- Include lots of nice imagery and photos rather than long paragraphs of text. Make sure the photos you show are relevant. e.g if you have a campaign for a craft food stall, include photos of people enjoying eating food at your venue.
- Create rewards/perks that are simple to understand and choose between. If you have too many options this causes confusion and delay due to too much choice. This will inevitably make people go away to think about what to do rather than supporting you then and there. This will lead to missing out on vital sales.
3. What type of marketing should I use to promote my project?
One of the main principles of crowdfunding is to build a ‘crowd’ before you launch a campaign. For most campaigns, this means implementing various marketing strategies, which reach out to your intended audience and communicate your message.
The easiest and cheapest way for you to let a large number of people know about your project and what you are doing is to use social media. Setting up a Facebook, Twitter or any other social media account will be very beneficial to getting your message out there.
When using social media develop a strategy to release a post or number of posts each day, which give an insight into your project, the people involved and the problems your cause/project is solving.
Make your posts personal and this will help you to connect with your audience and make them aware of what you are doing. Remember people can only support you if they know about you. So mass, consistent communication will build up real momentum behind your campaign.
It's a good idea to set a team member who is responsible for arranging social media every day. They should write frequent, engaging posts with links and build momentum behind the campaign.
Other areas of marketing include ‘paid advertising campaigns’ on platforms like Facebook or Google Adwords. But you will need a separate ad budget to pay for the ads. This can be costly but also very effective at getting ‘cold’ leads and traffic.
If you launch an advertising campaign, direct the traffic from the ad campaign to a landing page, which captures the leads email address. You can then launch an email marketing campaign, which nurtures a relationship with the lead and entices them to support you.
PR can also be a great way to gain exposure about your project and attract interest, however, PR normally isn’t great at converting more sales, so if your budget is limited think carefully about how much money you invest into a PR strategy.
Optimising your campaign to be the best in can be is the best way to make it successful. Take on board the advice above to improve your campaign and avoid the pitfalls many projects make. If you are stuck and wish more guidance and support then consider hiring a crowdfunding marketing agency like Wow Your Crowd to help launch your campaign. An agency’s experience and knowledge can save you time and money in the long run. To your future success!
Crowdfunding 101 - How to Crowdfund Your Big Idea Successfully Part 1
Many entrepreneurs and businesses struggle to raise the funding they require to turn their big idea into a reality. Crowdfunding helps to solve this issue, but how do you crowdfund? In this 2 part blog, we explain the main areas of ‘how to crowdfund your big idea successfully’, and highlight certain strategies we use here at Wow Your Crowd, which you can implement and help launch your campaign successfully.
Crowdfunding is being used across industries in many different ways to great effect. Helping individuals and businesses to build communities of customers and followers and to raise funding, which helps to advance projects and causes and improve the lives of us all.
The three main types of Crowdfunding are Donations, Equity and Rewards.
Rewards Crowdfunding is the most known form of Crowdfunding, due to the rise of Kickstarter the famous Crowdfunding platform, where projects generally pre-sell products, in order to raise the money required to manufacture the product.
Equity crowdfunding is on the rise with more platforms appearing around the world as it becomes a legitimate way to raise investment for business projects. Investors gain shares/equity in the business for their investment.
Donation crowdfunding is primary for charity and social causes, where backers of campaigns donate to a good cause but generally don’t receive any form of reward for their donation apart from gratitude.
Although the three main types of Crowdfunding are quite different the core strategies that need to be implemented in order to run a successful campaign are the same. These strategies once learnt can be repeated time and time again whether you are crowdfunding or marketing your business or special cause.
The steps for how to crowdfund your bid idea successfully are:
Research & Analysis
The very first thing to do is to carry out research into successful campaigns similar to yours. Whether you are launching a product, raising investment or asking people to donate to your cause its vital you understand why campaigns have been successful.
Make notes, compiling a spreadsheet, which lists information about the campaign: for example campaign name, raise amounts, value propositions, positioning, messaging, target markets, reward types, pricing, type of imagery, type of video, website and campaign page design.
Message
The next stage is to clarify your message. Crowdfunding is about Innovative products, disruptive businesses and strong causes that will change the world for the better.
Use the information collected from the ‘research & analysis phase to position your product, business or cause so that it differentiates itself from other campaigns. Your offer should sound different from previous campaigns.
Think about who your audience is and write to them. What are their problems, pains and needs? Tailor the messaging to solve their biggest problem. Create copy that makes them feel emotionally connected to your project and wants to back your campaign. You are the leader and guide, make them want to be part of your movement and community.
All big brand advertising campaigns have a ‘planning’ phase at the beginning of a project. Where the planning team develops a ‘comms strategy’, which clarifies the key points that the campaign messaging should focus on. The comms strategy is like the launchpad for your rocketship. Without the comms strategy or more importantly the key points from it your campaign will struggle to take off.
Before you start your project, create a comms strategy and use it to help create the messaging for your campaign. Key points of your comms strategy include:
- Your why - the reason why you are doing what you doing.
- Your mission and vision statement.
