#1 Timing is everything
Make sure ALL of your friends, family and press contacts support you fully in the first week so you reach your 30% psychological tipping point with ease. People are more like to donate to a project that already has some donations!

#2 Use personal rewards
One of the top ways to make people excited is giving them status or lasting fame as a reward in return for their donation. For example, featuring their name on the credits of a behind the scenes document or on a poster with complimenting art, or tweeting a thank you message with their name.

#3 Use influencers
Having an expert or ‘influencer’ in your field, who isn’t on your crowdfunding team, talk about your campaign (either in your campaign video or on social media) can help launch your project in a positive and meaningful way is sure to have a major impact.

#4 Use the correct social media channel
Use social media to determine where you should spread your marketing efforts in regards to your audience demographic: If your target is millennials, use Instagram and Snapchat. For women over 30, Pinterest is a key target. Or if it’s the news-hungry, workaholics, use Facebook & Linkedin.

#5 Be credible
If you can get any advocates who are well known and respected in the field of your crowdfunding campaign – have a short interview with them on the video

#6 Speak to successful crowdfunders
Speak to people who have done it before. Check any campaigns similar to your industry and send them a friendly email or follow people who followed/donated to their cause.

#7 Send weekly project updates
Create new content updates every week of the campaign. Eg videos, artwork, music, meetup, wrap party, competitions keep the energy high.

#8 Collect feedback
Collect feedback as you go along – page views, donor demographics, video playbacks – this can help shape how you promote your campaign

#9 Use short descriptions
Use short & snappy text descriptions in your pitch; make your pitch page as visual as possible

#10 Use logic & emotion
Sell with Emotion, Justify with Logic appeal to both sides of the brain!

#11 Attend A Crowdfunding Event
Attending an event with people who have successfully crowdfunded is a great opportunity to hear tips face-to-face.

Source: Hubbub

…”for a crowdfunding campaign to be truly successful, entrepreneurs must put effort into marketing it.” – John Boitnott, Inc. Magazine

“Crowdfunding is not a “post it and forget it proposition.” Running a successful campaign requires a major time commitment in advance of, during and post campaign. It also requires that you be fearless in getting out and spreading the word about your venture.” – Sally Outlaw, Entrepreneur Magazine

One of the most common elements of crowdfunding success is crowdfunding promotion. A crowdfunding campaign can have all of their ducks in a row with a polished, professional crowdfunding pitch video, beautiful pictures, excellent copy writing and very tempting perks. The product or the service itself can be brilliant, even life changing.
But none of that matters if nobody hears about it. That’s why crowdfunding marketing and promotion is so important.

Crowdfunders serious about seeing their crowdfunding campaign succeed to the highest possible degree need to take crowdfunding promotion seriously. VERY seriously.

Over the years we’ve heard from people running crowdfunding campaigns who told us they would love to have crowdfunding campaign promotion but refuse to pay for it out of their own pocket. Reasons range from angry replies like “I can’t afford promoting a crowdfunding campaign – that’s why I’m crowdfunding! I need money!” to people that constantly contact us asking us to deliver crowdfunding PR with no money up front but will be happy to pay us IF AND ONLY IF their campaign succeeds.

Then there are the crowdfunding campaigns that never even consider paying for crowdfunding promotion services and actually find it offensive that they should actually PAY for crowdfunding advertising. Our only guess in explaining this bizarre mentality is that too many people have this false sense of entitlement that crowdfunding promotion should be free or dirt cheap, paying up front for any kind of marketing and advertising is ridiculous and refuse to accept reality; without serious crowdfunding marketing, crowdfunding campaigns have no realistic chance of success.

That’s to say nothing of a crowdfunder’s dream of exceeding a funding goal by as much as 500% without a serious strategy for promoting a crowdfunding campaign.

A new perspective we’ve cultivated is that most, if not all, of the crowdfunding campaigns that refuse to spend any serious amount of money on crowdfunding marketing is a fear of loss in the form of losing money on crowdfunding promotion.

Here’s the catch; crowdfunding failure is a certainty without promotion. Fear of loss in terms of the unknown – and unknowable – results of professional crowdfunding promotion must be overcome.

