Today, crowdfunding is a great way to raise money for your projects which you want to commercialize. It is often that a person or a team of people have a great idea that they want to turn into a reality and sell to other people and make a business out of it. While such people can often approach investors for finance, it is difficult to do so without the proper connections and a working prototype.
Apart from that, investors often have heavy demands that most starting entrepreneurs may be reluctant to fulfill. This is where crowdfunding can immensely help such people.
Users can start a crowdfunding campaign, where other people can make pledges, which is putting up a certain amount of money in order to support the project. Users making pledges can get certain benefits, depending on the creator of a project. For example, they may be the first ones to receive the product when it enters the market, or they may get related merchandise or additional benefits by pledging a certain amount. These rewards often motivate users to pledge to a certain campaign.
Crowdfunding Campaign Tips
There are various things that you need to do in order to make your campaign successful.
- Advertise your campaign
Simply creating a campaign is not enough. You need to make sure that people are aware of your campaign, otherwise they will not be able to donate to it. Social media is an extremely effective way of advertising your campaign to the masses. Leverage all forms of social media. This is the most important step that you need to take in the early stages of your campaign in order to ensure its success.
- Have a great video
It is a well established fact that video catches more eyeballs than texts and pictures and does so for a longer period of time. A video ensures that your campaign will perform better. Make sure that you mention all the relevant information about your product and wrap it up in a good narrative.
Address the issues and the pain points that your product will be solving, what potential backers can expect from you as well as incentives for them to pledge money to your campaign. A well made video that is informative and engaging lasting for 2 to 3 minutes can yield great results.
- Create credibility
Mention any positive feedback that you may have received on your campaign page as well as relevant media. 3D renderings or concept art of your project? Add it. Has your product ever been featured in some publication? Mention it. Have you ever received a good testimonial from a well known brand or entity? Put it on your page. Doing so makes you and your product more authentic.
Also, don’t forget to provide updates to your backers so that they know how the progress is on the project that they have supported.
- Use a good pledge manager
A good pledge manager can help you in a variety of ways. It can allow you to raise funds even after the campaign is over. Once the campaign is over, you can send them a survey which indicates that they are close to receiving their reward. It will allow them to reconsider their pledge and allow them to upgrade to a higher reward tier.
It also helps if you were not able to receive pledges from some pledgers. This can happen if the pledger’s card has expired, if they do not have the necessary funds in their bank account or if their bank blocked the transaction. Pledge managers allow you to send them a survey by importing your failed pledges into its system and then giving them a chance to rectify the error and pledge again and claim their reward.