Crowdfunding sites provide a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to showcase ideas and raise funds. Unfortunately, not many projects and ideas accomplish their goal of becoming fully funded through a crowdfunding site. Crowdfunding is hard work, so entrepreneurs must be overly prepared for all obstacles and implications associated with crowdfunding for eCommerce before launching a campaign. The following are necessary tools that will help your campaign get off to a great start:
5 Helpful Crowdfunding Tools for a Successful Campaign
1. Pre-awareness:
Launch your project on Prefundia to gather a database of interested people. These people can be notified of your campaign launch date, and you will already have an audience or traffic generated towards your eCommerce site. This audience can also help generate traffic to your campaign once it’s live on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Data has proven the correlation between campaigns with higher awareness before their projects launch and higher funding. It’s a free tool to use, so why not give it a try?
2. Email Automation:
Once you have a database to market to, you must keep your subscribers updated. Hype them up about your product, but do not bombard them with emails. Encourage them to like your social media pages and existing eCommerce site. A great way to get your subscribers to become ambassadors is to create sweepstakes. Offer a free product or other valuable offers for people to sign up for your database. Recipients will be more likely to share your social pages and emails if incentives are being offered.
Creating a high amount of emails takes a lot of time, so use an email automation system if possible. Emails can be created and scheduled in one day, and you won't have to worry about when to post them. Email workflows automatically include a contact into a workflow once they fill out a form. Platforms such as HubSpot offer these services, but if you don't have enough resources, use a free one such as MailChimp. It doesn't offer as many customization options, but it's a great start.
3. Blog and Social Media:
Creating an inbound marketing strategy for your Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign can put you ahead of your goals before your campaign even begins. Blogging about topics that interest the target audience you’re going after and engaging with them through social media will draw traffic to your campaign.
A great blogging strategy would be to invite influential people to contribute to your blog. This will help establish your company’s reputation, and if you’re lucky they will share your project to their network of followers.
4. Compelling YouTube Videos:
More than half of successfully funded crowdfunding campaigns included high quality videos on their site. High quality content creates trust for your brand, and does a better job at explaining your product versus text. If you have technical skills, feel free to create the video yourself and fix it using free video editing tools provided by YouTube or iMovie.
Another way to raise money through your videos is by uploading them onto YouTube. They have recently announced a new feature that will enhance crowdfunding within your own YouTube channel. This new feature was scheduled to launch at the end of June, so look out for it. This new feature could be a great complement to your Kickstarter campaign.
5. Free Shopify Template:
Besides compelling videos, you should provide visitors with the option to buy your product on a well-designed storefront. Shopify offers a free template that will showcase your product in a clean display with product details and images.
Having a well-designed site will enhance your reputation and makes it simple for backers to support you with easy navigation. You will have the potential to raise funds before your campaign even launches if you adopt this template beforehand.
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