Why Relationship Building Is Fundamental to Crowdfunding Success
We all know that relationships matter in life and business, but many of us struggle in this area. While we know it can have a positive impact on our endeavours, humans sometimes have a natural reluctance to build new connections with people, which has arguably gotten worse as we rely more and more on technology to facilitate our interactions.
In truth, the art of relationship-building is one of the most important tools for growing your idea into a fully-backed and anticipated crowdfunding project.
Relationships and Not Sales
We can all send out thousands of emails each week as part of a campaign, but this is not relationship building. Neither is posting self-promotion on your social media channels. While you might be able to drive awareness of your brand through high volume marketing tactics, crowdfunding marketing campaigns really call for a more personal and intimate approach, closer to good old fashioned face-to-face relationship building.
This is because so much relies on people seeing you as a genuine, likeable and interesting person for them to back you and become part of your community. Your legacy will ultimately be defined by how you leverage technologies and tools like your crowdfunding video to establish real relationships with people at scale.
This is also an area where one powerful relationship with the right person can do much more than several loose connections with multiple people.
Four Strategies for Building Better Relationships
1. Make Time
Trying to be too efficient can often lead us to spend too little time on the things that will have a greater impact on our lives. Ironically, this can be incredibly inefficient when you realise down the line that your time was wasted on menial tasks or low-impact outreach activities.
Obviously, you should still be strategic in how you spend your time, but make sure you allow enough capacity in your schedule to build stronger relationships. This could mean direct calling a few potential backers and telling them more about your vision, running a virtual Q&A session for your community, or simply reading your social media comments and replying to them personally.
People can tell if you’re rushing things and if instead, you give someone the time of day and develop a personal connection with them, you’ll be able to create a stronger foundation for your project, built on people who are more invested in you and what you’re trying to achieve.
2. Don’t Forget About Your Friends
We all take for granted the people in our lives to some extent. And in the world of crowdfunding, it’s easy to get carried away with searching for new backers, rather than nurturing the relationship we already have. However, when you’re trying to build a strong community of followers and backers, it’s risky to neglect those who have already pledged support.
Rather than having people drop off, it’s best to find new ways to bring your most loyal and long-term backers and partners into the fold more closely. The ultimate goal should be for individuals to become ambassadors for your brand, and keeping them involved can lead to new opportunities for brand awareness and community building.
3. Don’t Automate too Much
Even if you’re trying to make the most of your time, this doesn't mean that generic communications and marketing automation should make their way into your strategy. People require personal contact and interaction for relationships to truly grow and you won’t be doing anyone a favour with non-personalised marketing or comms.
4. Be Present
Even when you don’t think you really have anything interesting to say to people, it’s important to let them know you’re there. Regular communication with your community or individual backers can help them to feel included in what you’re doing, helping you to build a stronger connection with them.
Looking for More Tips?
Let us know if you’re looking for more tips and advice to improve your crowdfunding marketing campaigns. As well as experience producing engaging crowdfunding videos for our clients, our team at Wow Your Crowd has a wealth of expertise about promoting your campaign to the right people, we’d be happy to share this with you.
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.
Common Myths About Crowdfunding Marketing Campaigns
Crowdfunding is a kind of social fundraising. It’s the new way to raise money, by leveraging your personal network to support your cause or campaign. Along with your network, you can use an online crowdfunding platform to raise the money you need to fund your personal or business venture.
Crowdfunding is an excellent option for startups, product creators, and developers to launch their ideas, collect funds and have a platform to build a community for their big idea.
When starting any crowdfunding campaign, you may need to keep these points in mind; you must be mindful of several misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding crowdfunding to prevent any issues that could have a negative effect on your project.
Crowdfunding Myths
Here are some important crowdfunding myths:
Innovative ideas are not crucial to the success
Wrong! The most innovative ideas have the best chance of succeeding and raising the funding they seek. Along with being innovative the best ideas need a good plan and strategy to bring it to life, which requires adequate time and attention to implement successfully. First, find out which groups of individuals are likely to support your campaign and then work out a marketing strategy on how to share your campaign with them to gain their backing.
