Fundraising campaigns are daunting. Often, there can be six figures — or more — attached to an overarching goal. For some campaigns, physical accomplishments. such as a building or renovation, are often the end goal.

On the other hand, if you find your business struggling most with interest on loan or mortgage, a capital campaign could be a great way to get you out of the red. You may even choose to provide an endowment fund for the next generation of constituents. 

This can all be pretty overwhelming for any business, which is why we’ve rounded up some best practices for preparing and executing a successful fundraising campaign. No matter the type of campaign, these tips can help you. 

• 10 Tips for Great Equity Fundraising Campaign
• How do I Improve my Crowdfunding Campaign?
• How do you run a Successful Capital Campaign?
• How Long Should a Crowdfunding Campaign last?
• Why are long campaigns bad?
• What is the Best Form of Marketing for a Crowdfunding Project?

10 Tips for Great Equity Fundraising Campaign

There is plenty of advice handed out when you first decide to undertake an equity fundraising campaign, you must have a strong and engaged crowd of customers and supporters, a unique product that will grab attention, and a powerful marketing strategy that is going to convert those who are interested in your company into investors.

Read Also: Is Angel Investment the Right Path for Business Growth?

Now that companies are able to raise capital through equity fundraising, we have listed out what we think are the 10 essential tips to ensure a successful equity fundraising campaign.

1.  Make sure you’re prepared

An equity fundraising campaign is a challenging and time-consuming process. It requires significant planning and consistent effort to raise the required capital and ultimately be successful.

Equity fundraising is about more than just raising capital, it is about marketing your brand and building a following. Then, if your fundraising campaign is successful, you will be accountable for additional shareholders.

This means that you need to be sure that you and the business are ready to embark on an equity fundraising campaign. You need to be ready to devote your time towards planning, marketing and communicating with your existing network of customers and followers.

2.  Build a crowd

Building a crowd is the most important step prior to going live with your offer. Once the offer is live you want there to be a strong investment base that commits funds early so that you can quickly build momentum.

There are a few elements to building a crowd; ensuring that the business is investible, knowing your audience and warming them up.

To determine whether people want to invest in your business, reach out to family and friends and your close network of customers to gain feedback. It is important to know how much they would be willing to invest, their thoughts on the business, and the idea of an equity fundraising campaign. This will help to refine what your fundraising campaign should look like, and prepare you for the types of questions that other investors will be asking.

Once you know that people will be interested, get to know your audience. Not everyone will be attracted by the same elements of your business. Leverage your audience based on their interests so that you get the most out of them.

Segment your audience and begin to warm them up prior to the offer going live so that they are informed about the business and the equity fundraising process. This will help to build a strong crowd that is ready to invest early and build key momentum.

3.  Have a realistic investment target and valuation

Having a realistic investment target is important. Ask for too much and you might not achieve your goal, ask for too little and you may have to engage in another raise.

Because equity fundraising is an all-or-nothing process it is important to keep it mind that you will need to reach your minimum if the raise is to be successful. The amount you choose to raise should be enough to take you to your next stage of growth.

It is also extremely important to set a realistic company valuation so you don’t scare investors away. You don’t want to risk a down raising, where your company is valued less, next time around if your business does not meet growth expectations.

4.  Tell your story

Your story is one of the important aspects of equity fundraising that inspires investors to support your business. You want to find the uniqueness in your business and its story. Something that will connect with investors and make them see the human side of the company.

If your product or business doesn’t have a real point of difference then you will struggle to get any engagement from investors. So you need to identify what is it that you offer than no one else does, and how your product or service will take the world forward?

You want to communicate your goals in a way that makes investors believe in the business and want to be a part of the journey. Your enthusiasm and passion for the business is important but so is communicating the essence of the business. Finding that balance is the key to a good story.

5.  Have a clear business plan

Your story is what will inspire investors to want to be a part of your business. But, it is your business model and plan that will convince them to invest. Investors want to see a path to potential success. This means a clear outline of your market and opportunities to grow.

