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Mid-Campaign Marketing: Keep Reaching!

Use this time to rally around the next circle of supporters and continue implementing your marketing plan.

 

Mid-campaign is the time to rally around the next supporters referred by previous funders, or to methodically continue implementing your marketing plan. Most crowdfunding campaigns follow a predictable trajectory of initial success followed by a Valley of Death–the period of time immediately following the initial surge of interest that can feel a lot like a lull. Here are some ideas to keep your mid-campaign marketing moving forward:

  • Now is the time to reach out to a wider audience. Brainstorm with your team on where you can go next for support and the media channels to use to reach them.
  • Launch new rewards to build excitement around a different offering that your growing audience will be delighted to share.  
  • Update your early contributors about your campaign progress, new rewards and other news and ask them to share the campaign with their friends, workplace and connections on social media. 
  • Emphasize sharing on social media and direct emails with incentives like giveaways, discounts, or even unveiling a new reward! 
  • Create updated press releases and digital content for social media and newsletter lists featuring campaign updates, celebrating wins, and sharing what’s needed to move forward to reach your goals. 
  • Think about the affinity groups that may be interested in your work or who your team is connected with and reach out with information about your campaign.
Mid-Campaign Marketing: Keep Reaching!

We know that most crowdfunding campaigns experience a Valley of Death after the first week, and that continued focus on marketing and outreach allows for a steady climb up from that lull, making for an overall trajectory of crowdfunded success that looks a lot like a familiar zoo favorite!

 

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The Possibilities of Successful Crowdfunding

Did you know a successful crowdfunding campaign can reap many benefits beyond capital for your business, professional networks, and community?

 

Did you know that a successful crowdfunding campaign can reap benefits for your business, professional networks, and community?

While a need for capital is what brings many to the innovative tool, the power of crowdfunding extends far beyond raising funds.

As you begin to set your campaign goals, collect resources, and make a plan, consider these ways your successful crowdfunding campaign can make an impact. 

  • It builds a community of supportive followers who rally around your project thanks to shared interest and investment in their neighborhood.
  • It attracts new collaborative partnerships and opens doors for conversation around your mission with individuals and organizations who are intrigued by the work you’re doing. 
  • It allows you to crowdsource ideas and feedback on your project or offering and creates a space to market test an idea or product with presales. 
  • It creates a centralized platform for you to formulate and tell your unique and compelling story with the use of multimedia like video, social media, and email campaigns.
  • It broadens your audience and potential customer base with shareable content, cultivating a more robust brand awareness within your community.
  • Last but not least, it allows you to reach toward your network of cheerleaders within your community and exchange your irresistible rewards for funds in support of your future success!

The Possibilities of Crowdfunding

 

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Growing Gratitude in Four Steps

Gratitude is learned in adolescence as our brains begin to build muscles around the expression at the heart of community support.

Early in adolescence, our brains begin to conceptualize and build muscles around the experience and expression of a cornerstone of community support: growing gratitude. 

In The Gratitude Project, Maryam Abdullah, Giacamo Bono, Jeffrey Froh, Andrea Hussong and Kira Newman write of their global studies on the roots and evolution of gratitude, exploring how the experience moves beyond a social custom and toward a deep moral value, and they define the process of learning gratitude in four components:

  1. What do we notice for which we are grateful–a gift, a moment, a simple joy?
  2. How do we think about what’s been given to us and why it was given? Was it an unexpected act of kindness, a gesture of support, an extension of love?
  3. How do we feel about what we’ve been given–happy, joyful, appreciative?
  4. What do we do to express appreciation in return? Do we give a hug or thank you note or are we inspired to pay it forward and offer the gift of giving to others?

Just as children learn to grow their gratitude muscles with cognitive development and the support of their environments and caretakers, we can stretch ourselves to dig deeper toward gratitude with practice of this process of notice-think-feel and do.

Growing Gratitude in Four Steps

 

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How to Ask Your Neighbors for Support

Because asking for support can feel uncomfortable, here are a few concepts to consider when reaching to your neighbors to ask for a hand.

 

One of The Local Crowd’s unique features is the opportunity for local businesses to contribute rewards in support of a campaign’s goal. 