The real work starts when your campaign starts
I will urge you to initiate your campaign at least two months before the official launch date. This is the time required to construct an effective plan, including a mailing list, and to develop a strong backer community around your project. These are the two crucial factors needed for your campaign's success. It would help if you used this time to study, prepare ahead, collect a good team, identify positions, and arrange all the assets before the start of the project. Planning well in advance will set you to campaign up for success.
The concept that people are waiting for your idea and project launch is misleading. Although crowdfunding begins with close friends and relatives, it hardly finishes with them. Many of us are also aware of the importance of news and social media promotions for business promotion.
To get the desired support you need for your campaign, you must start using other networks to inspire people to spread the word to their networks to gain mass awareness. With the right effort behind the campaign along with a well-advertised promotion, you will give your campaign a greater chance of success.
A Significant following on Social media DOESN’T assure success
Do you know that one of the reasons for your campaign failure is to post completely about it in advance?
Although social media is a key factor in crowdfunding success, you need to be aware of the fact that the majority of the donations will come from people you know already, such as your friends, relatives, or e-mail subscribers.
Keep in mind that undoubtedly Facebook numbers are important! Quite a few people will already have over 10k or more followers on their Facebook and Instagram, which they believe will be enough to help raise the funds they require. Unfortunately, this isn’t completely correct. Its best to work out the figures. How many pledges do you need of a certain amount to reach your funding target? Once you know this number times it by 20, (which = 5%). This is the ideal amount of people you need to reach out to and convince to back your campaign.
For example: For a 5 % conversion expectancy:
100 pledges x £100 fee = £10,000 funding target.
20 x 100 pledges = 2000 people
Facebook & Instagram are a great way to reach more people and build up your crowd. Review the number of followers you already have and then decide how many more people you need to reach.
Many campaigns set up a marketing funnel to capture leads for their campaign. The marketing funnel can include Facebook ads, press releases, email marketing and other marketing strategies.
If you haven’t got a social following or email list, it makes sense to start building one as soon as possible. Ideally 6 or even 12 months before you launch! You want people to know who you are and what you stand for. If you don’t have that kind of time then use the time you have to the maximum.
The crowdfunding campaign is only for startups
Many people think that crowdfunding is predominately for entrepreneurs and start-ups to raise significant capital to support their innovative ideas. This isn’t correct and is a misunderstanding. Crowdfunding is for everyone, entrepreneurs, start-ups, individuals and established businesses. Recently many big brands have started to use crowdfunding as a way to test their new innovations, rather than launching them direct to the commercial market.
Finally,
Implementing a Crowdfunding Marketing campaign is a great way to build awareness, build a community of followers and overcome any financial obstacles you may have with raising capital with conventional methods such as banks, schemes, investors, and other financial institutions. Any entrepreneur or business with an advanced concept can use crowdfunding to raise money quickly and easily without giving away large amounts of equity in their business or spending large sums of personal money.
Pinterest Marketing Simplified! 5 Simple Tips to Grow your Pinterest Account
Pinterest has grown to be one of the most popular social media platforms in recent years and has become handy for crowdfunding campaigns who are launching a new innovative product. In this blog, we explain 5 simple tips to set up and grow your Pinterest account.
Pinterest has made quite a name for itself in recent years. In fact, it has become the third-largest social network in the United States. In the last 12 months, Pinterest gained almost 70 million users. This is quite a large user base and it certainly gives marketers a lot to think of. What’s even more interesting is the fact that the majority of Pinterest users belong from high-income households and are predominately women. So, if you are a marketer or just starting a new business you should definitely use this platform to your advantage.
For your ease, we have listed down 5 actionable marketing tips to kick-start your Pinterest marketing campaign.
5 actionable marketing strategies for Pinterest:
1. Setting Up a business account:
It is highly recommended that you sign up for a Pinterest business account as it allows you to manage your targeted audience more efficiently through analytics and Rich pins.
Simply head over to the Pinterest Sign up section and create your business account.
Here’s a list of things that needs to be taken care of for a proper brand profile:
A professional profile photo: This one is simple. Use a professional picture of you or your company logo here.