Additionally, clearly outlining how you plan to use the raised funds will inform investors of the value of their contribution. If a successful raise this time round could lead to another equity fundraising raise or even an IPO in the next 24 months, then communicate that to investors. A clear path to success is what investors want to see.

6.  Have a clear marketing strategy

As much as an equity fundraising campaign is about raising funds, it is also a marketing campaign. Whilst you will require a strong marketing strategy to raise the funds, it is also a great opportunity to educate people about your product or service. Building awareness is crucial to a successful equity fundraising campaign and the future success of your product.

Social media is an important way to communicate with investors and the public, so having a clear strategy involving content, video and other engagement initiatives is vitally important.

Additionally, you will need to be regularly communicating with your crowd to update them on the business and the campaign’s progress. Our OnMarket crowd have said that a campaign video is what they focus on most when investing. They want to hear from you so that they can gain an understanding of the business from a first-person perspective.

Finally, your campaign page acts as a sales page so you need it to be clear, engaging and informative. Make it easy to follow so that less experienced investors can get a good overview of the business.

7.  Keep investors involved

Regular communication with your investors is important. Investors want to receive more than just equity in return for their investment, they want to be a part of the journey on an ongoing basis. This means that they need to be regularly updated about your business throughout the campaign and post-campaign.

Investors want to know what the company is doing, any additional features of the product or service and they will want to ask questions as well as be kept updated on the progress of the campaign. OnMarket provides the perfect platform for investor communication with a live issuer dashboard that provides live updates on the campaign and allows you to answer investor’s questions.

Finally, your investors can become your biggest supporters. They have a network that extends beyond what you could otherwise generate. If they feel as though they are a part of the journey they are more likely to want to share information about the business with their friends and family or through their social network.

8. Create a Great Video

Steven Williams, Founder at Drop Studio: “Fundraising videos can give your project the edge. A good video with an interesting story can help turn the tide of your campaign and help you be successful when fundraising.

Before you start creating your video, make sure that you have a good script, one that is well-produced, and also ensure you spend enough time planning your positioning statement. By having a good script you can ensure that your video is engaging to the potential supporters of your campaign.”

9. Engage Everyone who Believes in you

The key to a successful fundraising campaign is about engaging everyone who believes in you and your business; from your customers and advocates to your personal and business networks. By doing this effectively, you’ll reap the broader benefits of fundraising, which go well beyond an injection of funds as you’ll be supported by a diverse crowd of your biggest advocates who have a vested interest in seeing your business succeed.

10. “Don’t get tempted to overvalue”

Neil Garner, Founder & CEO at mobile tech and payments platform Thyngs:“Check out the competition – learn how the winners work and ensure you are clearly better/different to any competition fundraising at the same time. And don’t get tempted to overvalue the business. What a lay investor may be willing to pay today might be more than an experienced investor will pay at Series A; nothing like a down round to hack off previously supportive investors!”

How do I Improve my Crowdfunding Campaign?

Crowdfunding promotion is essential – especially with so many other campaigns out there on various platforms competing for your prospective backers’ money!

With hundreds of thousands of campaigns on multiple platforms, knowing how to promote a crowdfunding campaign cost-effectively in crucial. To help give your campaign an edge, here are six crowdfunding promotion tips to keep in mind to help you better reach out to and obtain funding from potential backers!

While there really is no single best way to promote crowdfunding,a combination of the following online and offline strategies can help to boost your campaign’s visibility and attract prospective backers quickly!

1. Work with Influencers

Working with social media influencers, even micro influencers, can potentially be a great crowdfunding promotion strategy. Reach out to relevant influencers with sizeable followings and see about collaborating on various projects to expose your campaign to a new audience, or at the very least, see if they can drop a quick mention of your campaign!

2. Use Video Marketing on Social Media

If you’re exploring how to promote a crowdfunding campaign on social media, video marketing is always an excellent idea. Try posting videos on your social media platforms about your team members, product development, news and the like in order to help establish a connection with your backers and give your campaign a more human touch, especially in its early stages.

