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.