Cover Board: This is the first thing your audience will see when visiting your profile so don’t be afraid to get a little creative here. You can use an image or a carousel that best displays your brand story or your best work/products here. Remember, it’s all about connecting with your audience!
Writing your Bio: Writing a bio for a Pinterest profile can be tricky as you are only allowed a 160 character limit. So, keep it short and simple and don’t overdo hashtags as they are not relevant here.
2. Planning your content strategy:
“What to post and when to post”, it all comes down to these two things when it comes to a good content strategy.
What to Post?
Creating captivating content based on the interest of your targeted audience is the key ingredient for a successful Pinterest marketing campaign.
You can create three types of content to promote your brand.
Product pins:
Pinterest is one of the few platforms where people are actually searching for new products/content from brands. In fact, 78% pinners find the content from brands including product pins very “Useful”.
So, if you are running a crowdfunding campaign, launching a product or have an online store and want to maximize your revenue, you should definitely take cool pictures of your products and promote them on Pinterest. Even better if your product is women-focused as almost 80% of the pinners from the US are females belonging to the age group 18-64.
Rich pins - Blogpost and Landing pages:
Have a story to share or a cool offer that people can’t miss? Create a beautiful picture with a catchy title and share it on Pinterest and you are almost guaranteed traffic!
You can drive traffic from Pinterest by inserting your website’s link on the pins. Whether you are promoting a blog or a landing page, you can make use of this strategy.
Video pins:
A great way to tell a detailed story of your brand and connect to your audience in a more engaging way. More on this later….
When to post?
Now let’s talk about when to post.
Picking the right time to post can certainly work in your favour and if you can hit the time when most of the audience is online using Pinterest you will win the Jackpot!
Past studies have shown the following times to work best:
During the day: Between 2 PM – 4 PM EST.
In the evening: Between 8 PM – 1 AM EST.
It’s all about analyzing your targeted audience however, the above mentioned times generally work well according to SocialFresh.
3. Optimizing your Pins:
Pinterest is labelled as a search engine for images and so it’s a good idea to optimize your pins for better visibility and reach.
Here are the two things you can do to optimize your pins:
Writing a compelling description:
Writing a compelling Pin description might look like a small thing but it matters a lot! In fact, Pinterest itself reported that using clear and actionable words can increase email sign-ups up to 70%.
When writing a Pin description, you should try to include your brand name and try to use clear, concise, and actionable words to better connect with your audience. Writing a Pinterest description is an art and every little detail matters so you must pay attention here!
Adding Hashtags:
Just like any other social media platform, Pinners use hashtags to find new content on the platform. Using relevant hashtags in your description can get your content discovered on Pinterest and really get things going for your brand.
4. Be consistent - Interact with other pinners and join group boards:
Posting quality content and interacting with other pinners regularly can take your marketing campaign to the next level.
Joining community boards is one of the best strategies to grow your Pinterest account. Here’s something that you can do:
Simply try to find group boards within your niche using hashtags and try to provide value to the viewers by posting quality content as much as you can. This strategy will help make your content more visible to the Pinners eventually leading to an increase in your follower count.
Pinterest is all about creating value for the viewers and if you consistently do that, your success is almost guaranteed!
5. Hidden Ninja - Video pins!
Now let’s talk about the video pins. Video pins are getting extremely popular on Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest reported that video engagement rose by 600% in 2019 as compared to the year 2018! This clearly shows the importance of video content and you should definitely use video pins.
Video Pins are great to connect with your audience and connect with them on a more personal level. Whether you are looking to share your brand story or a product that can change the lives of others or simply looking to raise awareness for your crowdfunding campaign, posting enticing video pins should be at the top of your to-do list.
When crowdfunding we recommend adding Pinterest to your list of marketing strategies as it is a great platform to help grow awareness of your new product and build interest in your project.
Contact us here at Wow Your Crowd if you'd like help with creating quality videos for your Pinterest content especially if you are planning to raise awareness of your new product campaign with a crowdfunding video. Catch you soon.