For example, imagine a neighborhood bakery raising funds to purchase a display case for additional baked goods with help from their peers at the coffee roastery next door. The roastery can donate a few pounds of coffee for their friends to offer for sale on their campaign, and benefit from the exposure and potential for gaining a new customer in a mutually beneficial exchange that Michael H. Shuman calls “the gateway for challenging economic behavior.”

Because asking for support can feel uncomfortable, here are a few concepts to consider when reaching to your neighbors to ask for a hand:

Keep it Conversational: Explore your potential collaboration with an open mind and approach your neighbors with a conversational tone, as opposed to rigidly asking in a way that could appear demanding or harsh.

Transparency is Key: Avoid any illusions of smoke in mirrors by remaining open about the goals of your campaign and the intention of your request for support. You may be surprised who is willing to offer support when it’s clear that their contribution will go to something they genuinely want to see succeed.

Focus on the Mutual Exchange: In the end, everyone wants to win, and fortunately, they can! As you brainstorm with your neighbors, explore how you can highlight their endeavors, products, or goals for their business in exchange for their support toward yours. 

 

 

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4 Common Pitfalls of Boring Campaign Videos

Create a dynamic and compelling campaign video by avoiding these four common pitfalls in videos that leave audiences scrolling past.

In online communication, video is king.

Your campaign video could be the first and only content your audience consumes on your campaign page, making it arguably the most important element of your marketing. Create a dynamic and compelling video by avoiding these four common pitfalls in videos that leave audiences scrolling on to the next thing:

  • Keep it short: The longer we spend on the internet the shorter our attention span becomes. Stick to 90 seconds or less to keep your viewers engaged through the video’s entire message. 
  • Get to the point: Hook your audience with beautiful imagery, an interesting fact, the reason they need to stick around and listen right away to keep them from losing interest before they’ve even begun. 
  • Show your face + use your voice: People connect to people, not slideshows. Recognize that feeling uncomfortable recording yourself is nearly universal; however, it is a fundamental part of creating a genuine connection between the person behind the screen and you, the person behind your mission.
  • Double-check the small stuff: With today’s smartphones, DIY video can be equally as successful in a crowdfunding campaign as high-production quality with careful attention to your lighting, any distracting background sounds, and avoiding overpowering music or sound effects.

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Build Strong Connections with Your Community

Your crowdfunding campaign’s strategy must include time and effort dedicated to building connections with your community.

One of the fundamentals of successful crowdfunding is a high-quality connection with your community of potential supporters. Whether you’re staying in touch with thoughtful email notes, personalized thank yous, or quick conversations over coffee, your campaign’s strategy must include time and effort dedicated to the relationships at hand. 

Here are a few tools to streamline your connections and create dynamic and effective conversations with your crowd:

  • Social Media Scheduling Apps: Create a dynamic content marketing calendar and schedule your Facebook and Instagram posts across your social media channels with a scheduling app like Later or Hootesuite. Both businesses offer free versions of their tools and can help you drastically increase your productivity by batch creating your content and scheduling ahead of time.
  • Email Templates: Cut down on your email writing time by creating templates to copy, paste, and add personalized messaging to. Gmail users can save template emails with just a few simple steps detailed here, or you can create a folder of pre-written texts to keep nearby on your desktop when you’re sending your messages to your connections throughout your campaign.
  • Online Design Software: In digital communications, compelling visuals are as important as text, but graphic design isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Tools like Canva offer a free, intuitive platform with a diverse library of templates for graphics to add to your social media posts, email messages, or even print off as notes or flyers to pass out in your community.

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Effective Social Media for Your Campaign

An effective social media post will inspire, intrigue, and prompt your audience to learn more about your crowdfunding campaign. 

 

In order to create effective social media posts to share with your network, you want to make sure you’re communicating in a way that inspires, intrigues, and ideally prompts your audience to learn more about your campaign. 

As you craft your content, regardless of which platform you’re sharing it on, be sure to touch on all of the following as you build your most effective social media post: 

  • Who are you speaking to and who are you speaking about?
  • What is it that you’re excited to share with them today?
  • When and where is what you’re sharing happening? Is there a deadline, an event, any specifics that are pertinent to a viewer of your message who is interested in participating further?
  • Why should they, or any member of your audience, care to listen, learn more, or support you?
  • Last, but not least, how should they move forward? This is your call to action, and it’s key to any effective marketing message!

Your best social media content will communicate in a way that inspires, intrigues, and ideally prompts your audience to learn more about your campaign.