3. Show Your Backers Appreciation

Show your backers appreciation by offering them free samples of your product, branded apparel and other fun rewards. This will not only help keep them engaged and eager to keep donating, but also create some positive PR and turn them into advocates for your campaign, getting their friends involved and spreading the word about it in general.

4. Promote Your Campaign at Local Events

This is especially useful if your products primarily for a local audience.

Apart from carrying out online crowdfunding promotion efforts,it’s important to engage with people in real life at local events. Try creating an event and inviting people nearby you believe may be interested. You can demonstrate how your product works, give away free samples and, more generally, get the word out about it in general. Be sure to promote these events on social media too!

5. Join Forums

You want to create as much awareness as possible about your crowdfunding campaign. Go ahead and join as many relevant online forums as possible to do this!

There are many highly-active forums online that cater to crowdfunding campaigns, such as crowdfundingforum.com. These digital forums offer the perfect place to promote your campaign, engage with prospective backers, learn tips, bring aboard new team members and more!

6. Partner with Marketing Professionals

Finally, consider partnering with a marketing and advertising agency or consultant in order to better promote your campaign.

Marketing professionals, while they do come with a price tag, can offer invaluable advice when it comes to promoting your crowdfunding campaign, including particular expertise in areas such as paid advertising, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing and more!

How do you run a Successful Capital Campaign?

So, your organization needs to raise a significant amount of money for a particular project. This might be a long-awaited renovation for your organization’s headquarters or perhaps another big-ticket project that can’t be covered by your annual fundraising efforts alone.

After examining all fundraising routes, you’ve determined that a capital campaign is the right way to go.

Before you dive straight into fundraising, there are a number of steps that you have to take to properly plan your capital campaign. To get your capital campaign off the ground, you should:

1. Assemble a Campaign Commitee

A capital campaign cannot survive with one person calling all of the shots. It is a team initiative that requires the support and commitment of several people.

In particular, a capital campaign needs specific individuals to ensure successful cohesion. Generally, these people will include:

• Members of your board of directors. Your entire board doesn’t need to be on your capital campaign committee, but make sure that you’ve enlisted the help of your key members before you start planning your capital campaign. Board members are often the most invested and well-connected individuals on your capital campaign team. They will be essential during the fundraising process (and may even contribute large gifts of their own).
• Staff members. Depending on your type of nonprofit, these team members may be faculty, heads of departments, or senior executives. It’s a good idea to have a selection of people from different departments and areas for a well-rounded capital campaign team.
• Community volunteers. Your capital campaign team should not be comprised solely of organization members. Regular supporters of and advocates for your nonprofit are perfect candidates for your capital campaign team. These supporters may have benefited from your services and be alumni, previous hospital patients, or recipients of your goodwill.
• Valuable prospects. Be sure to include key giving prospects in your capital campaign committee. They can provide unique perspective as donors that your nonprofit can leverage to better plan your capital campaign from the start.

Depending on the size of your committee and the scope of your capital campaign, you may need to break up your team into various subcommittees to help handle smaller or more detailed projects.

Types of subcommittees that you could potentially create include:

• Government relations
• Loans and “bridge funding”
• Major gifts
• Funding from religious congregations
• Corporate donations
• In-kind donations
• Marketing
• Special events
• And more!

As you can see, the options for subcommittees can become lengthy and involved. Make sure that your main committee meets regularly to get updates from each subcommittee.

Finally, you may need the help of additional people that aren’t included on your committee. These individuals can come from within your organization or be externally contracted (like an embedded capital campaign director).

In general, you should look to the following individuals or groups for additional help during the planning process of your capital campaign:

• Major gifts officer
• Prospect researcher
• Planned giving officer
• And more!

As mentioned before, capital campaigns are not meant to be tackled alone. Depending on your goal and your organization’s resources, the composition of these teams may differ.

2. Screen all Capital Campaign Prospects

To help you discover your major gift donors and lead donors, you should conduct a prospect screening before you make appeals.