We’re constantly asked about our “success rate”, the number of campaigns we’ve helped succeed, etc. etc. Another very popular question comes from people who ask us to predict the future by giving them sort of probability of generating sales/backers. We’re incapable of answering such questions. Ask anybody who works for Facebook or Google these same questions and you’ll find out they have no way to give you an answer either. That’s because nobody can account for the unknown variable of human emotion that drives people to make any given buying decision after seeing an advertisement or reading a press release.

We’ve concluded that people who ask these types of questions want some sense of assurance or confidence that investing in crowdfunding publicity has a probability of success. They want to mitigate their fear of loss in investing in marketing.
Here’s something very real to be afraid of: The fear of failure. Crowdfunding campaigns always fail when they don’t gain sufficient public awareness. And raising public awareness for your project is only possible through proper, professional promotion.

Tim Ferriss, angel investor and author of the global bestseller The Four Hour Work Week summarizes this point perfectly in a single sentence -“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”

Here’s a crowdfunding success certainty: You have to seriously promote a crowdfunding project every day for crowdfunding success to be possible.

And nobody does crowdfunding promotion better than Prodfit.

How can Twitter be used to boost crowdfunding donations? This post shows 7 ways to use Twitter during your crowdfunding campaign.
This post looks at:

• #1 how to thank donors
• #2 using language to create urgency
• #3 why you should ‘pin’ tweets
• #4 how to engage influential tweeters
• #5 making the most of images
• #6 optimizing the use of #hashtags

#1 Thank each donor (properly) on Twitter

Gratitude goes a long way.

Tweeting donors with a public thank you can:

a) make the donor feel appreciated
b) encourage others to donate knowing they’ll be publicly thanked if they donate
c) offer an opportunity for your project to reach more people
A quick thank you tweet will look something like this:

‘thanks for the donation @twitter_example!’

This (importantly) offers appreciation to the donor for their support. But, does it encourage the donor (& others) to retweet so the project reaches more people? Not really.
A ‘great’ thank you tweet can encourage retweets.

#2 Create a sense of urgency to encourage action

How often have friends asked you to donate to their fundraising campaign? How often do you donate straight away? How often do you wait until the deadline? People have great intentions but we’re natural procrastinators!
Creating a sense of urgency with your tweets increases the chances of an instant donation.

#3 ‘pin’ a tweet on the top of your Twitter account

This is a simple tip that most crowdfunders don’t maximize on:
Pin a tweet about your crowdfunding campaign (with an image, project url) to your Twitter page for the duration of your project.

Why ‘pin’ a tweet?

– Whenever anyone lands on your main Twitter page, you’ll have a tweet explaining your campaign at the top. Carry on tweeting away & the pinned tweet will stay right at the top.
– Throughout your campaign you will slowly get more likes & retweets (provided you are regularly tweeting, to attract people to your Twitter page). More likes & retweets give your project momentum. More momentum means people are more likely to click on your project link to see what the fuss is about!

#4 Increase the chances of influential people tweeting about your project

Are there tweeters with a big following that you would love to share (or donate to) your project? If you simply tweet them saying ‘please can you donate/retweet my project @influential_person?’ – they probably won’t.
To increase the chances of them doing so, I suggest you do the following:

Make a Twitter List

Make a Twitter ‘list’ of people you would like to retweet or donate to your project. Ideally this list will include people that would have an interest in your project, not random celebrities. When you click on your Twitter list, you will only see tweets from these people.

Engage with your list

When your project launches, start engaging (favouriting, retweeting or, even better, commenting on) people in your list’s tweets.
Keep doing this for a few weeks to build trust & encourage them to visit your page (where there should be a pinned tweet about your project at the top). The more you consistently engage with others on Twitter, the more likely they’ll engage with you.

Make a personal twitter ask

Once you’ve been engaging with lots tweets for a while, it’s time to make an ask (preferably at the point when your project has hit at least 20% of its target). A good ask will include a link to the project, stats.

#5 Making the most of images

When you include an image with your tweet, you can tag up to 10 people (which doesn’t eat into your 140 characters). Tag relevant people/organisations with lots of followers – getting a retweet from them will broaden your project reach. As suggested earlier in this post, retweet some of these people/organisations’ tweets too so they’ll be more likely to retweet yours when you tag them in an image.

