Building sponsorship relationships is one of many ways to raise funds for your dream project.
Crowdfunding and crowdraising is also becoming a popular way of helping entrepreneurs raise their dream and boost influence.
After having been directly involved with several crowdfunding campaigns and watching others go through the process, many of the same relationship-building, social media championing, and communication planning principles that are successful in attracting sponsors also apply to attracting crowdfund supporters.
Below are eight lessons that can help your crowdfund be successful in many ways.More...
8 Lessons for a Lucrative Crowdfunding Campaign
- Have a compelling video. The video is key!
- Have a team of champions to support the campaign through social media sharing. Make it easy for your team of champions to support you. Provide pre-written social media posts/emails, newsletter copy, and a conversational script for people to “good gossip” about your project to others. Don’t use a Facebook group as your sole or primary place to communicate with your champions. Many of them are not on social media; their team is. And others turn off their notifications, so they miss updates from you. Have a pre-campaign call with all your champions to help explain the campaign and celebrate their support in advance.
- When people back the campaign and contribute, ensure that someone is assigned the task of emailing a thank you to the supporter and posting a thank you on the crowdfund page. This is so essential. Generosity inspires more generosity, especially when it is recognized and shared. Imagine donating $100 or more to a campaign and there is no recognition. No thank you. This interrupts the cycle of reciprocity in that people are less likely to continue feeling excited about your campaign and will likely not share the campaign with others. When you recognize contributions and support on the crowdfund page, it creates social energy, buzz, and community! I have seen some crowdfunds who create appreciation images for Facebook (shouting out the contributor there as well).
- Put your focus on the start of the launch. The first few days through the first week are the most important and where most of the contributions will come. This energy is critical for the weeks that follow.
- Use a hashtag that can be easily searched and is unique to your campaign. For example, don’t only use “#resilience” if you are doing a crowdfund for a project related to resilience. Pick an additional one unique to your project such as “resilentyouthYVR” or “Resilience2018”.
- Don’t have an overwhelming amount of perks. Too many options often results in confusion and lack of support.
- Don’t put the most expensive perks first. This will stop many people from scrolling down to see other perks.
- Provide ongoing updates both on social media and on the crowdfund page. People want to hear the news. Share media links on your crowdfund page and other updates.
Planning a crowdfund takes time, strategy, and lots of support. Remember, it takes a team to raise a dream!