Prospect research can help you find all sorts of information such as:

• Past giving to your organization
• Donations made to other organizations and political campaigns
• Real estate ownership
• Organizational and business affiliations
• Stock ownership
• Basic information like name, address, marital status, and age

Having this information at your fingertips will help you determine the giving levels for your hierarchy of gifts. It will also be helpful when you make donation appeals to your major gift donors. The more you know about a prospect’s giving patterns the better prepared you will be to make donation appeals.

3. Set a Campaign Deadline

One of the components of a capital campaign that distinguishes it from some other fundraising efforts is that it has a deadline. While annual funds and endowments can be replenished at any time, funds for a capital campaign must be made within the allotted time.

Set a realistic deadline for your capital campaign, but account for unexpected events that could stall your fundraising and throw off your capital campaign plan.

A capital campaign can last anywhere from one year to several depending on your fundraising efforts and your system for pledges. Pick a deadline that makes the most sense with regard to your project and how long you think the fundraising stages will be.

The most important thing to remember when picking your capital campaign’s deadline? Always keep it flexible. Don’t let your campaign run on and on if you hit fundraising roadblocks. This can be a sign that it’s time to head back to the drawing board, and not to drag a campaign out that can’t support itself.

Conversely, if you hit your fundraising stride near the planned deadline for your capital campaign, don’t be afraid to keep fundraising. Your campaign’s deadline should be a guidepost and not a brick wall.

Our top tip for setting your capital campaign deadline? Explore available resources to help your organizational leaders plan a campaign and stay on track for the duration.

One great example of this is the Capital Campaign Toolkit, a resource that guides nonprofit leaders through a seven-phase campaign plan. A combination of online resources and expert capital campaign advising, the Toolkit is a step-by-step path to campaign success.

When using the Toolkit, your nonprofit gains access to templates, checklists, worksheets, and campaign experts to fully map out your campaign and any appropriate deadlines. With access to the Toolkit’s private Facebook group, weekly advising calls, and expert advisors, the Capital Campaign Toolkit has built-in accountability to keep you on track.

4. Decide on your Capital Fundraising Goals

One of the most important planning components of your capital campaign is setting your financial goal. Naturally, this will depend on the scope of your proposed project, but make sure that you are accounting for hidden costs as well as obvious expenses.

Hidden costs that you might not initially account for in your capital campaign goal include:

• Fundraising costs. Between marketing materials, the costs of fundraising events, and other related expenses, it’s difficult to raise a large sum of money without spending some money. Make sure that your financial goal takes these costs into account.
• Attrition costs. Many capital campaigns rely on pledges that are disbursed over the course of a number of years. Some of the value of these pledges will be reduced, often through nonpayment. Keep these attrition costs in mind when you start planning your financial goal and remember that attrition costs should not exceed 10% of your final goal.
• Inflation. This hidden cost may be more difficult to calculate than others, but you can still try to prepare for the costs associated with inflation over the course of your capital campaign.

Make sure that you accurately calculate all costs associated with your capital campaign. The financial goal will be integral when making your donation appeal to major gift donors, corporations, and other individual supporters.

5. Review Past Fundraising Results

Before determining who to solicit for donations and how you will raise money for your capital campaign, it’s a good idea to look to the past to determine which route to take.

If you have implemented a direct mail campaign that has worked in the past, consider using that method to communicate with your supporters.

Looking to the past can be a great way to give all of your fundraising methods a boost, but it can be especially helpful when planning a capital campaign. Since you need to raise a significant amount of money by a certain deadline, it’s useful to have all of your best fundraising strategies in the back of your mind.

6. Set a Campaign Budget

As mentioned earlier, capital campaigns are designed to raise money for a particular venture, but they also require the spending of funds. Before you launch your campaign, make sure that you have a designated budget set aside for fundraising costs and other expenses.

Potential costs could include:

• Fundraising events. Depending on the type of event, you might need to pay for or rent certain services.
• Major gift donor cultivation. Asking major donors for contributions requires more than a simple phone call. It involves meetings, lunches, and other events that are designed to persuade the individual to donate to your capital campaign. Your team will have to spend some money during this cultivation process.
• Marketing materials and support documents. Your capital campaign will have to have various marketing materials available for donors to learn more about the campaign. Whether completed in house or by a marketing agency, these marketing materials should be factored into your budget.

