Successful Crowdfunding Campaign: The Ultimate Guide | Infographic

To launch a successful crowdfunding campaign when you want your new product on the market has become a trend. The global crowdfunding industry estimated fundraising volume went from almost $3B to $34B between 2012 and 2016 (*source). These numbers reveal a true social change despite only 1/3rd of all crowdfunding campaigns usually succeed.

Indeed, many startups and companies are not aware that it requires a perfect strategy to make it happen. Most of the success will be dependent on what happened before the campaign and not during the campaign. You need to build the biggest community ever to target as many people as you can.

I do not intend in here to give the perfect plan, with all details. However, this might give you tips/ tricks, and a global overview of one of the right ways to be successful.

Preparation Time

Too many out there underestimate how much effort is necessary to reach your goal. You would be a fool if you only believe that to post your project on a crowdfunding platform will do it all.

It will usually take between 8 and 12 weeks of preparation before the official launch of your crowdfunding campaign. You need to bear in mind that it can take up to a year to be ready for that day. It highly depends on the market niche, how complicated is your product, and how high is the goal you want to reach.

This timeline and the performances you want to achieve can also be influenced by the budget you set up for this marketing campaign.

The Complete Roadmap To A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

We could mention in total a thousand steps and things to do to make it a successful crowdfunding. I tried in here to let you know 24 of the most important tasks. This will give you a global overview of the whole process without overwhelming.

In addition, we have designed an infographic to help you better visualize every step (below this article, designed by Nikola Mi?i?).

Conduct Feasibility Study

You need to check all other successful crowdfunding campaigns, but also the failed ones, similar to your product, in the same industry, … This will help you find out the chances of raising the amount you might already have in mind.

Choose Your Platform

Kickstarter and Indiegogo both have pros and cons. However, you need to make a choice. We truly encourage Indiegogo for some reasons but the choice remains yours by the end.

Set Up Email Service

You need to gather a lot of emails in order to spread your word around the globe. Platforms such as MailChimp or GetResponse will do the job. Basic accounts are free but you usually have to subscribe to a pro account after a certain number of emails.

Draft Email Templates

You will have to pitch many different categories of people and you do not want to write a different email all the time. Once you have defined all categories (friends, family, investors, influencers, tech blogs, tech journalists, …), you will make one or two templates for each of them.

Draft Social Media Messages

You will need to come up with the best hooks on social media in order to attract the crowd to either your landing page and/or your crowdfunding campaign. Around 25 messages will be necessary to attain to find out which ones are the most suitable.

Create Graphics For Your Product

It is pivotal to shape the most astonishing pictures and renderings for your product and use cases. Marketing is not only through words but also highly visual.

Build Landing Page

It is time to craft a web page where you will introduce the crowd to your concept in order to show the world what is your idea and start building a community all around it. it will also help you build a solid and advanced SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to help people find you easily on the Internet.

Create Social Media Pages

Once you have all graphics and messages ready, you need to start using social medias, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on. You will have to populate your accounts with an average 10 posts to make people feel the pages are alive.

Create/Launch Facebook Ads

For consumer products, a good starting point is to consider Facebook as 90% of your marketing effort. Once you have defined your daily/weekly/monthly budget for marketing, you will have to test the messages you have defined at first and boost them to the right targets.

Optimize/Scale Facebook Ads

Using Facebook analytics, you will choose which messages were the best, which targets are the most suitable. It will then help you figure out what you need to modify to get the best out of your next ads in order to get the best ROI (Return On Investment).

Post Into Facebook/Twitter Groups

Your target communities are often gathered online and interacting with each other. You will have to introduce step by step your concept and how it can improve and/or make their life better. Another approach is also to show them which problem your product is solving.

Build Lists of Media Contacts and Influencers’ Emails

In marketing, you cannot succeed alone. Many persons/companies have built way before you a huge community and they can help you introduce your product to million of people. You also want to be published by the best journalists using the pitches you drafted at first. Do not forget Youtube, this platform is one of the most viewed and is trending.

Create Campaign Perks

Perks are the different options you will offer to your backers. They need to be attractive and cost optimized. Finesse is very important in here and we always advise to offer special perks for your original subscribers and the first days of your campaign.

Create Campaign Page

It is vital to draft the clearest message ever, it needs to be simple and precise. Nice illustrations and a nice story will do the job and convert visitors into buyers in no time. The main elements fo your page will be the followings: title, description, features, story, timeline, crowdfunding reasons, perks, the team behind, and testimonials/experts tests.

Shoot/Edit Video

One of the most important elements of your crowdfunding campaign and marketing will be the video. It must be astonishing and deliver a clear message in less than 3 minutes.

Build Press Kit

Most reporters will never look at your pitch but write an article with your press kit as a sole resource. Hence, you will have to design a complete pack of information about you and your product.

Pitch Under Embargo

You want some reporters to know your product before it is officially available online. But you don’t want them to spread the news before the D-Day, so ask them to hold the news and tell them they will have the opportunity to be first to spread the word and get traffic.

Private Announcement

Once you are 48 hours ahead of your crowdfunding launch, contact all your subscribers and close friends/family to let them know your early bird perks and make them ready for the big show. Your early birds are limited and you want them to be aware of that.

Make Campaign Live

You’ve made it! Time to press launch and harvest the efforts of such a preparation. However, don’t forget to announce everywhere (email+social medias) this special occasion.

Launch A Press Release

Your idea is live and you need as many people as you can to spread the word for you. Remind the reporters you contacted before, and pitch some platforms specialized in press releases for your industry.

Pitch With No Embargo

There is no rest when your campaign is live. You need to keep pitching medias all the time as they can always publish some interesting articles for you.

Crowdfunding Collaboration

Find out all other potential successful crowdfunding campaigns, and offer them to promote their campaigns on your updates and they will do the same for you in exchange.

Stretch Goals

Last but not least, the stretch goals (additional functions that are enabled when the campaign reaches a certain amount) need to be well designed in order to push your current backers to share the campaign online. To offer them referrals is also a good idea as they could get a free perk if few people they referred buy a perk.

The most important are the preparation of your crowdfunding campaign, not the actual launch. You need to calculate your minimum goal according to the number of subscribers you have and potential buyers. You then need to reach this goal in the first 48 hours of the launch. This will allow you to stay on the top featured projects on Indiegogo and Kickstarter and get by the end a successful crowdfunding campaign.

This article introduced you to a typical timeline and set of actions in order to get a successful crowdfunding campaign. There are also many other things to do but they are not mentioned in here.

If you want to know more about crowdfunding or if you want NOA Labs to run your next successful crowdfunding campaign, feel free to leave a comment or to contact us directly.