Christopher Moore — May 10, 2017
So you’ve created the crowdfunding campaign and now the battle to achieve your fundraising objective before the deadline. But what do you do and how can you make your campaign a huge success?This is the most important question.
The moment when you press the ‘go’ button can be very daunting, many campaigners stop for a while, waiting for the funds to come in. However, this is often the very tactic that will lead to a failed campaign and no funding for your project.
You should have already started your marketing for your crowdfunding campaign at least three or four months ago. If you haven’t, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
So what should you be doing now?
Here are several activities to keep you occupied and support your campaign:
1. Let Your Email Contacts Know
Even if you haven’t been promoting your campaign for a long time, you should still have an email contact list for your business.
These are the best brand advocates you have and the most likely people to invest in your campaign from the start.
Therefore, your first action is to email your contacts and let them know about the campaign.
Some of these people will be customers, so you’ll need to let them know why they should be providing you with more funds. Instead of saying it will increase the range of your products, or improve your facilities, etc – concentrate on the benefits for them.
These might include:
- Cost savings.
- Better service.
- More features to existing products.
By giving a reason why it will benefit them, you are more likely to encourage a positive result.
2. Create A Video
If you haven’t already done so, you should be creating a video for your project.
In the videos explain exactly what you are about and why the project is important to you. There should also be a mention of the rewards available.
Videos are a great way to encourage contributions to your campaign as they illicit an emotional response and audiences respond better to visual and audio stimuli than text.
Although one video is probably the minimum you can get away with, there is always the option of adding more videos and creating a community around this medium. You can use Facebook to distribute targeted videos, or you can even promote live or in expiring style, using platforms like Snap Chat.
The more videos you do create, the higher the chance you have of gaining shares and greater awareness for your campaign.
Here is an example of a video from Aumeo Audio (you can see their successful Indiegogo campaign here):
3. Promote Your Campaign
If no-one knows about your campaign, then there aren’t going to be donations.
So you want to list and advertise your campaign at a lot of sites. There are several free listing and promoting sites you can use to advertise your campaign. You should start with these to get the ball rolling.
Don’t get caught in the trap of paying for anything that you don’t need to.
With the right supporters and marketing materials, you can achieve your goals without paying for advertising.
Though, as time has gone on since the first crowdfunding site was launch, the best–meaning the most profitable campaigns–all have a mix of PR and some sort of paid, usually Facebook and/or Google Adwords to get access to a wider audience and sell more than they would have otherwise.
4. Create a Press Release
This is often one of the least thought of ways of gaining attention, yet local news publications and even some local organizations will love hearing about your crowdfunding campaign.
Creating a good press release does require some skill, but there is lots of information available on the internet to help you create a top quality article for journalists.
Finding the list of can be tricky, but with a little research you can generate a huge list of people interested in receiving such news.
5. Keep Your Backers and Other Funders Informed
Now that your campaign is rolling, you need to keep informing your audience about the progress.
This should be done via email, social media, blogs and via your crowdfunding platform.
If you keep communicating with your supporters and potential audience, you will encourage more contributions and will be moving towards your goal more quickly.
Conclusion
As soon as you press go on your crowdfunding project it can be tempting to step back and relax. But this is the time to move forward and push your campaign to achieve your goal.
Look for ways to communicate with your audience and reach new audiences through journalists or interested organizations.
Then you will have an easier time of achieving your funding goal.
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