The 5 Pillars of Crowdfunding Marketing

At this point, we are going to assume that you already have a good understanding of what crowdfunding actually is, how it works and what type of crowdfunding campaign would work best for you, depending on your goals and development stage of your business. If you are yet to consider if crowdfunding is a good option for your business or which crowdfunding platform to use, we would suggest you to review our previous in-depth articles – Crowdfunding definition, How does crowdfunding work, Startup crowdfunding. Crowdfund marketing.

Crowdfunding, as an alternative method for financing creative ideas and startup businesses, has seen an unprecedented rise in popularity over the last 10 years. Inevitably, the media tends to popularise mostly the success stories of businesses that stormed through their crowdfunding goal in a matter of days. What hasn’t gotten as much publicity though is the fact that many businesses begin their crowdfunding journey with high expectations and confident pitches but never get what they require from the crowd. The key requirement here is crowdfunding marketing.

So what’s the difference between the super successful campaigns that land of the first pages of the press and the ones that don’t reach their goal and never get any press mentions? The answer is rather simple – having a well thought crowdfunding marketing strategy increases your chances of success profoundly. Whether you run a rewards or equity campaign, you will need to raise awareness, collect leads and turn them into backers.

In this article, we will share with you the five pillars of crowdfunding marketing as well as some bonus pro tips.

To complete a successful crowdfunding round, your efforts should start weeks, if not months before your official crowdfunding launch. It all starts with research. If your business has a strong marketing strategy in place, you probably already have a good understanding of the market and your target audience. But if you are yet to define your ideal customer, spend some time reviewing this 15-minute read by our colleagues at AdEspresso.

Do you have a carefully defined buyer persona in mind? Good, let’s take one step further and consider how your ideal customer would react to your upcoming crowdfunding:

* Is your crowdfunding offer attractive enough for your target audience? Would they walk the extra mile to support your crowdfunding venture despite the risks associated with it?

* What kind of rewards would they like?

* Where can you find them? Which social media channels are they most active on?

Once you have specified exactly who is your target audience is and how it would react to your crowdfunding, let’s review the competitive landscape.

* Are there any similar brands that have already completed a crowdfunding round?

* What did they do successfully and poorly?

Take a thorough look at similar campaigns and use that information to fuel your campaign with much needed insights. In addition, generally, the crowdfunding community is a friendly arena so it might be worth it reaching out for some first-hand tips.

To have a successful crowdfunding round, you will have to gather and nurture leads in advance. That’s where a well-designed and well-written landing page comes into play. Having a great landing page makes all the difference in crowdfunding campaigns. With a main purpose of converting your traffic into quality leads, the landing page requires focused, attractive content and a state-of-the-art design. Your landing page will be the central hub of your crowdfunding efforts – at least during the first stage of your crowdfunding, the pre-launch stage.

Here are a few “must-have” elements that will help you optimize the conversion rate of your landing page:

* Simple, clear headline and hero text – when it comes to crowdfunding landing pages, clarity is mandatory. The headline and the introduction should work together to briefly describe why the project matters, what problem it solves and how it solves it.

* Sign-up box to collect the leads – this step is crucial, considering the main objective of the landing page – lead generation. The sign-up area should be placed strategically, and depending on the length of your page – on a number of occasions. Don’t forget the vital CTA (call-to-action) button.

* Lead magnet – don’t forget to introduce an incentive that will motivate the people to share their email addresses. Depending on the type of the crowdfunding (reward-based, equity-based etc), you could offer super early bird discounts for the email subscribers, link to your business deck or exclusive updates related to the crowdfunding.

Once you have your headline, hero text, sign-box and lead magnet consider, you could focus on the finishing touches – additional details about the brand and the crowdfunding, adding your branding and crowdfunding video, wrapping it all up in an exceptional design.

Getting the word out about your crowdfunding campaign can be done in many ways. Using the press is a definitely something you should consider adding to your crowdfunding marketing mix.

A press release is an official document a brand sends to the media to announce something newsworthy. Over the years, PR agencies have published thousands of press releases around the globe and have created a standardized format, which we would suggest you to follow as well. In the lines below, we will share with you the basic components of a press release and how to use it to grab the attention of the media.

* Each press release starts with a headline. The headline is often called “the two second hook”, so it has to be attention grabbing and informative at the same time. It’s important to keep the length of your headline to around 70 characters, otherwise it might be shortened in the search queries. Consider using power words like “You”, “Free”, “Because”, “Instantly” to have a stronger effect on the reader’s emotions.

* The second important component of a properly written press release is the dateline. This section typically contains the release date and the city of origin. If you want the story published immediately, make sure to include “For immediate release”.

* The introduction is the third important piece of the press release puzzle. The introduction is the second hook for the journalists and it typically basic answers to the questions who, what, when, where, why and how. It’s really important to gather up all the important information into the introductory paragraph, while keeping it around 300 characters.

* Further explanation about the business, the founders and the crowdfunding campaign should be included in the body part of the press release. Make sure to keep the whole text between 300 and 800 words.

* Close the press release with the “###” symbol or “ENDS”;

* Don’t forget to add media contact information – name, phone number, email address;

* If you can’t add everything important to the body part, include additional details in “Notes to editors”. In this section we typically include a link to the brand’s website as well as links to the crowdfunding landing page or the crowdfunding page itself – depending on the progress of the campaign.

To make it all clear, we’ll illustrate it with a press release we wrote for one of our latest clients.

To put the word out, send emails to journalists in relevant niches or use tools like Journalink if you want to save hours of email digging.

We can help. Drop The Crowdfunding Studio are proud partners of Crowdcube and Indiegogo. We assist ambitious businesses in communicating their ideas, products and services with outstanding crowdfunding video production, campaign design and crowdfunding marketing.

To learn more about us and our services, visit our website: drop.studio

Or book a free phone workshop today and ask us anything: how to create a successful crowdfunding campaign or how to accelerate your business from zero to fully funded.