Up to 89% of crowdfunding, campaigns fail, depending on the platform. How can you help your great idea succeed?
Proper promotion is the key to your campaign’s success.
If potential backers don’t know about your campaign, they won’t donate. Crowdfunding promotion is the only way backers learn your campaign exists.
This article will help you learn what it takes to start off strong and keep going that way. If you’re willing to put work and careful planning into your promotion, it will pay off.
Keep reading to find out how crowdfunding promotion can fund your startup.
Your Story
Backers aren’t donating to a product. They’re backing a story.
How did your startup begin? What is your product, and why does it need to get out there?
Where do you hope to take your company? How do you plan to get there, and how does crowdfunding fit into that plan?
Include your company’s personality, too. Stiff, purely professional companies aren’t the ones who need crowd funding.
Loosen things up a bit so potential backers can connect with your company and your product. Crowdfunding promotion depends on backers believing in you, not just your product.
Refine your story to be clear and unified. Have a team meeting where you’re all involved in creating the basic copy that shares your story.
Solidify your image by keeping this story consistent everywhere it’s presented.
Your presence everywhere online should reflect the same core points of your story. Your team should all have the same set of basic talking points to jump off from.
Visuals
Potential backers need to see your product and your story. Capture their attention with engaging visuals.
Videos
Create the best video to present your campaign with our tips. Involve both key players of your team and people using your product to give backers a sense of your personality and product’s daily application.
Keep the main introduction video short and sweet. More videos detailing your product and the facts supporting your strategy are great content for social media.
Ask your early users to make their own videos of them using the product. That visual strategy both informs backers about your product and spreads your crowdfunding promotion across the Internet.
Images
Videos work well for your crowdfunding platform, Facebook, and Youtube. Still images or gifs are better for outlets like Twitter and Instagram.
If you’re in the early stages of production, use images to give your backers a sense of what the product will look like. They need something more solid than an idea to support.
Image captions can show your team’s personality. Use humor to engage your audience and direct them to your campaign page.
Crowdfunding Promotion Timeline
Campaigns raise 42% of funds in the first and last three days of a crowdfunding campaign. Having a solid, and reasonable timeline is the key to getting those funds.
Most campaigns are around 30 days. The middle of that timeline lags between the first excitement and the final push.
Beginning
Create a crowdfunding promotion timeline that extends around your campaign length. Schedule promotion like crazy before your launch date to let backers know this campaign is coming.
The day your campaign starts, schedule an online launch event that gets your campaign to the top of the trending pages. Ask everyone you know to engage with content you post on this day to get your name out there.
Your launch day is a great chance to ask product users to post their own videos, too.
Middle
Cashflow will slow substantially through the middle of your campaign. This is when you must keep your promotional efforts going strong.
Set attainable goals each week to drive donations. Decide these goals weekly to ensure you’ll reach them.
If backers see “Let’s hit 40% by Friday,” they’ll rush to donate if you’re close to that number. Setting a goal of 70% by the end of the week when you’re only at 20% is a bad idea, though.
Plan a big surge of marketing for the middle of your timeline. Have a new set of user videos or a new company video to present then.
End
Your marketing should ramp up again towards the end of your campaign. Encourage everyone you know to spread your campaign on social media during this week.
Double your communication efforts with your audience. Remind them daily how close you are to your goal.
The end isn’t the end, though. You have to keep communicating with your backers after the campaign ends.
Communication
Staying in communication with potential and current backers is the best way to increase donations. Identify your audience before your campaign begins and focus your crowdfunding promotion on them.
When you’ve found your audience, choose the best crowdfunding platform to find them on. GoFundMe works best for personal campaigns, while Indiegogo is better for entrepreneurs with unique ideas.
Email List
Email lists generate 50% more sales than other lead-generating methods. For a crowdfunding campaign, this means more donations.
Generate an email list early. If you generate one before your campaign begins, you can ask people to donate in the first rush.
Use your online landing pages to direct people to join your mailing list. Keep them updated often on what’s happening with your company.
Stay transparent with this inner circle. If your production timeline isn’t working, let them know you’re adjusting it.
Honesty will develop a strong connection that translates into more donations.
Social Media
While people may not want a daily email, you can interact with backers on social media every day. If they say something nice or share your campaign, thank them.
Ask for their opinions on what other features or incentives they want for your product. It’s a great tool to get suggestions like a line of your product in new colors.
Open communication with your backers also develops a stronger bond.
Keep it Going
Backers weren’t just interested in your campaign. Keep them updated on your progress after the campaign is over.
Let them know how your product is progressing.
Are there going to be set backs in your release? When can they expect to have the product in their hands?
Show them what their money and support is doing.
Wrapping Up
Crowdfunding promotion depends on involving your audience in your campaign.
Produce lots of visual media to keep them engaged in your story. Keep communicating with them so they know how they’re contributing to that story.
With that hard work, you can become a part of that small percentage of success stories.
For more help with your crowdfunding campaign, contact us–we can recommend some vetted partners to take your campaign to the next level!