#6 Optimize your use of #hashtags to increase reach

Why bother with hashtags? Hashtags tie all content about your project to your crowdfunding page into one place.
‘Think of a catchy name for your campaign and create a hashtag. Be relentless in spreading the word on ALL forms of social media – Twitter and Tumblr are great for spreading news fast. Using a hashtag will bring your posts together and make your campaign easily identifiable.

Resources about optimizing hashtags

This post from social media experts, Buffer, show why, scientifically 2 hash tags are often most effective
Twitter itself recommends 2 hashtags per tweet

Different social networks require unique messaging techniques designed, timed, crafted, and suited to that particular platform. If you want to maximize response and conversion rates you can’t just throw some stuff up. Like everything related to marketing, a strategy is in order to do it right.

Since Facebook often seems like a big messy room I’m reluctant to enter, I found this infographic by TrackMaven, a site dedicated to making you a more competitive digital marketer, extremely helpful.
After analyzing exactly 5,804 Facebook brand pages and 1,578,006 posts and then putting the information into their data grinder —that’s the my informal term for doing math that’s beyond my comprehension and pay grade—these guys really managed to clear the clutter and explain Facebook’s needs that’s not only simple and concise—something I’ve never said about Facebook before—but also seems very doable.
Try incorporating these simple-to-follow—and very surprising—data points and see if you don’t lure your users one very important click closer to your crowdfunding campaign. (Highlights below and infographic follows.)

Character count: a good Facebook post is around 60,000 characters and if your post is over 80 words your response rate improves by 80%.

Visuals: images garner 37% more engagement

Best hours: posts published between 5pm – 1am Eastern time get 11% more interaction, than those published during the work day (8am – 5pm) and 29% more than those published before work, 1am – 8am.

Weekends: Less than 18% of content is posted on weekends, but weekend content sees the most engagement

How-to of engagement: “likes” are the most common way to socially engage, accounting for 87%, 5% accounts for comments and 8% for shares

Time and days matter: Thursday is the big day on Facebook, weighing it at 16.82% posts, and lunchtime is the favorite time

The hashtag: these posts see 60% more interaction

The exclamation point: as much as I hate to report this, it seems the exclamation point is seen as being positive. Use them and see 2.7% more interaction

The big question: ask a question and see your interaction increase by 23% on average

The amount of money raised through crowdfunding has exploded in the last five years, rapidly transforming most parts of the economy, from start-up investment to personal loans. The social good sector seems to be one of the few areas failing to make the most of this promising new form of finance with crowdfunding still making up less than 0.5% of giving in the UK.

In 2015 alone, £3.2 billion of loans, investments and donations were made through crowdfunding platforms in the UK. However, the vast majority of this money funded loans to businesses and individuals or equity investment in start-ups with just $81 million going towards supporting good causes.

Opportunities in crowdfunding for good causes[/b][b][/b][b][/b][b][b][/b]

Despite this lack of uptake, previous research has shown that crowdfunding has a number of potential financial as well as non-financial benefits, including:

The potential to attract new donors and fund projects that would not otherwise get funded; a survey showed that 64% of those who had raised funds via crowdfunding were unlikely or very unlikely to have received finance elsewhere.

It can help get more people involved in campaigning and volunteering; the same survey found that 27% of those who had supported a crowdfunding campaign also offered to volunteer for that project.

Crowdfunding can be instrumental in raising awareness and promoting a cause; the same survey also found that 90% of funders went on to promote the project they supported, typically via social media.

Since crowdfunding raises money for specific projects, rather than organisations as a whole, it provides more transparency around what funds will be used for and how they will benefit others.

Crowdfunding has the potential to enable more experimentation into new ways of addressing social challenges by reducing the cost of failure for fundraisers. When there isn’t support from the crowd, a project won’t meet its funding target and so can’t go ahead, meaning reduced financial losses for the fundraiser.

It is possible to use crowdfunding to support a broad range of social projects and initiatives.
At a time when smaller organisations are increasingly squeezed by government cuts and other more intrusive forms of fundraising — such as face-to-face, mail or telephone — are criticised by politicians and the media, it is especially surprising that those fundraising for good causes have been slow to realise the advantages of crowdfunding.



