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!