You might find that your capital campaign has other associated costs not listed here. Make sure that you account for all of the expenses that you might incur during the planning and implementation process.

7. Create a Plan to Avoid Campaign Disaster

Just like you accounted for hidden costs, you’ll want to create a plan for unforeseen circumstances during your capital campaign. These events could range from small hiccups to large roadblocks that stall your project for several months.

Although you probably don’t have a crystal ball that can accurately foretell the future, you can try to account for issues that may arise during the planning and implementation of your capital campaign.

Your subcommittees and the main committee should keep each other regularly updated on progress to catch problems earlier rather than later.

8. Create a Capital Campaign Plan

Once you know how many gifts you’ll need from each donor level, you’ll want to plot out a fundraising course for obtaining those gifts. The capital campaign committee should kick off the giving with their own donations, but after that, you’ll need to determine when and how you go after major gifts, lead gifts, and smaller donations.

Remember: your capital campaign plan can be subject to change. Allow yourself flexibility with your plan so you can course-correct as issues arise.

However, it’s important to stay in line with your capital campaign plan as much as possible. Set checkpoint dates for your team to evaluate fundraising success.

If you’re consistently failing to meet benchmarks, that could be a sign that your fundraising goal isn’t attainable or that you need to head back to the pre-planning stage to get the right prospects in line to contribute gifts.

9. Plan out a Campaign Timeline

Going along with your fundraising course, you’ll need to create a detailed campaign timetable for each step of the capital campaign.

This timeline should include two main phases:

1. Quiet Phase. This is the stage in which you make appeals to major donors, corporations, and government agencies. During the quiet phase, many capital campaigns receive 50 to 70% of their overall goal.
2. Public Phase. After a kickoff ceremony, the capital campaign is made open to the public. At this point, donors can contribute whatever they want, whenever they want.

You can fill in the details of these two phases with the particulars as they relate to your specific capital campaign.

10. Write a Capital Campaign Case Statement

Your case statement is what you will use during your donation appeals to convince prospects that your project is worth funding. It is a flexible document that gives details about the capital campaign. It answers questions and sells the campaign as being worthwhile.

It is also helpful when developing proposals and brochures, writing speeches, and establishing accountability with donors.

Your case statement should be professional, visually appealing, and informative. It should highlight your organization’s past and current accomplishments and explain why you need money for your capital campaign.

This single document will be the basis for the majority of the rest of your marketing materials.

How Long Should a Crowdfunding Campaign last?

If you’re not thinking about how long your crowdfunding campaign will last, you should be. The length of your campaign can seriously impact your chance of success. Too short and it won’t gain momentum. Too long and it’ll lose momentum altogether.

Campaign length differs from platform to platform. Kickstarter lets you choose anywhere from 1 – 60 days. Indiegogo lets you set any amount of time you like. So what’s the best timeframe to choose?

Clay Herbert from Crowdfundinghacks.com has a definite answer to this question.

“Your project should last 30 days.”

Now, this figure isn’t just plucked from the air. Kickstarter witness their highest success rates when a campaign lasts 30 days or less. But why is this?

Why are long campaigns bad?

You might think that by setting a long timeframe, you’re giving yourself the best possible chance at getting funded. After all, the longer the runway, the more backers can get on board, right? Well, as we’ve seen, the research shows this isn’t the case.

More work, less money

Campaign momentum is highest when it’s first launched and right before it ends. The in-between period can lag. It’s really difficult to keep that sense of urgency going over a long stretch of time. If you give yourself a very long middle period, the chances are your campaign momentum will peter out before you reach the finish line.

This is because backers need urgency to get excited about a campaign. If a project is ending in 60 days time, there’s no urgency to pledge. They’re not going to miss out on anything if they decide to donate at a later time. Chances are though, they’ll forget about your campaign and forget to donate.

Campaigns that end sooner are much more likely to secure donations. You need to tap into that FOMO.

