A successful crowdfunding campaign is the dream of many startups and small business owners who are in need of funding.
💡 Read Creating a Marketing Strategy that Works: Benefits, Steps, Tools
To run a successful crowdfunding campaign, you need to capture the attention of a large number of people and convince them that your project is worth their time and money.
Crowdfunding essentially relies on people who will donate or invest a certain amount to fund your campaign. However, to reach this crowd, it’s necessary to have a thorough marketing strategy to guide your plan.
This blog will cover everything you need to know about conducting a crowdfunding campaign and how to make sure it achieves success!
Why Would Anyone Want to Invest in the First Place?
Investors have a lot to gain from putting their money forward into crowdfunding campaigns.
- Crowdfunding provides investors with a low-risk investment, which is something they value.
- Investors don’t need to be concerned about how the economy or stock market will affect their investment because it is not a component of the financial market.
- Investing in a crowdfunding campaign is simple. Through a direct online method, investors can invest money in a project or business.
- Investors can diversify their portfolios and increase their financial potential by sponsoring numerous campaigns through equity crowdfunding.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding can be used to raise funds, but there are drawbacks as well. The benefits of employing the tactic include the following:
- Little financial risk
- Increased brand awareness
- Control over equity
- Free marketing
Before starting a crowdfunding project, you should think about the following disadvantages:
- It requires a lot of work and time
- Oversaturated market
- Potential for no or little gain
- Potential scams
Although some sites allow you to take the money for a charge, most crowdfunding platforms return donations if you don’t reach your target.
The Challenges of Crowdfunding
Many people believe that using crowdfunding is a simple way to make money. Realistically, these people probably never tried to do such a thing. It takes a lot of work to create a project that backers will consider to be worthwhile. Because there is no assurance of success and because crowdfunding is becoming more and more popular, funders are extremely selective with investments.
These are the five major issues that reward-based crowdfunding initiatives face:
- Finding and putting into practice a marketing strategy that is affordable before, during, and after the campaign
- Developing the right messaging that will drive interest in the product or service
- Establishing and effectively structuring the rewards program to increase ROI
- Finding the most effective and cost-efficient fulfillment method for the rewards
- Finding brand advocates that will support the campaign and serve as influencers for their audience
4 Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign
Although there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for a successful crowdfunding campaign, there are several steps you can begin with.
Audience research
As with any marketing campaign, it’s incredibly important to find and reach out to the right people for your campaign. Knowing who they are and where to find them is the first step. Everything builds on that foundation.
Determ allows you to set up tracking for particular keywords and find all the places these keywords have been mentioned. So, this means you can set up tracking for any of the following:
- Brand name
- Products
- Competitors
- Key people
- Similar topics
This will help you collect all the relevant information surrounding these keywords, such as:
- How many times has your audience talked about your keywords?
- How does your audience feel about your keywords?
- Which channel does your audience use the most?
- Where is your audience?
- What language does your audience use online?
- What other topics does your audience talk about?
Read CircuitMess turns its crowdfunding campaign into a success
A great effort would also include researching your competitors to find out how they are reaching their audience.
Read 4 Ways of Using Customer Insights to Track Marketing Campaigns
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has been one of the main drivers of sales for brands. Especially with the rise of social media platforms which generate massive numbers of user-generated content, influencer marketing has been on an upward trajectory since.
This applies to crowdfunding influencers, too. Having someone with a large following talk about your big concept or product might be a game-changer in your campaign. They can persuade people to believe in your ideas and turn them into potential supporters.
Case Study: Influencer Marketing for Batmobile Crowdfunding
Our client, CircuitMess, used Determ to support their Batmobile crowdfunding campaign. We talked with Mihael Gelo, CircuitMess’s business development representative, to understand what they achieved using Determ.
What Mihael deems had the most impact on the crowdfunding campaign was the ability to easily track mentions of their company and products, especially the ones that positively reacted to their previous efforts, all in one place. Thus, they could simply reach out to the authors of those posts and encourage them to either support the campaign promotion or participate in the affiliate program.