Crowdfunding 101 - How to Crowdfund Your Big Idea Successfully Part 2
In the past, typically only enterprise companies with large R&D budgets could bring a product or innovation to market. But today, crowdfunding has levelled the playing field and enables businesses and entrepreneurs to make their ideas a reality. In this blog, part of 2 of ‘How to crowdfund your big idea successfully we continue to explain the key areas of how you can launch your crowdfunding campaign successfully.
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. Its 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 is 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 is a game-changer and has made it easier than ever before for you to launch your big idea. Use the information explained in both parts of this blog to help develop your campaign and launch it successfully. For more information about how Wow Your Crowd, crowdfunding agency UK can help support you with your campaign, get in touch today and arrange a free crowdfunding strategy success session. To your crowdfunding success!
3 Step Formula to a Successful Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign
Over the past 10 years, Crowdfunding has changed the way entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovative businesses can launch their products. Providing an alternative route to the problematic and expensive way of traditionally bringing an idea to market. But how do you launch a successful Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign? Our 3 step formula explains how you can.
Crowdfunding is amazing, it is a ‘game-changer’, giving entrepreneurs and start-ups the opportunity to launch their products and big ideas, but it hasn’t always been this way. Traditionally, launching a product was expensive and was only possible for companies with large R&D budgets. Most entrepreneurs or small businesses didn’t have a chance and could only dream of launching their products, with a small minority actually taking their idea from concept to selling it commercially. But thanks to the way the Internet has changed how we communicate with each other and with the rise of Crowdfunding, entrepreneurs and startups now have the ability to navigate the issues of traditionally launching their product and make their big ideas a reality.
Although crowdfunding has levelled the playing field for creators there is still a lot of work to be done in order to launch your product successfully. Many people see the large raises by certain successful campaigns on platforms like Kickstarter and instantly think Crowdfunding is the easy way to raise funding and the answer to their start-up dreams. However, Crowdfunding isn’t as simple as you may think.
Official stats from Kickstarter show that only a third of campaigns to date have been successful (489,000 campaigns launched, 183,000 successfully funded) and of those successful, the average funding raised was around $7,000. When you see these stats in the cold light of day it puts a different perspective on things. As mentioned before, many people see the successful campaigns that raise 6, 7 or 8 figures and think they can easily do the same. In fact, only the top 3% of campaigns raise over $50,000. The top 1% raise over $100,000 and those that reach 7 or 8 figures are the top 0.4%.
You can be successful and launch a 6,7 or 8 figure campaign, but it's vitally important that you understand what the successful campaigns do in order for you to replicate them. Whether you want to raise ten thousand dollars or one million dollars with the right effort, the right planning and hard work you can certainly do it.
So, what do successful campaigns do that unsuccessful campaigns don’t and what do you need to do to give your campaign the best chance of success and skyrocket the chances of smashing your funding goal?
From our own experiences, helping our clients to successfully launch 5,6 and 7 figure campaigns (joining the much sought after 1%) and by studying the most successful campaigns over the past couple of years we have developed this 3 step formula:
Step 1. A Unique Product
The most successful campaigns don’t rush their projects. They spend many months and years developing their idea. Researching similar products, understanding the needs of the user and then developing something that improves on what has become before. It's no coincidence that the big campaigns are for products that are generally labelled ‘The World’s First…’ These products and ideas are different to what has been made before and are pushing boundaries, creating unique innovations that provide users with something different.
For example, Vectoman wallet didn’t rush their launch. They spent two years tweaking the design of their luxury wallet, adding additional smart features, so that the wallet was completely different to any other wallet that had been launched before. When they did eventually launch they raised over $2million.
If you launch a product that is the same as what has come before, people will stick with what they already have. They have no reason to switch or upgrade. The psychology behind inventing products that people want is for you to change a user's habit in order to get them to buy.
Step 2. An Awesome Pitch Story.
It would be incredibly unjust if you decided to create an amazing product that was completely different to what has come before and then not backs it up with a standout pitch story that conveys exactly how your product helps its users. But unfortunately, this happens regularly. Many creators have great ideas and create awesome products but they fail to explain the value the product provides the user.