There could also be a link between the length of your campaign and the level of confidence felt by backers. A long campaign timeframe could indicate that the creator isn’t confident about reaching their goal quickly. Which is interpreted by backers as a lack of confidence in their idea. Backers will pick up on these subtle signs and bypass your campaign.

What is the Best Form of Marketing for a Crowdfunding Project?

Chris Dyson of TripleSEO offers a three-phased approach that includes some pre-launch steps.

Build your Audience: encompasses a lot of the pre-launch steps we talked about in the previous posts like understanding who is most likely to support your campaign and building a blog to reach them. Even with more than two billion people online, only a miniscule fraction are going to be interested in your product or social cause.

Spending your time or money marketing to the rest is a waste of time. It’s ok though, even the fraction of people that will be interested could be tens of thousands of eager supporters.

What do your potential supporters do online? Are they on specific blogs or forums?

Creating a blog is much easier than you probably think. You really only need a few pages that describe your campaign and to which you can post regular updates or thoughts. Chris gets a little detailed with some of his suggestions, diving into what colors represent emotionally, but it’s definitely worth a look for ideas and guidance.

Besides posting something to your blog at least once a week, you need to reach out to other blogs as well. The blogs where your potential supporters hang out already have an audience, why not reach theirs?

Setting up your Funding Campaign: encompasses some of the campaign description and marketing material that will go on your crowdfunding page. This is really still part of your pre-launch stage because you’ll want to test the ideas with friends and family before you put them live on the ‘net.

Even if your campaign is for a social cause, you’ll want to offer some kind of reward to supporters. If your crowdfunding campaign is to produce a product or business, then you can offer different levels of your product. If your campaign is an emotional plea for a social cause, get creative with your rewards.

You absolutely must have a video for your campaign, I would recommend a few. Crowdfunding marketing with videos have a much higher success rate and you can use these videos on YouTube as extra marketing.

Campaign is Live: After your campaign is online, you’ll want to really step it up with your marketing strategy.

Keep guest posting through the end of your campaign. This is really the best and cheapest way to bring people to your crowdfunding campaign page.

Keep your community informed through tweets and other social media updates. Reach out personally to the most enthusiastic and see if you can get them to volunteer some time for the campaign

Why do Crowdfunding Campaigns Fail?

Here is the harsh reality of crowdfunding – 85% of campaign fail. Gone are the days when you launch a campaign and it goes viral with little promotional effort. If you think you can build a product and expect it to magically generate sales on its own, you are in for a rude awakening.  

But here’s the good news. With the right strategic plan and preparation, you can successfully create and execute a successful crowdfunding campaign.

We spoke with our marketing partner, Sean Angus, president and co-founder of The LaunchPad Agency who was voted one of the best marketing agencies in Los Angeles in 2019 and has a 92% success rate in crowdfunding. Here is what they had to say are the top mistakes they see campaigners making on their crowdfunding campaigns.

1. Not enough social capital

Lack of social capital is the #1 reason why most campaigns fail. It is critical to hit the key milestone of reaching at least 30% of your funding goal in the first 48 hours. If you do not hit this mark, the stats show that you have a 70% failure rate.

If you do not have a strong network of friends, family investors and more ready to back your campaign, then conducting prelaunch marketing activities to build a targeted email list of potential backers is key to launching with a bang and ultimately campaign success.

2. Not properly preparing

Once the campaign starts, you should already be ready to go. First and foremost, you should have a timeline of the events that are about to occur, including timing of launch, updates, ads, and other elements of the campaign. You should also have all your images, video content, and copywriting that you need for your campaign page and advertising ready to rock.

You should also know what your budget is for advertising, along with a little leeway in case you have to make a last-minute adjustment. We’re not saying you can’t roll with the punches if you come to find that you need to make little adjustments but starting off strong with a plan could mean the difference between a hot mess and success.

3. Not setting a realistic funding goal

Setting too high of a funding goal is a common reason why crowdfunding campaigns fail. You need to make sure you have at least 30% of your funding goal ready to be invested into the campaign in the first 2 days. Prior to launch, we recommend doing a realistic assessment on the strength of your social capital and estimate how much you can raise from them.