Challenges in crowdfunding for good causes

Despite the clear opportunities for charities, community groups and social entrepreneurs using crowdfunding, previous research has identified several challenges that organisations should be aware of, these include:

A potentially negative impact on equality, diversity and participation. People and communities that are wealthier, have better digital skills or have larger social networks are more likely to run a successful campaign and are therefore better positioned to benefit from crowdfunding.
Because crowdfunding focuses on one-off donations, there is a risk that it could reduce the number of people making repeat monthly donations to charities.
Crowdfunding for good causes may encourage public sector funders to stop funding services previously paid for by the taxpayer. Since crowdfunding often emphasises visible short-term impact, it is not a reliable substitute to government funding when creating lasting social value.
It puts the decision on which projects go ahead in the hands of the crowd who may have little knowledge about the areas they are funding. This raises a potential conflict between what organisations — which typically have expertise in the social needs of a particular area — think is a priority and the opinion of the crowd.
It isn’t easy money and a successful crowdfunding campaign, just as any other fundraising campaign, requires hard work. This often involves dedicated teams and careful planning months in advance of the campaign going live.
What we did

We wanted to understand what is preventing organisations with a social purpose from harnessing the benefits of crowdfunding and identify what can be done to help support those that want to do so.

We surveyed over 450 charities, community groups and social entrepreneurs to try and understand their awareness, perceptions and usage of crowdfunding. We also interviewed eight of the leading UK crowdfunding platforms working in this sector and asked them how they worked with these organisations and what they saw as the key opportunities and challenges in doing so.

A lack of knowledge, skills and capacity is the biggest barrier to using crowdfunding

Nearly nine in ten of the organisations we surveyed had heard of crowdfunding, but only 15% had actually used it to raise funds. We wanted to understand what was preventing those who were standing around the pool from jumping in!

When asked why they were yet to use crowdfunding, more than 70% of organisations reported not knowing enough about the regulation of crowdfunding and how the different types of crowdfunding work and what they offer.

Two in three organisations reported not having the skills and capacity to set up and run a crowdfunding campaign within their organisation.

‘Nevertheless, more could be done to develop practice guides and toolkits tailored to charities, community groups and social enterprises and to make sure these organisations know that these guides and tools exist.

The difficulty of fundraising for core costs was seen as an important barrier to using crowdfunding

Just over half of the organisations we surveyed highlighted that they thought it would be too difficult to fundraise for core costs through crowdfunding as a reason why they were not using crowdfunding.

However, crowdfunding an organisation’s core costs is not impossible. One possible way of doing this would be to say on the campaign page that a certain percentage of the money raised would go towards paying the organisation’s overheads.

There is a strong appetite for crowdfunding amongst charities, community groups and social entrepreneurs

We wanted to understand the future potential use of crowdfunding by organisations with a social purpose, so we asked how suitable they thought crowdfunding was to their organisation’s needs and how likely they thought they were to use crowdfunding in the next 12 months.

The community and voluntary sector clearly recognise the potential of crowdfunding with 85% reporting that they thought at least one type of crowdfunding would be suitable for their organisation’s needs and 43% reporting that they were planning on using one form of crowdfunding in the next 12 months.

The clear appetite for crowdfunding suggests that overcoming the challenges we highlighted around knowledge, skills and capacity is likely to result in a substantial increase in the use of crowdfunding.

What can charities, social enterprises and community groups do to make the most of crowdfunding?

Based on the insights from our research we made three recommendations to charities, social enterprises and community groups:

While crowdfunding is not a silver bullet and will not work for everyone, all community and voluntary sectors organisations should at least give it a go and try setting up a small crowdfunding campaign. Even if they are unsuccessful in reaching their funding target they won’t have lost anything other than the time they put into the campaign and are likely to learn a lot along the way.

Interviews with crowdfunding platforms consistently highlighted that organisations often struggle to make the most of crowdfunding because they see it as a fundraising task, rather than a joint task between campaign and fundraising teams. This is something that can be addressed by joining up these two teams when setting up crowdfunding campaigns.

