Equity based crowdfunding continues to grow quickly worldwide, providing an attractive alternative to the closed esoteric world of venture capital and angel investing. Often painted as an easy route to funding, businesses often underestimate what it takes to achieve a successful crowdfunding campaign.
It’s true that having a strong business idea to start with is a fundamental requirement for success but it’s by no means the only prerequisite to ensuring you reach your funding goals. Crowdfunding is an interactive process that starts long before the campaign goes live and will run long after it has closed.
We’ve put together some tips following the recent success of our client Doctaly’s campaign that raised 181% of its target to reach over £900,000.
Build interest before you launch
Investors are more likely to invest in your business if they see others are investing. It’s for this reason you should build interest in the campaign before it goes live so you kick off with a strong start. Set up your website early on and seed information to your networks, including family and friends and ask for them to do so as well. You don’t need to go for a full-fledged website; a simple web page is enough to take sign-ups for people to register interest – use your social platforms to direct people there. This will allow you to inform this database when the campaign goes live and encourage an initial spurt of investment.
Set reasonable targets
It’s tempting to set a huge target with the hope of raising more funds but in reality, a campaign that is far off its target is not appealing to investors. Be realistic about what you can raise and keep in mind that you are not capped at your funding target, you can always over-fund.
Create a video to tell your story
Take time to create a compelling video to give visitors a better idea of what your campaign is about. Campaigns with video are proven to raise more than those without. A well-crafted video will allow your visitors to see you or your product in action and will tell a persuasive story that you can share far and wide. It’s worth investing in expertise to make this as strong as possible as this will in turn attract investment.
Be personal
People buy into people. Regardless of whether you’re a startup or an established company, introduce your team and let your supporters see who is behind your project. This is all part of telling the story, which is essentially what your crowdfunding campaign is about.
Be transparent
Make sure you communicate clearly what you are trying to achieve and how much money is needed to make that a reality. Ensure you are also clear about what funders will receive and try and offer incentives that incentivise investment at different levels. Just ensure that what you’re offering is realistic.
Maximise Social Media plaforms
A strong social media campaign is vital to spreading the message far and wide outside the campaign platform. Share your updates on social media platforms that best match your marketing and content strategies and where your potential supporters are most likely to be found and ask your network to do the same.
Use platforms like Sprout Social to schedule valuable content both in advance of and during your campaign, ensuring you tailor all content for each platform. You should plan to increase the numbers of posts to ensure something is going out every day once your campaign is live.
Try and engage with social media influencers who have clout in your target crowd and ask them share the campaign on their platforms.
Create an ongoing press campaign
Spread the message further via a targeted press campaign. Targeting investment media and media in your sector with compelling stories and updates about the campaign as well as features on the founders and any interesting developments in the business will generate further interest. In the case of Doctaly, we also utilised the expertise of the founders by providing expert comment from them in relevant features in national and specialist media and maximised on research they had commissioned to generate further news.
If you don’t have an agency, then do ensure you create a media pack including relevant high-resolution photos to accompany any stories you are selling in to media.
Keep the campaign updated
As the campaign progresses, ensure regular updates go out on your chosen platform to anyone who has expressed interested and/or invested to keep them engaged. Whether it’s updates on fundraising levels, new pieces of press coverage or developments for the business it all helps to keep your campaign front of mind and build confidence in its success.
There’s no way of guaranteeing success but be sure to do your research and study other successful campaigns to give yourself the best chance.
If you or your business needs help promoting your crowdfunding campaign, get in touch info@action-group.co.uk
