How To Get Supporters To Your Crowdfunding Campaign
Many people think that once they start a crowdfunding campaign, all their financial woes will disappear. If only it were that easy! One of the biggest challenges in running a successful crowdfunding campaign is knowing how to market it. Though you don’t have to be a marketer, you do have to expand your vision and feel comfortable reaching out to your family and friends, social network and community circles.
Before getting supporters, it’s important that your campaign looks nice and portrays what you’re wanting to raise money for. At Fundly, we encourage all campaigns to include at least one image or video, a description of why you’re fundraising and add a few giving levels as incentives. We’ve broken down a few of our best tips to help you get supporters.
Step 1: Recruit Your Inner Circle Of Family and Friends
When initially starting a campaign it’s important to recruit your core supporters first, this includes yourself, family and friends. This “inner circle” will be the the root of your crowdfunding campaign so make sure to make them feel connected and passionate about why you’re raising money. When you’re communicating and sharing your campaign be descriptive and excited, this will help them want to back you 100%.
How To Reach Your Inner Circle:
Email is a great way to share your campaign with family and friends. Make them feel special by personalizing each one, this may take more time but will pay off in the long run. And if you want some traction immediately, try sending them a text with your campaign URL.
Email is a great way of sharing your campaign with friends and family. Make sure to customize your message to each person, and remember to make them feel connected to your story and passionate about helping you raise money.
So you’ve shared your story via email and social media to your friends and family. Now what? Two words: Remind and Repeat! Our platform makes it easy to send automatic reminders to your friends and family who have not yet supported your campaign. Fundly’s automatic reminder emails receive a 10% conversion rate, proving that even those with the best intentions forget to do things. If at first you don’t succeed… ASK AGAIN!
Email is the best way to get donations to your campaign. Start by importing the contacts from the email service you use most.
Don’t be shy! We’ve found that each email sent to a family member or friend will increase the amount you raise by $45 on average.
Add your voice to the template below. Write from the heart and make your recipients feel good about giving – and maybe a little guilty if they don’t.
Step 2: Spread Out To Your Social Circle
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+ are super helpful towards marketing your campaign. A good place to start is to focus on the social media platform that you use most frequently and where you have the most number of followers.
Once your “inner circle” has supported you it’s important for them to market your campaign on their social networks as well. People are interested in what others are doing on social media and generally if someone donated or supported a cause, they want to share it with their network – think of it as a chain reaction!
Use hashtags. Let’s say you’re raising money for autism awareness. Make sure to use hashtags such as #autism #autismspeaks #autismawareness
Make sure to post pictures. We’ve noticed that when people post pictures on Twitter, your tweet becomes more popular and noticeable.
Give a shout out on social media to “thank” your supporters or donors – publicly making them feel special will give them a reason to share your post or retweet. It’s the little things that matter!
Before posting on social media, craft an upbeat and smart pitch that will get people excited to click on your link. Make sure to include a compelling photo in your social media update!
Step 3: Tap Your Community Circles
Once you’ve gained the support from you and your “inner core’s” network, it’s time to get the creative juices flowing. Tapping into community circles are important because it allows you to reach a broader audience that have similar interests. An easy way to start is by asking yourself what types of communities does your campaign fall into?
Questions To Help You Find Your Communities:
What is your campaign raising money for? If you’re a college basketball team raising money for nationals, you would look into sports, basketball, the college where you play and alumni communities.
Is there a local chapter you can connect with?
For example, if you’re raising funds for your local San Francisco church, you could look into local SF communities, other church parishioners, church member forums, etc.
Another example would be If you’re raising money for a community project, you could look into Junior Leagues in your area, local volunteers programs, community leaders, town/city hall, community forums, etc.
Example: Bringing Your Circles Together
Let’s say you’re a fashion and lifestyle blogger and need to raise $5,000 for blog expenses.
Step 1: After you create a campaign page, you send a personal email to your family and friends (aka: “inner circle”) telling them about your fundraiser and why it’s important for you to raise the funds.
Step 2: Next, you tap your extended network, which is your social network. With your fashion blog, you might have a stronger following on Twitter and Instagram so you would post there first so more followers will see it.
Tip: Make sure your content is different everytime you post, people don’t like reading the same material over and over. Make them want to support your cause.
Step 3: Other than using hashtags in your tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts, you could try to reach out to fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogging communities, as well as relevant clothing and product brands, to see if they’ll help share your campaign and support your cause.
We love hearing about your campaign and the kinds of communities you love. Share the communities you’ve had success with in the comments below.
Veronica Olah is Community Manager at Fundly.
How To Get Supporters To Your Crowdfunding Campaign was originally published on Fundly
