Why Your Campaign Needs Great Rewards
Crowdfunding Rewards – What can I give?
The dawning dilemma of the crowdfunding campaign. Answer it right and the matter of what you can get becomes clearer. Backers want to see your idea come striding into the daylight, but mostly they want something worth their while, worth their money, and most importantly, worth talking about. Now, this article is specifically about rewards-based crowdfunding.
Rewards based crowdfunding differs from equity based in that instead of offering out part of your business, you provide them with incentives such as early release on your product, or invitations to testing it out. While equity-based campaigns provide business shares and donation-based campaigns provide help to people they don’t offer their backers rewards in the same way.
Crowdfunding Rewards – Show Your Gratitude
Are your chance to show your supporters that their attention was well spent. Reflect this in what you choose to offer them. While generic rewards like branded T-shirts, paperweights and stationary are serviceable tokens of fandom, they won’t do much to reinforce your relationship with your fans. What would you want? What would your friends and family want? It’s important to consider this before planting your feet onto the crowdfunding landscape.
Crowdfunding Rewards – Investments are uncertain.
Why risk it? Why not wait and see if the business is fruitful before pledging money to it? People value safety, but you’re asking backers to take a risk. In this case, it helps to think of rewards as rewards, not just samples of your product. Reward people by giving them rewards that money can’t buy: Limited editions, exclusive events, unique experiences, early product samples- a way of rewarding your close enthusiasts. Did I mention rewards?
What all your backers want is to back a company that thinks about what its customers want. Well, your finely crafted rewards are evidence that you’ve done just that. It shows that, from day one, your sights were set on the goal of delivering your product and that you’re determined enough to realise your ambitions. For this reason, try to avoid rewards that don’t add anything to your campaign.
Crowdfunding rewards tiers – Choose them well.
Photograph them well. Describe them well. Price them clearly, not too dearly; deny the fans their pricy pencils, poorly printed T’s and cold, folded paper thank-you notes.
Here are a few examples of bad crowdfunding rewards:
£1 Mere satisfaction
£5 A tip of the hat.
£15 A unique, personalised, thank you email, lovingly batched by our system.
£45 Your very own product. (RRP £30)
£85 5 instances of our product
£250 Complete creative control over the company.
As you can see, this rewards list began inconsiderately, then overvalued itself, and then overpromised itself out of existence.
Remember, your backers might want to support you, but show them that you’re a professional, functioning business by giving them good value for money. Overpromising, though, is easy, wasteful and potentially fatal. Before you make commitments to your funders, plan thoroughly so you can fulfil them punctually and profitably. You don’t want to lose their confidence and their pledge.
Crowdfunding Rewards – Here is a good example of crowdfunding rewards:
Consider the Rushmore Group, who offered a unique Gold Lifetime Membership Card to its £5000-tier backers. They raised £1,000,000 because their reward wasn’t available to anyone else at any other time. They delivered big and they weren’t late. See their campaign here: https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/the-rushmore-group-ltd-10449
A great way to price your rewards is to have around 5 that start small, working up to around 10% of your funding goal. Reward tiers let you target people. The people pledging to the lowest tier- what would they want? High-tier investors, what would they want? It’s always wise to cater to your different demographics, pair the juiciest reward with the most common pledge, and make sure everyone gets something unique. Here are a few reward ideas to get the ideas flowing.
- Tours of your work environment
- Early development material (scripts, prototypes, concept art, props)
- Classes, tuition, and shared knowledge
- Personal skype calls
- Chances to network with you
- Exclusively premium samples of your product
- Trivial design decisions (naming your prize turkey)
- Novelty content pertaining to your expertise (one-liners, sketches, recipes)
- Shoutouts and social media exposure
- An exclusive early trial-run of your product
Now, here’s a real example of great rewards from InstruMMents 01, an Indiegogo campaign that you can find here: www.indiegogo.com
$79 Super early access, $70 discount, 5 year app access
$149 Early access, $50 discount, Silver edition, 5 year app access, personalized signature etching
$1399 Early access Studio Pack, $600 discount, 5 year app access, 01 Ten Pack, personalized signature etching
With these rewards, they exceeded their funding goal by 300+%. Each tier offers something unique- even the cheapest (and likely the most popular) one, which has the earliest access. When you cleverly include a discount of $70, people see that $79 pledge as a $9 one. In general, these rewards are offering incredible value.
One example of a successful rewards campaign that we took part in was for Pulp wines, who successfully funded in One day. We provided video support for them during the campaign.
And that’s the key to it all. Perception of value. Use great language to emphasise what you’re offering. Present your rewards as nice, weighty lists and always ask yourself What can I give?
Do you need advice on how to make great crowdfunding rewards?
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, crowdfunding marketing and crowdfunding PR.
To learn more about us and our services, visit our website: drop.studio
Or book a free phone workshop today and ask us anything, like how to create a successful crowdfunding campaign or how to accelerate your business from zero to fully funded.
If you’d like to know The 3 Key Messages That Will Make Your Crowdfunding Campaign Relevant, see our next article here