- USPs - unique selling propositions,
- Features and benefits and the value they provide.
- Target market/persona of your ideal audience, their likes and dislikes, age, backgrounds, jobs, financial position
- Develop a branding guideline, including tone of voice and styling.
The comms strategy will form the foundation of your business moving forward as well as your campaign, so it's worth spending the time developing it.
Use the points from the comms strategy plus the research you carry out to craft the best messaging for your campaign, which attracts your audience and entices them to back your campaign.
Marketing Campaign
Once you have your messaging ready now is the time to build your marketing campaign. At the heart of your marketing is a marketing funnel, which generates awareness of your campaign and attracts leads to support you.
The key areas of your marketing funnel are:
- Landing page
- Email marketing
- Facebook Paid Advertising Campaign
- Social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
- PR
Landing page - is a 2-page website, which has a ‘home page’ that works as a sales page and a ‘Thank you’ page. The home page is designed to showcase the launch of your campaign and request people who are interested in your campaign to sign up using their email address. Once someone signs up they are taken to the ‘Thank you’ page, where you can have additional messaging such as requesting people to join your Facebook page or community page.
Email marketing - Once someone registers their interest on the landing page their email address is added to your email list. You can then email the person on a regular basis nurturing a relationship with them. The idea is to provide them with relevant content about you and your campaign which entices them to back you when you launch. The whole idea of the email marketing sequence is to foster a relationship with the leads and get them to know like and trust you. This makes it easier to sell to them when your campaign goes live.
Facebook paid advertising campaign - is the preferred choice of traffic source. Running a Facebook ad campaign almost guarantees leads from your target market and is a very quick way to build up a large lead list. The only drawback is that is can be expensive, however, most successful rewards crowdfunding campaigns have used this strategy, understanding its important to invest money upfront in order to generate the leads required to make sales when your campaign launches.
Social media channels - use your social channels and your team’s channels to promote your campaign. It is best to start talking about your campaign as soon as you can, to build up the buzz and noise around your launch. Post about all topics to do with your campaign - the cause, the prototype, the team, experiences to date, campaign news, fun stuff etc.
PR is good for brand and campaign awareness. Not all campaigns use PR as it can be a bit hit and miss, with some industry stats indicating it is only responsible for generating 5% of campaign sales, however, PR, if done right, are great generating awareness and building interest in your product and company.
Build a Crowd
Building a crowd of hungry backers before you launch, who are ready to support you, is vital to the success of your campaign. Its a fact, the more people you have on your email list when you launch, the more money you will raise. But building a list is not easy and you will need to work hard using various strategies to build your crowd.
Many people think the crowdfunding platform will send people to your campaign but unfortunately, unless your campaign reaches around £25,000 in the first few days of launching, platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo will not promote your campaign. Industry stats show that 75% of funds raised by campaigns come from the traffic they sent to the campaign page. So, how do you build a crowd?
Leverage your network - Your own network is the foundation for your campaign and the best place to start building a crowd is with your friends and acquaintances. Sit down with your team and create a spreadsheet, which lists all of your contacts, use your phone's contacts and platforms like Facebook to build out your list. Once you have your close contact lists build a list of your 2nd and 3rd tier of contacts like friends, people from networking, relevant and related people and business. Use Linkedin for help with 2nd and 3rd tier contacts.
You need your campaign to gain momentum early on, so leveraging your close contacts to support you is a tried and tested method for gaining early support and getting your campaign off to a good start.
It takes more work to build a relationship with a cold lead and get them to know like and trust you, so don’t be shy to let your friends and contacts know what you are doing.
From your and teams list of contacts choose 15 to 20 people who can help amplify your campaign. Reach out to them and ask for their support in advertising your campaign across their networks, directing traffic to your landing page or campaign page depending at what stage your campaign is at. The bigger your team the bigger the reach you have.
Some tips for using social platforms to build awareness of your campaign:
- Set up and use your Pinterest account to promote your project’s vision and “brand.
- Pin pictures of your product/rewards and anything else visually interesting that relates to your project.
- Pin images and videos that direct people back to your campaign.
- Post pictures documenting your product development and campaign journey.
- Post pictures of the team and events relating to your project.
- Tag your pictures with a link that relates to your campaign.
- Set up and use a personal & business Facebook page for your campaign to send regular campaign updates.
- Always include a link to your campaign whenever posting about it on Facebook.
- Set up a private group and get leads to join it. Ask them for feedback on your project and use their comments to build a stronger campaign.
- Use popular and trending hashtags to raise awareness for your campaign.
- Ask contacts for retweets to help spread the word about your campaign.
- Tweet at people (even those you don’t know) who might have a special interest in the subject of your campaign.
- Make sure your team also tweet to their contacts about the campaign.
Crowdfunding may sound difficult but with the right team behind you and a solid plan, crowdfunding is simple and produces amazing results for those that get it right. For more information on crowdfunding video and how we can help support you with your campaign, get in touch with Wow Your Crowd, a crowdfunding Agency in the UK and arrange a free crowdfunding strategy success session. Speak soon!