Other than setting up a campaign on a pre-existing crowdfunding platform, larger organisations should explore different ways to utilise crowdfunding. One way of doing this is to partner with a platform to curate a themed community of projects with a similar mission or geographical focus that you or the members in your community would like to crowdfund. An alternative is to use a white label service to develop customised crowdfunding platforms that fit their organisation’s or networks’ brand and fundraising needs.

Prodfit receives around 5-10 requests for whitelabel crowdfunding platforms a month. In the vast majority of cases, we are either not told various pieces of information around the project, or we are told but only under NDA. The information can include:

- Which person or company is commissioning the project
- What market sector and or geography is being targeted by the platform
- What type and size of project will be supported by the platform

To all those who believe they can exploit a new “niche” in the crowdfunding space, we say great. There are still plenty of interesting niches out there – both geographic and sector-based.

However, this comes with a caveat. If you really believe your concept is so indefensible that you aren’t even willing to tell us who you are or what you’re trying to do before we give you a quote, you might have a problem.

Markets

See,[url]prodfit.com[/url] is one of at least 10 major players in Nigeria crowdfunding who can provide people with new platforms. In some cases these platforms can be up and running in a few hours, and even large-scale custom deployments can be live in a month.

Consider what this means if your financial viability rests on capturing a significant slice of a new market or niche for crowdfunding. If you have a truly attractive niche, then the second your site is up and running others are going to see it and – given the really low barriers to entry that now exist in the space – potentially enter your market and clone it. If they do this, you will be in a race to the bottom on site fees, as your only real differentiator will be your commission – your technology after all was provided probably by one of a small number of vendors selling effectively the same solution.

And if you don’t have an attractive niche, well… then it’s never really going to take off.

Tips on Whitelabelling

So here are my recommendations for those considering whitelabelling a platform for a new sector or geography:

Make sure that you are bringing more to the table than an idea – e.g. if you are looking to launch a new crowdfunding site for the planet Mars, make damn sure that you know all of the creative Martians, have signed up the Mars Film Society as a partner, and know the Royal Martian Academy of Arts staff well. In addition, ideally, secure match-funding from Mars Bank, so that projects running on your platform truly benefit from association with you. The real acid test – imagine that someone else tried to launch a platform for the same space at the same time as you – would you still feel confident that you would take over the whole market, or at least a reasonable share of it?

Make sure that you are comfortable to tell us who you are and what you are trying to achieve. This ties into the above. If you haven’t developed the institutional relationships that are going to help you succeed, then we understand your reticence to share your idea – after all, others can go and build those relationships and take your market! However, you should never let yourself get into that position – you should be sufficiently comfortable that you are going to execute on your idea that you can tell us what it is and let us help you out. We don’t mind signing NDAs when we know people have prepared properly – particularly if that helps you on the legal/investment front.

Make sure you’ve incorporated a company or entity that can legally take on the project. A new platform is a major job – you can’t do it in your spare time. When new platform founders come to us with just a concept and ask for a quote, consider how this works from our perspective – we don’t know who you are, nor do we have any assurances that you are serious. Putting together a quote takes us time, particularly if we tailor it to your proposition. Signalling that you are serious about the project – e.g. you know your market, you’ve set up a company, arranged finance, registered a domain, build institutional relationships etc – is a good way of getting our attention!

We are frequently asked to take a risk on a revenue model – e.g. to build and run the platform in return for a revenue share from the platform commission. Think about how this looks and sounds to us. If you are a new startup, you’re asking us to put in most of the effort and take most of the risk for some unknown and unquantified reward. Moreover, if you really believe your idea is a killer idea, you wouldn’t want to share the commission with us – you’d want to pay a fixed fee/ongoing monthly fees that enable you to make more money in the upside case. We will consider revenue share models, but really only when we know and trust the organisational partner running the site. Which is why it’s so important that you show us you’re serious!

Summary

Think hard about your niche or application for crowdfunding. Figure out what happens if you get competition, and what the key relationships you need to establish are. Once you’ve built those relationships, analysed the finances of the platform, figured out your own revenue model and how you’re going to get paid, and started talking to the key players in your niche, then it’s time to start looking at commissioning technology – such as ours.

