Promoting Your Campaign

Promoting your crowdfunding project funded is not rocket science…but it’s also not a simple feat.

No matter how great your idea is, you will only get an edge by following these tips and being creative with your marketing and promotion. This will drive traffic to your funding page and raise the necessary capital to get your project off the ground.

TIP #1

Join the online communities of your target audience

It is highly recommended that you sign up to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin to connect with online communities where your target audience is most active. Find out who your key influencers are and develop relationships on your social media platforms as you want to use their audiences as springboards to bring more traffic to your campaign. Don’t be afraid to focus in closely on one or two social media platforms versus all of them.  You can also include top niche related forums and community sites such as Hacker News and Reddit.

TIP #2

Create a ‘Coming Soon’ landing page and/or campaign page

You’ll want to create a place for gaining interest and capturing emails of those interested in your campaign, before it launches. It is a critical piece of your marketing campaign and is relatively simple and inexpensive to do. This can include a landing page (a single website page) or a ‘Coming Soon’ campaign page that we publish before the launch date.
These needs to be set up properly early, before your campaign goes live so that you have sufficient time to collect leads. This will allow you to have backers ready to go for campaign launch. A landing page and ‘coming soon’ campaign page should have a compelling headline, contain valuable information about your product, collect email addresses via an email capture form or follow’ button, as well as high-quality and persuasive images.

TIP #3

Create a global list of all contacts

While you need to tap your personal contacts for support, real crowdfunding success depends on your reaching out and building a community focused around your project. Start by creating a simple introduction and build a global list of people that might be interested in your campaign. Support doesn’t start and stop with financial backing so you may want to offer multiple opportunities for your network to support the campaign.

Divide this list into 3 parts:

1. Supporters
   Your closest personal network is probably your strongest supporters. You can also ask for feedback as they are more likely to be honest in
   offering their criticisms and advice. Start with your list of family and friends and don’t forget to encourage them to share your campaign with their respective circles.
2. Influencers
   The perfect influencers have relevant audience and substantial readership like blogs, popular websites and industry experts. Focus on the most relevant and work on a smaller list so
   you can dedicate more time in creating the perfect pitch. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, Klout and Traackr to find influencers. Keep in mind that identifying influencers is not enough – the hard part is how to build relationships with these influencers and get them to support your project. It might be in a direct meeting.
3. Media list
   Press coverage is one of the most important factors for your campaign’s success but it is also one of the hardest to get. Most of the people you reach out to in this list will most likely ignore you so you have to have a solid basis for reaching out. Is your product within the industry the media covers? Has the writer written previously on other crowdfunding campaigns? Make your pitch brief and to-the point. You can also offer incentives such as a media kit or an exclusive on the story

TIP #4

Build a targeted email marketing campaign

Direct email outreach is the most effective tool for driving early momentum. Thirty percent of your early pledges will come from people you know – so it is important to build a strong network before you launch your campaign.

Mailchimp is an example of a great tool for managing email campaigns.

Make sure to offer:

• A strong call to action in your email subject line to get people to actually open the email

• Include a request to share the email amongst your leads’ inner circle to increase your audience reach

• Maintain the right balance between text and image

TIP #5

Promote your content to as many channels as possible

Content marketing is all about storytelling and you want to tell your story to as many people as possible. Distribute your content on your blog and social media networks and get in touch with bloggers and top social media users to help you share your content with their audiences.

Use content automation tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer to schedule posts automatically.

You can also test the results of paid ads to promote your content such as Facebook ads and Google Adwords.

Use traditional PR strategy as well, sending out well-written press releases with images (that you have permission to use) to newspapers, publications and media that may be interested in your project.

TIP #6

Captivate your audience using videos.

One of the most important elements of a successful crowdfunding campaign is a captivating video. In fact, you are 85% more likely to reach your funding goal with a video than without. Videos are prominently displayed on campaign pages and remain the best medium for storytelling.

It is important to build rapport and anchor your video with your passion and belief in your dream. That way, you can deliver an emotional appeal to your backers.

To create an effective video for your crowdfunding campaign, it is important to consider the following:

• Length

• Script

• Style

• Engagement

TIP #7

Guest blog, guest blog and… guest blog

This is truly a great way to get your project in front of new audiences. Rather than waiting in line to be featured on a blog or a magazine, guest posting is an activity that you can control. As long as your article is relevant, well researched and written, most bloggers will be willing to consider your post.

Aside from getting direct traffic on the blog, you will also have contact with the blog’s social media outlets once they post your article to their feeds.

Make sure to request the blog owner to set your guest post as a “follow” link so that you can also see improved search result ranking as a result of linking to a high quality blog.

if you’d like to see our essential tips for promoting your crowdfunding project as a printable pdf or digital copy, go here to download our our free ebook guide.