How can you start a successful crowdfunding campaign? This post shares five secrets from leading crowdfunding campaigns to help you achieve or exceed your expectations.
What is crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is the process by which individuals or organizations raise money from people (family, friends, strangers, friends of friends), by way of persuading them. It is a way of convincing the public to fund a vision. But you must show how your vision is valuable to them. Usually, funds donated through crowdfunding can range from $10, $20, $100, or even more.
This is one of the newest techniques startups, nonprofits, musicians, artists, and businesses are using to raise funds. Being able to crowdfund on a larger scale has been made possible thanks to numerous donation crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and RocketHub just to mention a few.
A study has shown that the average funding per crowdfunding campaign segment is $794. But to be successful in any campaign, there are several factors you need to consider that will be discussed in this article.
How Crowdfunding Works
There are plenty of crowdfunding platforms these days where individuals and businesses can seek donations in return for special rewards like free giveaways, products or an opportunity to take part in the design of a product or service.
Crowdfunding can also be used to collect loans and royalty financing.
When done properly, crowdfunding can provide an excellent strategy for startups to grow at a faster pace, since it is a way of obtaining much-needed capital while simultaneously creating a customer base.
On the flip side, if you don’t have an appealing story to tell, the chances of succeeding are low. You will have wasted precious time you could dedicate to other productive things in your business.
But since we want you to be successful in your crowdfunding campaign, here are five secrets you should use as shared by Leonard Richard, a financial advisor from a professional paper writing service in the UK.
1) Research & Planning
If there is one thing we can learn from the most successful crowdfunding campaigns, it is the resources they dedicate to the initial planning stage.
To be successful in your crowdfunding campaign, you need to concentrate on your project before you list it.
Don’t rush it. It may take months or even years of research and planning. It involves a lot of work, and it can be devastating. That’s why it’s important to make sure it is 100% completed before you launch your campaign.
The first thing to consider is the amount of money you want to raise and the best channel for obtaining the money.
There are quite a number of startups, for instance, one of the best resume writing services raised huge amounts of money through perk-based crowdfunding platforms, but not all have gone past the $10,000 mark. For that reason, if you are planning to raise a significant amount of money, then perk-based crowdfunding may not make the best option for you.
2) Show How Beneficial Your Project is to the World
To be successful in your crowdfunding campaign, you must prove that your project can satisfy a real need and solve a real problem.
You need to substantiate your campaign, show how it benefits the world, and make donors see the need to donate money to your project and not the projects of others.
The best crowdfunding campaigns are those that feature products or services that are valuable and solve real needs and problems. People in Nigeria are suffering due to lack of electricity, in Congo Ebola is killing millions of people each year. Crowdfunding campaigns that are aimed to solve problems like these are bound to be successful or your business.
3) Define Your Target Audience
This is something you should do before starting. Define your audience. Remember you are creating a product or launching a service and you want a lot of people to support. According to 6dollaressay, if you want to get support for your project, you must know your audience; understand their wants, desires, needs among many other things.
You want to know what gives them sleepless nights, what makes them scratch their heads, and so on.
Understanding your audience isn’t an easy process, although it’s possible. You can split the process into small steps such as:
- Step #1: Brainstorming
- Step #2: Feedback
- Step #3: Indirect feedback
Building an online presence, getting followers and obtaining subscribers are some of the effective ways to get initial feedback. You can later use this feedback to optimize your crowdfunding campaign before you launch it.
4) Don’t Just Sell Your Product, Sell a Vision
To see success in your crowdfunding campaign, you need to not only sell your product’s features but sell a vision as well. This is in fact, what most successful businesses in crowdfunding do.
They sell a fresh perspective that grabs attention. A vision will touch your audiences’ hearts. It makes your project feel like theirs and not for the world. They will feel a click in their heads when they see your product’s vision resonates with them. If your idea/product can make their life simple, if it can be beneficial to them and the project supporters, you will definitely win their hearts over.
5) Engage with your audience
To be successful in your crowdfunding campaign, you must engage with your audience. It’s not just about launching the campaign and waiting for dollars to start coming in. It’s not a one-way but a two-way conversation. For that reason, you must interact with donors and potential donors. Be available on social media sites your target audience is using. Respond to their questions in time.
Additional Secrets to Running a successful crowdfunding campaign
Don’t Ask for Money
If you start a crowdfunding campaign by asking for money immediately, you are setting yourself up for success. “Start by telling an engaging story and share your eagerness for your project and donors will be ready to support you”, says Rachael Thomson, a crowdfunding advisor at EssayMama.
They are supporting your project knowing that it will benefit them in return.
Don’t Depend Entirely on Crowdsourcing
Before people donate to support your project, you must bring something to the table. The successful crowdfunding projects you read about today were launched by people like you who invested heavily on them to turn their idea into reality.
An example of an entrepreneur who invested in his crowdfunding project that raised more than $100K on Kickstarter in only a few hours after being launched is Marc Barros. Marc claims that he invested more than $80,000 to prepare for the campaign.
The preparation stage of every crowdfunding project is always costly but it has higher odds.
Final Words
Well, it’s easy to launch a crowdfunding campaign, but it’s not easy to make it big. Not all campaigns launched are successful. After all, being successful with your crowdfunding campaign isn’t about making millions; it’s about raising those millions to make your idea into a reality.
We hope you will find these secrets helpful and useful.
Good luck with your crowdfunding campaign!
Ready to fulfill your orders?
No other company has as good a reputation for dealing with Crowdfunding Fulfillment as Floship. We fulfilled more crowdfunding campaigns than any other fulfillment provider, and can also take care of your on-Demand eCommerce Fulfillment once your campaign grows out to a steady eCommerce business.
Showcasing your Floship Certified Logistics Plan badge on your Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign profile page will show the whole world that you got your fulfillment sorted out and you will deliver upon your promise. For more information, click here to read more about the FCLP.
Meet the author
Michael Gorman is a proficient freelance writer who offers assignment writing help to students. He also works with some of the best resume writing services in the UK. Being interested in everyday development, he writes various articles and explores new aspects of human existing. He is also the author of papers owl reviews and the UKwritings review. You can connect with him through his Facebook and Twitter accounts.
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