If your campaign falters at the start, visitors to your campaign may be dissuaded from supporting it as people only want to back winners. The goal is to exceed key campaign milestones in the first couple of days to ensure you are trending and showing success. With the funding momentum created at launch, Indiegogo/Kickstarter algorithms will kick in and will increase your campaign’s visibility within their community. 

4. Bad content

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then you’d better be sure it’s saying the right thing. Your images should help you tell the story and your messaging should be concise, well thought out, and consistent. It’s always important to use a professional photographer and copywriter. Nothing loses your audience’s faith in you faster than a bad first impression.

5. Uninspiring campaign video

Your video should highlight the product, but also gives your audience a taste of what the experience with your company will be like. An average campaign video should run about 2-3 minutes. No more. And it is very important to get your message across in the first 30 seconds.

You need to come out and say what this is and why people need it in the opening salvo of the video. Studies show that 60% of the people stop watching a video after the first 30 seconds. 

A video that’s short, easy to watch, and convincingly tells your story is key to converting your visitors and getting them to support you. Brand-building is essential to running a successful crowdfunding campaign and you need to start off on the right foot with a great video.

6. A unique product

Sure, your product is cool, but has it been done before? Make sure you do your homework before you start just in case someone else had the same idea.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t revamp the idea into something bigger and better, but make sure there is enough of a difference (and that difference is a strength) that you have something new to say about it. You will need to be able to differentiate yourself from similar products on the market and convince people to invest in your product.

7. Not being strategic about rewards

As much as people want to help out new inventors and artists, crowdfunding is usually a quid pro quo. People feel good about giving something to a project they believe in, but they feel even better about getting something in return.

Make sure you have a few tiers of rewards, giving the lowest price to the early backers and saving a higher price-point (although reasonable and still a discount to what your retail price will be) for those who back your campaign later on.

Of course, you always want to create a perceived valued discount and a sense of urgency utilizing limited perk quantities. In addition, you can also create new perks, promote flash sales, advertise secret perks (Indiegogo) and other tactics to rev up a campaign that may have stalled.

8. Not having an integrated approach

It’s more important than ever that your campaign marketing strategy includes engaging your target audiences in several channels. The more channels in which you can reach your customers, the greater your chance for success.

An integrated campaign utilizing PR, social media, digital marketing and online advertising is essential in creating interest and driving massive amounts of traffic to your campaign. This means more than just placing a few Facebook ads and spending lots of money. Making sure you have the right combination in place along with the proper execution will help skyrocket you to success.

9. Not having a budget for advertising

You think the internet is free? Guess again! One study by Sprout Social even showed that organic reach on a Like page was only 6.4% of your fans. That’s not a lot, especially if you’re trying to keep them updated about a campaign launch.

Read Also: Investing With Intelligence: 7 Tips for Tracking Performance of Your Investment

To be successful, a campaigner needs to drive visitors to their campaign so they can convert them to purchase. PR and Facebook ads deliver the best ROI by far and are the biggest drivers of crowdfunding campaign funding.

Be prepared to spend money on Facebook, Instagram, and other places where your audience lives to promote campaign awareness. As they say, you need to spend money to make money. And that is especially true in today’s crowdfunding ecosystem. 

10. Not having a solid shipping strategy for shipping fulfillment

If you don’t have a fulfillment plan for your rewards, you’ll need one before your campaign ends. Delivering your backer rewards quickly and in a timely fashion will build trust and earn you the brand loyalty you need to translate your campaign’s success into ongoing company success.

Don’t let overestimation of cost, long lead times, and other unforeseen problems squelch all the goodwill you’ve garnered from a successful campaign. Underestimating on the fulfillment cost can cut into much of your profit if you are not careful and is one of the main reasons why crowdfunding campaigns that were seemingly successful, fail.

Finally

Now you have everything you need to plan a successful equity fundraising campaign. Remember, Acknowledging every donor – big and small – is a huge part of maintaining a successful and healthy campaign. Since a fundraising campaign could last from anywhere between one to five years in total, make sure you’ve already outlined the strategies for tackling this final phase.