Some of the features, or better yet metrics that Mihael really liked are the engagement rate and influence score that can be found under each mention. It enabled them to filter out the results and contact those users and authors with the highest influence and engagement score, as the two were a great performance indicator.
“Other than identifying authors that mentioned us, a benefit we saw was using the influence score metric to guide us towards those media outlets that we were not familiar with prior to them mentioning us. Based on this information, we generated some quality leads, so the lead generation aspect was simplified. In qualitative terms, Determ has increased my efficiency with contacting influencers, and therefore the entire company’s efficiency with the campaign.”
Mihael Gelo, business development representative for CircuitMess
Press releases
Sending a press release and getting attention for your crowdsourcing campaign can significantly improve the number of visitors to your page. Consequently, this can also increase the amount of money you raise.
Getting backlinks to your campaign page will help your website’s traffic and SEO, which will benefit both your campaign and your bottom line. Sending a release to pertinent journalists is crucial to getting your campaign in front of the correct people.
What should a crowdfunding press release look like?
In journalism, writers use the method called the “inverted pyramid” when writing articles. So, the most important information in your story should go at the beginning of your article. Here’s what you should include from the get-go:
- The duration of your campaign
- The URL to your crowdfunding page
- Your goal
Following the opening paragraph, you should mention the amount you have already raised, the number of supporters you have, and the rewards you are providing.
Secondly, the journalist has to know who is behind the campaign. Briefly describe the creator or business. You don’t want to overwhelm them with your life narrative; instead, just say who is in charge of the campaign in two to three sentences.
When a journalist has all the information they need in front of them, it is much simpler for them to decide if they want to cover your release or not.
How to keep track of published press releases?
One difficulty you might have when sending out a press release is keeping track of the media outlets that covered it. Just like in the case of CircuitMess, it would be extremely beneficial to employ a media monitoring tool, such as Determ, to automatically keep track for you.
You could either search for the exact name of your press release or, ideally, just one keyword that links your campaign directly to the press releases.
Other than that, using a media monitoring tool would allow you to do the reporting so much more efficiently because all your data will be present in the dashboard, as well as the reports tab.
With Determ, you can present the following data surrounding your press releases:
- Sentiment toward the campaign
- Total reach and shares
- Sources
- List of top authors
Create marketing materials
Your campaign will stand out with a strong set of marketing materials, and this is crucial given the daily launch of new initiatives. Making an emotional connection with a customer is equally as important as properly describing the product, according to Connor Young, founder and CEO of Ample Foods. However, other than the storytelling aspect of it, there are several marketing elements needed for a successful crowdfunding campaign.
Landing page
Being noticed usually involves creating a great landing page on your crowdfunding platform. After all, your landing page is where all your marketing efforts land, so don’t leave it to the last minute.
The Kickstarter page for Van der Waals is a great example of a well put together landing page. They used video, visuals, and clear simple text to get their message across. Their video briefly discusses their motivation for creating their product, their passion for it, and some of its specifics.
Another example is this video created by MOUS, which launched its first crowdfunding campaign back in 2016. which achieved massive success. They had the world’s largest phone case crowdfunding campaign in Indiegogo’s history.
Social media channels
Additionally, you need to set up and get ready to use all of your social media accounts. You’ll be able to stay on message and view your campaign as a whole if you create a content schedule and prepare the content in advance.
Content marketing
You can establish your own blog or post as a guest contributor on existing blogs in your industry. Blogging is a terrific method to engage with your audience.
You can establish your own blog or post as a guest contributor on existing blogs in your industry. Blogging is a terrific method to engage with your audience.
Additionally, it’s crucial to prepare your email-sending software, lists, and strategies for gaining new subscribers beforehand.
Setting up your various platforms and producing some compelling and engaging material are crucial steps in the process. All of your marketing messages will be built on top of this foundation.
To Sum Up
In conclusion, adopting crowdfunding marketing tactics to promote your campaign will be essential to its success.
Reaching the proper investors, creating buzz, and engaging your community will all help your campaign succeed and support your enterprise once you have reached your objectives.
To learn more about how media monitoring with Determ can help in the process, book a demo, we’d be happy to help.