 

Take a look at how campaign hosts are connecting to their communities on our campaign page. Don’t forget to sign up for The Local Crowd newsletter with the form below, and follow along on Facebook to stay connected and learn more!

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Inspire Your Audience to Take Action on Your Crowdfunding Campaign

Create marketing content that inspires your audience to take immediate action.

 

A call to action (CTA) is a strategic part of marketing strategy that inspires your audience to take immediate action upon responding to the content you’re sharing on your social media feeds, press releases, digital content, or traditional advertising mediums. This small but mighty sentence is the workhorse of your content and ideally, you’ll include one in every social media post you share. 

Curious about how to inspire your audience to leap into action? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when our campaign launches and take advantage of our early-bird rewards! 
  • Visit the link below by Friday at midnight to pre-order this one-of-a-kind product and support our business’ crowdfunding campaign!
  • Share our campaign on your favorite social media platform and help us spread the word as we near our crowdfunding goal! 
  • Comment below with what menu item you’re most excited to try once we meet our campaign goal and launch our food truck! (Tag your friends who will join you for an afternoon treat!)

A call to action (CTA) is a strategic part of marketing strategy that prompts your audience to take immediate action upon responding to the content you’re sharing on your social media feeds, press releases, digital content, or traditional advertising mediums.

Take a look at how businesses have inspired their communities to lend a hand of support on our campaign page. Don’t forget to sign up for The Local Crowd newsletter with the form below, and follow along on Facebook to stay connected and learn more!

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Relationships & Rewards Bolster COVID-19-Challenged Economy

Local businesses make up the fabric of any prosperous community, and all have seen an impact from the ongoing COVID-19-challenged economy. 

Local businesses make up the fabric of any prosperous community, and all have seen a profound impact from the present and ongoing COVID-19-challenged economy. 

In his recent publication, “The Case for Local Rewards (In the Post-COVID Era),” Michael H. Shuman writes, “Rewards that incentivize local purchasing and local investing are increasingly becoming the gateways for challenging economic behavior.”

We know that relationships are a foundation for resiliency and prosperity in the rural economy. As people connect to businesses and businesses connect to local initiatives, a mutual and collaborative support structure is built, creating a foundation to revive in the face of turmoil. Through the crowdfunding lens, as Shuman writes, pre-purchased rewards offer a tangible and mutually beneficial approach to locally lending a hand.

Imagine a local farmer in need of support after the pandemic’s mandated closures of their wholesale restaurant accounts. The business needs money to survive, just as the community needs access to fresh food.

The farmer can raise capital by pre-selling produce shares at a discounted rate, allowing their business to gain financial support, and the community will receive a monthly delivery of fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables. Both the customer and the business benefit, thus cultivating a richer relationship and progress toward a healing community at large in a troubling time.

Read more on the power of locally owned businesses in the rural economy in the full publication, “The Case for Local Rewards (In the Post-COVID Era)” from economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur Michael H. Shuman here. 

Relationships & Rewards Bolster COVID-Challenged Economy

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Your Crowdfunding Budget: The Magic of Knowing Your Numbers

A successful campaign that reaches (and even exceeds) its goals always starts with knowing the numbers of your crowdfunding budget.

 

Creating a crowdfunding budget for a campaign not only looks at your financial goals and projections, but factors in your contacts from email, social media, and other networks within your community. 

Did you know only one in five crowdfunding campaigns reaches its full fundraising goal? If you want your campaign to be one of the successful ones — that reaches (and even exceeds) its goals — you will need to know your numbers confidently.
We know that 85-90% of the backers that give to your campaign are driven to do so by calls to action by you. This means that the desired number you wish to reach at the end of your campaign must correlate with the length and diversity of your contact list. It is essential to strategize realistic goals that factor in all the necessary costs to manage your campaign.

When you calculate your numbers, keep in mind that about ten percent of your contacts will convert — meaning, on average, one in ten of the people you reach to and ask for support, will follow through. 

As you crunch the numbers, you may find your target funding goal to be too steep to be fulfilled by the length of your contact list. Fortunately, now you know.  You can then be better prepared for a slam-dunk campaign by spending more time focused on growing your network or strategizing a project of achievable size. 

Your Crowdfunding Budget: The Magic of Knowing Your Numbers

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