One final point – for anyone looking to build their own site from the ground up, or “outsource it to India/Eastern Europe/some other low-labour rate country”, please don’t. We have spoken to endless people who have tried this and most of them have ended up having to throw away the “solutions” and starting again. It’s not worth it. Use our technology, or use a competitor’s technology (we’ll even introduce you!) but please, for the sake of our own sanity, don’t “just build your own”.

It’s a rule of thumb that it will always take longer to raise angel financing than you expect, and it will be more difficult than you had hoped. Not only do you have to find the right investors who are interested in your sector, but you have to go through meetings, due diligence, negotiations on terms, and more.

Raising capital can be a very time-consuming process and the investors must also be attracted to your business. Here are what angel investors particularly care about:

1. The quality, passion, commitment, and integrity of the founders.
The quality of the founder’s proposition is key, the angel investor should see prospect in it. The founder must also exhibit passion, commitment and should be someone of integrity. These are the first impressions a founder should give a prospective angel investors.

2.The market opportunity being addressed and the potential for the company to become very big.
The business plan must have a viable market and should be one with an enviable prospect of rapidly developing over the years.

3.A clearly thought out business plan, and any early evidence of obtaining traction toward the plan.
A founder must be equipped with a clearly thought out business plan that has been thoroughly researched and the necessary feasibility study carried out. He/She must also show evidence of formulated plans to propel the business to the ”promised land”. This should be stated in the business plan and also in the course of presentation.

4. Interesting technology or intellectual property.
You don’t just go to an angel investor without putting some plans in place. Putting some necessary things in place portrays you as a serious and passionate founder. You must also possess knowledge of the business you are going into. Mind you, the biggest selling point of an entrepreneur is his/her intellectual property i.e. his understanding and knowledge.

5. An appropriate valuation with reasonable terms.
This factor is one that if not carefully handled could scare off the investor or shortchanged you. You should carry out adequate research to ascertain the value of your business plan. Failure to do this could end up in you over-valuing your plan, thus, scaring off the investor; or under-valuing it, thus, shortchanging yourself. Careful attention to this will result in a win-win situation for both parties.

Taking the aforementioned into consideration will make getting an angel investor easier.

Read more blog Posts on funding and investing on [url]blog.prodfit.com[/url]

Who is an Angel Investor?

Angel Investors are wealthy individuals that agree to invest in a small start-up that has little access to capital.

Segun is a young budding entrepreneur who runs a business with a lot potential, but he lacks the financial capability to push it to the next level. This was efficiently resolved when Chief Bankole, Segun’s father boss, a business mogul decides to invest in Segun’s business. Chief Bankole here can be referred to as an Angel Investor.

Angel investors invest in early stage or start-up companies in exchange for equity ownership interest. Most Angel Investors are friends, acquaintances or families of the founders of the business they invest in. they are often not concerned about profit, rather, they are ready to take the risk of investing in a business based on the belief they have in the founder of the business.
The five major things all entrepreneurs should know about angel investors:

1. How much do Angel Investors invest in a company
An Angel Investor can invest as much as he likes.


2. How long will it take to raise angel financing
It’s my rule of thumb that it will always take longer to raise angel financing than you expect, and it will be more difficult than you had hoped.Not only do you have to find the right investors who are interested in your sector, but you have to go through meetings, due diligence, negotiations on terms, and more. Raising capital can be a very time-consuming process.


3.The risk of angel investment
It’s very risky, and an angel will only invest if he or she is comfortable with potentially losing all of his or her investment. At best, only one in ten startups are successful.


4.Will angel investors sign nondisclosure agreements
No. Angel investors see too many deals and you don’t want to impose a roadblock to getting an investor interested in your company.The entrepreneur will have to be careful and not disclose highly confidential information.


5. How often should an entrepreneur give updates to his or her angel investors
It’s best to give monthly updates to your angel investors, whether you have good or bad news. If you are having issues, this can be a way to seek help or advice.And if you need extra investment, this might facilitate a discussion. No one likes to be surprised, so regular communication is important. Jason Calacanis, a noted angel investor, has said, “There is another really awesome reason to keep investors updated: they didn’t give you all their money — they have more!!! They want to give you more!!! If you keep your investors engaged with honest updates, they will reward you by participating in future rounds.”

Source:[url]forbes.com[/url]