A great pitch story hooks audiences on a physical and emotional level. Your story and marketing message should be written so that the user thinks you have built your product specifically for them.
A pitch needs to stimulate your audience, and get them thinking emotionally,... “yes I must have that now!”. Create an offer your audience can't refuse. But remember you aren't selling, you are building a relationship with a user who has a problem or knows someone with the problem and has a need for your product, the solution to their problem. Work these message points into your pitch video, your campaign page and all of your marketing campaign and your crowd will be queuing to buy your product.
Step 3. A Hungry Crowd
A big mistake made by many people is thinking the crowdfunding platform (where the campaign is hosted) will provide the backers required to help fund the campaign. This is far from the truth. Industry stats show that around 75% of funds raised by campaigns come from their own traffic sources - their crowd.
It's vitally important that your project builds a crowd of hungry backers prior to launching. Backers who are ready to buy your product as soon as you go live. This will allow you to reach your minimum funding goal quickly and give your campaign momentum. Once your campaign is underway and off to a good start you can send cold traffic to the campaign page and make more sales.
Platforms like Kickstarter will only advertise your project in its newsletters and promote the campaign on its homepage once the campaign is showing signs of success and audiences are backing it.
So it is vital you build your crowd beforehand using organic and paid advertising methods - such as leveraging your contacts and generating leads through paid Facebook advertising campaigns.
Crowdfunding really is a game-changer and helping entrepreneurs and start-ups all over the world make their dreams come true and it can make yours come true as well. To make sure your campaign is a success, seek support from a crowdfunding marketing agency and let them guide you on your crowdfunding journey and help reach your fundraising goal.
Bespoke Crowdfunding Agency in the UK
Facebook Advertising has changed the way businesses advertise their products and services for good. No longer do companies have to rely on expensive Google ads or offline strategies like mailshots, leaflets or expensive advertisements in publications. In this blog wowyourcrowd will help you to learn how to master Facebook advertising and set up your first campaign.
Facebook advertising has changed the way business can target their target market and attract interest in their products and services. Prior to Facebook advertising if you wanted to attract interest in your marketing campaign you would have to implement various traffic strategies - online and offline. Google Ad Words (PPC) was the main online way to attract customers, but with Adwords most people are looking to buy straight away. When running a crowdfunding campaign particularly in the prelaunch phase you are looking for ‘audience interest’ with a view for the audience to buy when you launch. It turns out Facebook traffic is perfect for this.
If you haven’t already, your first step is to set up a Facebook business page. Once set up you can start to create your Facebook advertising campaign.
Step 1. To start go to Facebook business manager
https:// business.facebook.com/ads manager . Click on ‘create ad’.
Step 2 - Choose a Goal.
This is where deciding on a clear objective is very important. Choose the objective for creating the ad. For example, if you are seeking to build leads or sales the objective to choose would be ‘Conversions’.
Step 3 – Choose Your Objective and Target Audience.
We at wowourcrowd believe that it’s important to be specific about your target audience and their demographics when planning your campaign. Facebook will only display ads to the audience demographics you choose. For example, your campaign objective might be to collect emails via a landing page, this is what most people do when crowdfunding. In this case you will choose ‘Conversions’ as the main objective.
Then you want to confirm who your audience are. For example, our audience is male 26 – 46, who like dogs and are living in New York, and speak English.
Your ads will now be displayed to this specific audience. You can narrow the search by selecting the specific location, e.g. Washington DC, which can help better your results.
When starting your ads and carrying out an initial test you can set your ad budget low as $1 to $2 a day. You can also place limits on your ad spending if you are worried you may forget to turn off your ads, although this is unlikely to happen. For example, you can start your ads from as low as $1 a day if you choose to run ads without a set time frame. You can also set a start date/time and end date/ time if you want more control over your campaign. Its best practice to start your ad budgets low when starting out. The Facebook algorithm needs to learn about your needs and target audience, so it will be important to run campaigns for a number of weeks and months. You don’t want to blow all of your ad budget in the first few days. Typically the Facebook algorithm needs around 4 weeks to really understand your best target audience.
