Crowdfunding Marketing Strategies

Effective crowdfunding requires both data and stories. While data often comes easily from the issuer but stories typically do not. People might think that developing a proactive, comprehensive crowdfunding plan to make sure the company is fully funded is the essentially most important plan when it comes to raising capital. However, that is just one part of a total plan. To make sure your crowdfunding campaign is successful, it is important to create a marketing plan to make sure your crowdfunding goals are easier to reach. Create marketing tools that communicate with your potential investors, media, public officials and anyone else that matters to your company.

A successful crowdfunding marketing strategy involves many thoughtful steps. Below are some strategies to follow when create a effective marketing plan:

First of all, raising funds for your company is more about building a community than selling a product. It is not as easy as you think. You need to think thoughtfully about your target audience. Regardless of the product or service you are selling, the success of your campaign relies heavily on how well you can connect to the minds of your target audience.

How to start? You can always start with people around you. Family, friends and co-workers can make a great foundation for your campaign community. Talk to them about your project and are they willing to invest in your project? If the answer is no, it is unlikely that investors with visibility of thousands of competitive projects would choose you. Get their feedback and learn from it.

If your family and friends are interested in investing, this can be a great sign that your campaign is good. Make sure all these people are ready to start funding your project on the first day of the crowdfunding campaign. This will help to create buzz around your project and can encourage other potential investors to invest. Remember that people know people and if your initial fan base can share on their social media to promote for you, it will be a great opportunity for you. Start building your own network and look for ways that you can connect and expand your initial contacts.

Timing is everything. As you put together your crowdfunding strategy, you will need to think about pre-promotion, launch week, weekly follow up and campaign close.

a.) Pre-Promotion 

• Create a media blast during this period. Let everyone know that you are going to launch a crowdfunding campaign. It will be great to host a pre-launch private event by inviting potential investors to build hype.
• Post your launch date across all your personal and company social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram! Word of mouth is also important because people need to know when and where they can access your business.
• Setup Facebook Ads for Email Signups to collect potential investors details. Facebook is one of the best marketing platforms you can use to shoutout your business or product before you launch your campaign. Wisely set up your target ads based on your audience and try to get a good amount of email sign-ups. This will be grateful for you to share content and remarketing purposes in the future.
• Press releases are important to get local or international exposure. This will help you spread the good news to everyone.
• Create a video that captures your audience’s attention and promotes your project clearly. Make sure the video is interesting and clearly presents the benefits of your project.
• Display early bird promotion that will help to achieve your goal. Add limited time only rewards to attract potential investors to make investment.

b.) Launch Week 

• Send the message out to let everyone know that you have launched!
• Post your launching across all your personal and company social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Make sure you share videos, live streaming and photos to get the hype up.
• Create great customer service. You will want people who are interacting to have a great experience, which will then push them to share your product and services.
• Collaborate with KOL to promote your campaign.

c.) Follow Up & Running Weeks

• Send weekly updates that include campaign progress, special announcements or when a large donation has been made! It is important to post a weekly update as investors get concerned if they don’t receive an update on a campaign that they had invested.
• Create updated content. This could include an update on how your campaign is performing, any new developments or achievement you have experienced or a simple thank you to those who have already invested. Always connect with your investors and build a good relationship with them.
• Connect and get featured on local and online media platforms for ongoing marketing.

d.) Project Closing

• Countdown the last week till your campaign finishes on all of your social media accounts. Use phrases that create a sense like “only three days to go”, “only $1,000 off my goal!” or “We had made it!”.

On top of a thoughtful timeline, think about how you can creatively launch your crowdfunding campaign to attract the attention of the public.

Content will matter greatly to your crowdfunding marketing success. Craft your content to your audience’s interests, questions, and voice. Create clear, creative, and catchy descriptions, content, newsletters, emails and captions. 

You may conduct research on similar projects for inspiration and tips. Some crowdfunding platforms do not take down campaigns once they have finished (whether successful or unsuccessful). This is a great opportunity to research similar projects to your own and see what works well and what does not.

One of the best ways you can create quality content that will help your crowdfunding is creating an engaging blog. You can do a lot of blog posting such as:

• Provide the latest updates on the progress of your project. People like to see progress in something they invested in.
• Include product / service reviews, testimonials, video and other helpful content to help people understand your product / service performance.
• Create Q&A posts that answer typical questions customers might have.
• Connect with your audience by sharing a story of “Why” you started this project and what is your achievement, millstone and future planning.
• Provide your audience with reasons they should invest in your project. Your content should answer all the possible questions the investors would like to ask.
• Feature guest posts from people who will matter to your target audience – Social Influencers will help to create hype.

By offering friendly and meaningful resources to your investors, it will bring more people to your website and crowdfunding platform.

Social Media is a key weapon in your marketing plan. When you plan a crowdfunding campaign, you will want to focus your efforts on the platforms that will provide the most success. In order to pick the right channels, consider the following:

• What type of social media that your target audience interact, share and communicate?
• Which platform do you feel most confident using?
• What people have the greatest influence in your community and how you collaborate with them on content posts?

The famous social media platforms that you should take account in are Facebook, LindedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Maybe you do not have hundred thousand or million followers but even a hundred followers can make a difference in your goal. Of course the more the merrier and what you can do to increase your followers is by implementing some of these strategies:

• Timelines matter. Begin social media efforts and marketing initiatives months before your campaign start date.
• Connect and communicate with your community. Show genuine gratitude to your followers.
• Write engaging posts to get your community to respond and interact with them. In addition, keep pushing updates to your investors.
• Create a unique hashtag and use it in all of your social media posts. By doing this, it allows you to organize posts into one place where people can easily find information about your crowdfunding campaign. Encourage your supporters to use the hashtags as well.
• Create social media pages. A specific Facebook page and Instagram business account are great places to host your community and post updates. Every page and account comes with analytics that help you gauge performance and manage it.
• If you have sufficient marketing budget, you can also increase your Facebook and Instagram reach by boosting your posts. This is a great way to reach people with interests related to your crowdfunding campaign.
• Post-campaign updates are also important because it is a great way to update your crowdfunding progress and performance.

Before launching your crowdfunding campaign, it will be great to create a website or a landing page. Until your campaign page goes live on a crowdfunding platform, let these serve as your “command center”. Landing page and website can channel your online traffic for specific actions.

When you have a website for your crowdfunding campaign, you can easily share important information and updates about your business, product or service there. Use it as the central hub for marketing your brand, business, product or service. 

Email marketing greatly energizes crowdfunding marketing. People love updates on places they have chosen to invest. Effective email marketing can promote your content, events, newsletters, promotions and build a list of subscribers. Email marketing is the cheapest form of communication for your crowdfunding. There are numerous good email marketing services out there such as Mailchimp or Hubspot which are not pricey. 

Marketing is not something you can do once and leave it behind. Be prepared to work on your marketing strategy and communications activities year-round. Keep in mind that with a great effort and job put into marketing, the easier crowdfunding will be successful.