The Complete Crowdfunding Pre-Launch Checklist
Creating an engaging and informative campaign will help your potential backers to learn more about your crowdfunding idea and decide, prepare everything and let the backers decide whether or not they want to contribute or not. There are many bloggers and writers and crowdfunding experts who mentioned you must get started two months before you launch your crowdfunding campaign. If You are working hard and ready to finalizing every important aspect of campaign and it’s marketing strategies, here is the the ultimate and final checklist you should consider.
The Planning: If you have a great idea and planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign, You must have a platform where you would like to put your campaign. Do research about the platform, even the alternatives, consider the pricing [the platform commission]. In case if you chosen Kickstarter, that must approve your campaign before it launches. If you are hoping to get the money straight into your bank account or as soon as the campaign ends, then you are wrong. Every platform has it’s own commission structure and takes few days to couple of weeks from the date your campaign ended.
Do not forget project timeline planing means prepration, pre-launch, launch date, and campaign end date.
The Crowdfunding Story: Everyone loves storytelling, storytelling is by far the most underrated skill, It’s something that comes from inside of you and everyone can tell a story about anything they are passionate about whether you’re writing the real problem you face, the exact idea or a pitch or a business plan, your story should inspire and engage emotionally and that will connect you to your audience.
Telling a good and engaging story about your crowdfunding idea will be only way to engage backers for campaign investment. People think in stories, not statistics, and marketers need to be master storytellers.
Compiling and telling a story is really a good way to make the idea valuable. Some people do not want or not clearly reveal to backers why the funding is required, in this case make sure the campaign story finds takers and your personal agenda of how you would want to support the cause becomes appealing.
Pitch Videos: A pitch video reflects professionalism and the seriousness about the campaign or cause. The backers and potential investors are smart enough to judge about these aspects, they can understand you quickly. Did you know, the campaigns with pitch videos raise 4 times more than a campaigns without pitch videos.
The campaign would be extremely effective, if you include an pitch video in your campaign. videos can engage and can communicate with your target audience while offering you full creative control.
First 30 seconds are important to grab the attention of audiences. Within first 30 seconds the backer decides if she/he is going to invest in the crowdfunding project or move on and please make sure your pitch video must be under 3 minutes.
Pitch Text & Visuals: Pitch Text [The Content] is equally important as Pitch Videos, and an important aspect for your crowdfunding campaign. to have strong pitch text on your campaign page. The best way to move ahead, dividing the entire Pitch Text as Content Blocks which can be improved on everyday basis, and of course according to your preferences & the crowdfunding planning. Do not forget pitch text should lead up to one call to action.
The Content Blocks
- Short Introduction
- About the Campaign
- How it Works
- Impact on Real world
- About the Team / Company
- Perks & Rewards
- Funds Usage
- Campaign Updates
In addition to the content, high-quality visuals can help quickly to explain what’s the exact goal of the crowdfunding campaign. In addition, you can add product screenshots as well as infographics along with the content.
If you are not an expert and good with content or graphic designing, you can hire professionals for the job. Once you get everything, take some time to finalize everything including press releases, contents, social media contents.
Perks & Rewards: You have to be very fair with the rewards, in case if we think about ROI the backers wants and expects to have a fair deal. Don’t forget the point, every support will back your project with an expectation that they will receive something against their investment.
Organizing and preparing for your crowdfunding campaign launch, it’s crucial to offer the rewards / perks that your backers will love. Try to connect them emotionally but be realistic with your rewards. Also do offer some special perks which you can include in the campaign to keep the momentum going.
Social Media: Crowdfunding campaign management can be a challenge but if you will act like a wise marketer, act smartly to use social media effectively for your crowdfunding campaign, social media can play a crucial role to the success of your campaign.
Pushing social media outreach is vital especially when most people are hooked on these platforms, you have to make sure you have a set of creative content which will be shared and re-shared on social media networking sites. Your efficient work will create awareness that will drive traffic, get you contributions, pledges and donations for your crowdfunding campaign.
Pushing social media outreach is vital especially when most people are hooked on these platforms, you have to make sure you have a set of creative content which will be shared and re-shared on social media networking sites. Your efficient work will create awareness that will drive traffic, get you contributions, pledges and donations for your crowdfunding campaign.
Social media contents along with images receive higher engagement than those without on social media platforms specially facebook, twitter. Make sure you do use Social Media Management Tools, which will be helpful to create a schedule of regularly rotating contents all related to your crowdfunding campaign.
PR Strategies: You have to attract media for your crowdfunding campaigns else its rare to have automatic mentions in premium outlets. You have to make efforts so that media outlets covering your campaign. Signup with HARO and
The Steps for Crowdfunding PR
- Press Release Content Creation, Put focus on your story,
- Start pitching during pre-launch period,
- Research journalists who cover your business topic,
- First target the local media,
- Apart from media, Target influencers, bloggers, writers,
- Include visuals, product screenshots in the PR Content.
- Release a PR whenever you reach a milestone.
The writers, authors, bloggers and contributes always look for good pitching stories and you can try HARO and Hey.Press to connect with the journalist for free. Check these posts where I wrote about Free Press Release Distribution Websites & Crowdfunding News Portals.
Email List: Every early supporter can bring a larger group that consists of anyone who might be interested in your project. Whenever you reach 25- 30% of your target goal, start email marketing campaign for a push. The primary question is often I’m being asked how to build the email list?
This is how to build the list:
- Create a list of family & friends of You and your team.
- Ask your team to get the same of their supporters & followers
- Extract emails from social media platform like facebook, check this post
- Buy it from an email list provider, not a temporary solution.
- Collect Emails from your crowdfunding Landing Page, Make Opt-In noticeable
Once the lists are finalized, start a campaign of pre-launch email marketing to everyone including friends, family and early supporter, also start an email invite campaign for your campaign soft launch, then a pre-launch announcement and final launch email campaign.
Don’t rush to the launch your crowdfunding campaign. A successful campaign needs proper planning as well as execution and only after all above, cross check this checklist before the official launch.
Share your experience if you already went through a crowdfunding pre-launch campaign, Also comment and share if you have something to add in this article.
This Article was originally published on CrowdNuke Blog, May 11, 2016.