With thousands of businesses competing on Facebook for user attention , it's almost impossible for Facebook to place every ad out on the platform. So, instead what they do is put your ad into an ad auction, where those campaigns with the highest bids get their ads displayed across the network. The bid is the amount you're willing to pay to get your ads in front of your audience.
We at Wowyourcrowd feel that the other important areas of setting up an advert are the ‘Ad Spend Limits’ and the ‘Schedule’ option. When you are prompted to fill in the Ad Spend Limit, be sure to fill in the minimum and maximum amount you want FaceBook to use on a daily or monthly basis. This is part of what is called a budget optimization and helps you remain in control of your spending. If you don’t put in a fixed budget you could log in 1 day and find out Facebook has spent more than you wished, which is good for the bank balance.
In the Schedule option you can choose a time of day when you want to display your ads to the audience. Facebook will show you the time when your audience is the most active, so all you have to do is select a specific time and Facebook will take care of the rest.
Running a Facebook campaign to attract interest to your crowdfunding campaign is a really good idea. To find help to set up your Facebook campaign simply search Goggle using a keyword term like Crowdfunding Agency UK. Then select an agency like us that are experienced in using Facebook and have the credentials to prove it. To your success!
Product Positioning Statement is the Key
There are thousands of crowdfunding campaigns happening every day, so its vital that you can grab your audience’s attention and have them immediately understand why your offer is suited to them. If you don’t get their attention your campaign will fail. In this blog we at wowyourcrowd will help you learn how to create a product positioning statement that will set your campaign up for success.
Positioning is the act of defining why your product is the best at doing a particular thing and why the defined target audience cares a lot about it. Get your positioning statement right and you will knock the competition for six, making more sales and increasing revenues faster. Positioning is fundamental to all forms of marketing, from content written, to campaigns launched and sales pitches made.
Your product positioning statement lays the foundations to all of your crowdfunding, advertising, marketing and selling activities. Most businesses and start ups fail to develop a positioning statement and if they do make one, you can bet the attempt is fairly generic and doesn’t deliver what a well thought out and developed positioning statement should do.
The following 6 steps will help you to create an effective positioning statement which you can use for your crowdfunding campaign and beyond.
1. Competitive Alternatives
The competitive alternatives is what your audience would do if your product didn’t exist, what would they use or do instead? When developing your product its vital you are an expert on the different solutions on the market – list all of the advantages and disadvantages to the alternatives. Remember not all alternatives to your product will be another product – it may be the user doesn’t do anything or instead hires a student to carry out the arduous work.
Really understand what your customers compare your solution with.
2. Unique Attributes
Your products unique attributes are the capabilities or features that your offering has, that the competitive alternatives don’t have. They are your secret sauce; what differentiates you from the competition. The attributes can range from the features you offer, to the materials you use, the process used to produce the product, your team’s experience, a particular skill set, technology involved etc. List down all of your products attributes. When developing a product particularly for crowdfunding its important your product is completely different and unique to what has come before.
3. Value
Value is formed from your products attributes and the benefits those attributes provide. Value is the reason your audience will care about your products attributes. Be sure to explain the physical and emotional benefits your product provides and then back this up with proof. For example your product is a camera, which films in 20 mega pixels (feature) that provides sharp photo images (benefit). The value is how this relates to the user’s goals, i.e. images can be zoomed in or printed in large format and still look sharp.
4. Target market characteristics
Generally the value your product provides is relevant to a large amount of people but as a start-up particularly when crowdfunding your advertising budget is likely to be minimal, so its vital you target an audience who are ready and hungry to buy your product straight away. Your positioning statement should clearly identify who these people are. Your ideal audience are the customers who buy quickly, rarely ask for discounts and tell their friends about your product.
5. Market Category
Market categories help users to understand what they don’t know about your product as they will naturally associate your product with other leading products on the market. For example you say your product is a luxury men’s sports watch – people automatically think of a brand like Tag Heuer. The positive (or negative) connotations of Tag Heuer’s brand will automatically help the user to position your product in their mind. Choose your category wisely and this will have a very positive effect on your brand.
