Elena Mikhaylovais CEO of Crowdfund Productions, a company that assists creators with the PR, marketing, and content creation aspects of a crowdfunding campaign.
1. Success in crowdfunding has three components: great product, clear explanation of the benefits to other people, and timely delivery of rewards.
2. Crowdfunding is a team effort. Make sure to surround yourself by knowledgeable, hardworking and enthusiastic people.
3. Your campaign results will not always be up to your expectations. Don’t get frustrated or angry. Crowdfunding is about creation and learning, not competition.
Read more of These Serial Kickstarter Entrepreneurs Share Their Recipe for Crowdfunding Success.
Leigh Lepore is the founder of Crowdfunding Strategy & Information, a team of business and creative consultants in marketing, videography and PR with a passion for crowdfunding.
1. Social media sharing and updates should be centered around the creation process. Share updates including rough draft designs and how the project is evolving over time. Show people the time that you are putting into the project. Don’t always be talking about yourself. Also share other trending topics.
2. Offer rewards that are engaging, make people want to be a part of the campaign, and that are in some way related to your project or your skill set.
3. The biggest mistakes are in the pre-launch crowdfunding phase. Get out there and get feedback on your idea, the messaging, and the project. Figure out where your target audience hangs out!
Read more of Crowdfunding Expert Leigh Lepore Shares Fundraising Tips
Eli Regalado is the founder and Chief of Madness at Mad Hatter Agency. Mad Hatter specializes in using unconventional methods to recruit influencers, launch products, and raise money.
The average raise [on Kickstarter] is only $7k. Or, as I call it, a friends and family raise. In order to move past the $7k mark you need to leverage bloggers, mainstream media, and effectively harness the power of social media. Posting 100 links to your FB wall or Twitter feed doesn’t count as harnessing the power. That’s considered spam and is proven not to convert.
In order to rise above you must come out and be separate. You must tell a compelling story, have a good video, get the buy in of influencers, convince mainstream media to write about you and embrace the blogosphere. You’ll also need the tools and shortcuts to do it effectively. A failure to do so will put you in the realm of the door-to-door vacuum salesmen.
Read more of Why crowdfunding on Kickstarter is likened to selling Kirby vacuums.
Rose Spinelli is the founder of TheCrowdFundamentals and is a coach, blogger, and speaker. She also contributes a tip of the week to Crowdsourcing.org.
Much of your crowdfunding campaign preparation should be lining up and befriending the media, niche bloggers, and your online tribe. Doing so is the best way to get your campaign some ink and eyeballs when you’re up and running. This takes time so waiting too long can make or break your success.
According to a 2013 study, 79 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend. It makes sense considering how much time we spend on our computers. Another study, this one by QuickSprout, says 63 percent of people are more likely to be influenced by a blog than a magazine to make a purchase.
Read more of How to Influence the Influencers
Robert Hoskins – Robert runs a blog about crowdfunding as well as an established PR firm “Front Page PR”
Just as in starting any small business, every crowdfunding campaign should begin with a business plan that states what thecrowdfunding campaign’s goals and objectives are and what products/services will be offered to potential donors and/or investors. Similar to any product/service launch, a crowdfunding profile should describe the features and benefits needed to entice the customer into desiring the offer.
If you reach the right target audience with the correct marketing messages based on their demographic and psychographic profiles, there is a very good chance that the customer will follow the recommended course of action to visit a crowdfunding campaign’s profile to check out the perks/rewards being offered or the equity crowdfunding investment’s potential return-on-investment.
Read more of Tips on How to Plan a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign.
Richard Bliss is founder of the Funding the Dream on Kickstarter podcast (180+ episodes).
Marketing isn’t about CHANGING someone’s opinion. Marketing is about finding people that want something and then crafting your message/telling a story to fit in with their worldview.
If you are spending all your marketing money, budget, resources, and time attempting to convince people to change their opinion about something, you are going to fail. There isn’t enough time and there isn’t enough money in anyone’s budget to change people’s opinions. Focus on finding a group of people who have been overlooked and underserved, and then deliver to them what they want/need and you will win.
Read more of Not enough Time. Not enough Money – Why your marketing is failing
Piers Duruz, Founder of CrowdfundingDojo
Start building an email and social media audience immediately, with the promise of content that interests them for following you. Growing an audience takes time, but you can do it while you plan everything else. Even your journey to prepare can be interesting to the right people.
The first 48 hours of your campaign is the most critical. If you can get your followers to visit and pledge at any time, make it right at the start.
Start your promotion with the people who are closest to youand work your way out. Each group provides social proof to the next group, by showing other people have already backed you when they arrive.
Read more of Here’s how to make $8 million on Kickstarter
Devin Thorpe is the author of Crowdfunding for Social Good: Financing Your Mark on the World.
The biggest thing fundraisers do wrong is to start raising money from strangers without hitting up friends and family first. Think of a tip jar. If a tip jar is half full when you see it, you feel compelled to throw in some money because other people have. If it’s empty, you think, “No one’s tipping. Why should I?” After all, why would anyone give you money if your own mother hasn’t given you $10? – Patty Lamberti
Don’t focus so much on the financial goal that you forget to tell people about your real goal: the social objective. In crowdfunding, fundraisers constantly report on how well they are progressing financially. That’s OK to some degree, but you should also remind people about the social good you hope to do. Because as soon as you make the money the focus, people start reaching for their wallet with the wrong intention: They want to protect it instead of opening it up.
Read more of The Talent Around the Table: Devin Thorpe
Salvador Briggman is the founder of CrowdCrux.com, a blog about crowdfunding.
Focus on emotion, but back it up with technical ability. It’s no secret that part of what makes crowdfunding campaigns spread quickly and gather a supporter base is social media. Whether it’s networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, or social bookmarking websites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blogs, and Tumblr, information can disseminate in a matter of hours and light up the web 2.0 news networks.
What many people overlook is the reason why information spreads: it spreads when it makes a reader feel a certain way, which then makes them want to share that link.
The feeling that prompts a backer to share that link could be “This is so cool!” or “This is an important cause.” It’s easiest to invoke a feeling when you have a prior relationship with your backers, as is the case with the multi-million dollar “Reading Rainbow” campaign.
Although ultimately, you want your backers to come away from your video and campaign feeling something, you must also back up your pitch with technical ability. What prototype have you created? Why can your team deliver on their promises? You must engage both the left and right hemisphere of the brain when crowdfunding.
Read more of Here’s how to make $8 million on Kickstarter
