5 Big Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign

5 Big Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a Crowdfunding Campaign

And a whole bunch of smaller ones too…

Successful crowdfunding campaigns rely heavily on their pre-campaign marketing, planning, and promotion. To help get your pre-launch planning started we have compiled some of the most important questions you must ask yourself first.

What is your product and what problem are you solving?

Why should people care that you have created the world’s most magical garment or the coolest backpack, wallet, purse, cup, organizer, gadget or thingamabob, ever? Often new products are designed to solve a problem that the consumer doesn’t even realize they have yet. That means you have to explain patiently and sometimes in many different ways how your product will revolutionize the way consumers live their lives.

Tip: think through the consumer. They are always considering, “What’s in it for me?”. If you explain your product to your target market through this lens, your message will resonate and be more effective overall.

Answer these questions, write down the answer, refine the answer and refer back to it because this is the framework for your entire campaign.

  1. What is the product in seven words or less?
  2. How is the product innovative?
  3. What problem does the product solve?
  4. What’s in it for your target audience to support?

 

What is the best platform for you to launch your product on?

Rewards based crowdfunding, made popular by sites like ArtistShare (2003), Kickstarter (2009), Indiegogo (2008), and others, were ideal for artists, innovators, creatives and entrepreneurs to launch their businesses by going straight to the source - their customers. In the early days the basic model was that a campaign offered a reward in return for financial support. Crowdfunding has expanded immensely since then to provide for charitable causes, where the reward is simply the warm fuzzies you get from doing a little good, and to offering equity in the business in return for investment.  If you’re not sure at this point, or are a little confused, read up on the different types of crowdfunding before you move forward with your project. If you know that rewards based crowdfunding is for you, then read on.

Next up is the question of which platform to choose. Is Kickstarter right for you? What is the difference between Kickstarter and Indiegogo? Do you want to go with a smaller more local platform? What extras can they offer your campaign to help it succeed? Should you be looking at donation based platforms? Or, are you ready to look at equity based models?

The only way to answer these questions is to define what is most important to you and to do some research. For example, choosing to go with a big and well established site like Kickstarter has the potential to reach their large audience of engaged backers but on the flip side there are a lot of products vying for the same attention. So, you would need to know how to make yours stand out amongst the others. Moreover, a large audience doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be YOUR audience. With many smaller platforms popping up all over the place you have the option to choose something a little more niche. Here at Next Chapter you would be putting your product in front of a mostly female audience because we support female led startups who often create products for women or solve problems experienced by women.

Other things to consider include the level of support you need, the fee charged by the platform, and where their audience is located. Where do you get the most bang for your buck? Does the platform offer analytics or consulting services. Do they vet the products?

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to choosing the right platform for your campaign, but it is an important aspect to explore in order to give your product the best chance of success.

How will you present your product?

Crafting your story, video, reward, tagline, and messaging is the most important factor to determine your success. You can have the coolest product EVER, but if no one understands what it does then it WILL flop.

You can only start this by first determining who your target market it is. Then, you need to think about how to speak to these people. For example, coming soon on Next Chapter Basics for Basics will be crowdfunding to relaunch their sustainably sourced online shopping portal. This serves two different target customers primarily. The obvious are the environmentally conscious looking to shop for ethically sourced clothes online. The second are those who are looking to expand their wardrobe with trendy, unique, quality fashion through new online suppliers. The second is a much more broad audience, more focused on the fashion rather than the ethics behind it. Therefore the message targeting this audience will need to be much more image based and fashion oriented whereas, the former will be targeted through messages that include environmental and ethical language.

Visuals are the heart of your product. Whether it is product shots, video, how to demos etc. they absolutely have to be high quality. Need further proof of how important visuals are in your marketing efforts? Read Hubspot’s research 42 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2017 or check out these slap in the face stats by Venngage to rev up your creative engine

  • Colored visuals increase people’s desire to read content by 80%.
  • Content with images increases a view rate by 94%.
  • Visuals generate more backlinks than any other form of content.
  • Posts with images produce 180% more engagement.
  • People are 85% more likely to buy your product after watching a video about it.

I hope you’re now officially convinced. If not, ask us and we’ll throw some more stats at you. You wouldn’t turn up to a job interview in your pajamas, would you? So, check your lipstick, put on your snazzy shoes and brush your hair. Present the best possible introduction to your audience. First impressions matter.

Where and how are you going to promote your campaign?

Start some lists. Their titles would be something like:

Partners - these are natural collaborators for your company who you can ask to share posts on your behalf, include in their newsletter, and generally help you to promote your campaign through their network

Press - includes journalists who already write articles related to your product, publications relevant to your business, think about bloggers as well - local and international

Paid Media - consider writing some advertorial content. Who already reaches your target market and where would your ad dollars be best spent. Where else do you want to spend a little advertising dollars? Maybe Adwords, Facebook Ads or with an social media influencer.

Platforms - Think about where your audience spends their time on social media and do that. Choose just one or two platforms and do them well rather than spreading yourself too thin. If you’re a fashion brand you’ll probably want an instagram presence whereas a parenting or baby product will likely find a better audience on Facebook.

Once you know who and where you will focus your efforts, create a promotion schedule in advance. That way it becomes a no brainer while your campaign is live and you can focus on nurturing the relationships you have begun to create. This means responding to comments, retweets, shares etc and pitching to specific journalists from unique angles. Sadly, you don’t get to sit back and relax once you hit the launch button. That is when the real hustle begins.

Do you have the right team?

You need to be objective on this one. Because you’ve known your co-founder since you were 8, is not enough to answer ‘yes’ to this question. Consider your main role. Are you the hipster, the hustler or the hacker? In order to get all the necessary work done, excite and engage your backers, and actually deliver your successfully funded product; it is imperative you have the right people by your side.

The team is there to bounce ideas off of, share the workload with you, fulfill a skillset that you don’t have and, importantly, help pick you up out of the inevitable mid-campaign slump. Yes, there will be days when the ticker doesn’t move, you have exhausted all of your leads, and your fears start to creep in. Simply having someone to talk to can be invaluable. Also, a strong team helps with future growth according to the startup genome report which found that on average solo entrepreneurs scale 3.6 times slower than startups with two or more.

This is not to say you can’t go it alone. You will find plenty of supporting evidence that declares going it alone is the only way. But, it is something to seriously consider. You know yourself best.

Now that you have worked your way through five major questions (and a bunch of smaller questions), are you ready to take the next step? Contact us to get started with a campaign at [email protected] or get started and create your campaign now.

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