6. Relevant Trends
Positioning your product with a certain market category is very beneficial, however what is even better is also associating a ‘relevant trend’ to the product. This has the effect of making your product relevant now in your customer’s mind. Use Google trends to research what trends are in fashion and see if one fits with your product.
We at wowyourcrowd believe that a well thought out product positioning statement will help you with your crowdfunding campaign whether you are making a crowdfunding video or planning the marketing for your project. Use the above tips to help create the best positioning statement and skyrocket your product’s success!
Wowyourcrowd - Crowdfunding Marketing Agency
The foundations to any product launch or crowdfunding campaign is built upon a well defined ‘communications plan’. Your ‘comms plan’ outlines a number of key areas about your product and forms the strategy for which your campaign will follow. With this blog, Wowyourcrowd will help you to develop your campaign’s strategy.
When launching a new product or running a campaign for a new offer, It’s vital that you have a strategy and create a plan before you start any marketing. This holds true for any type of marketing, for example, whether you are using social media, print, TV, or picking up the phone to call people. The companies that achieve great results from their marketing efforts do so because they leave no stone unturned in their quest to achieve their marketing goal. They put in place a strategy, which is based on research and analysis, and then stick to it across the campaign, testing and measuring as they see results come in. Improving their campaign as they move forward.
We at wowyourcrowd have experienced that when using Facebook to launch your product and boost your crowdfunding campaign is no different, you’ll need a strategy in place and follow it to a tee. Your marketing strategy doesn’t need to be complicated or require you to spend too much time creating it. It can simply be a few slides from a presentation or a document that includes the following:
- Your Product Positioning Statement
- Your Target Market – and the different Ideal Customer Personas.
- List the Value your product provides users.
Your product positioning statement - is a one liner, your elevator pitch, which clearly explains in a nutshell what your product is, what it does, who it helps and the benefits it provides. The 1 liner shouldn’t be longer than a paragraph and be deliverable in 15 – 30 seconds – the amount of time you would have in an elevator lift! The positioning statement will be used as the foundation to all of your marketing and sales messaging now and in the future.
Your target market - clearly defines who your key customers are likely to be. For example you are selling a new ebike – so the overall target market is white and ethnic males from 25 – 55 years old, who live in major cities and enjoy cycling. This target market although is slightly defined it is still very broad, with a wide range of different types of personalities. So, we need to funnel down more and go more niche by creating Ideal Customer Personas from the target market. A well-thought out buyer persona can really help you find that type of person on Facebook due to the platform’s extensive collection of personalised data on users.
Try to visualise your ideal user, you can give each persona you create a name, note what job they have, where they live, how much they earn, what are their interests, what do they like, dislike, their life experiences, education, family etc.
By creating a number of personas it is not just a good way to take advantage of Facebook’s excellent targeting system (and not waste your ad spend budget targeting the wrong people) but it also makes it a lot easier to create and write marketing content to target that particular type of user.
For example you are selling an ebike and an example of your ideal persona is:
David, 55 years old, Lives in London, is an IT Director who earns 60k a year. He Is married and father of two children who have now left home. David enjoys cycling at weekends as a hobby and cycles to work in the week. He’s a fan of the Tour de France and likes motorcycles. He used to ride a motorcycle but struggled to park it in central London so stopped.
How do you get the right information to create a buying persona? Research competitor companies, speak to your target market in focus group meetings, find out about them and then build your personas.
This will take a bit of work but understanding this is the type of person who will be best suited to buying your ebike makes it so much easier to target them on Facebook and get the sale rather than go after people who will never be suited to your product offer. Its worth the work!
Understanding the ‘value’ your product provides users is vital if you want to make the sale and out muscle your competition. Value is formed from 2 areas the ‘features’ of your product and the benefits the user receives when they use the product. Benefits come in two forms – physical benefits and emotional benefits.
We at wowyourcrowd believe that when launching your product or crowdfunding campaign your crowdfunding marketing agency will require information about your product. So use the information outlined above to create a strong ‘comms plan’ and form the strategy for your campaign.
