Did you know you can also use crowdfunding for business and launch your online store?

In fact, crowdfunding is expected to be the future of small business financing where the focus will be on community building.

So how does crowdfunding work in helping you launch an e-commerce store?

Here’s everything you need to know.

What is Crowdfunding?  

Crowdfunding uses a platform like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to connect business owners or project creators to an online community who may be interested in investing, funding, or backing the project.

For a complete understanding of crowdfunding, download the Crowdfunding Launch Playbook.

What is Crowdfunding for Business?

Sometimes, project creators or innovators have just enough funds to create a product prototype. To sell the product to an audience, they would need funding.

Banks or VCs don’t often support product funding unless it has immense potential to disrupt the industry.

Most crowdfunding products are a novelty and hence do not have enough viability to attract the support of bank or VC loans.

This is where crowdfunding for business works its magic.

• Project creators launch their products on a crowdfunding platform.
• They set a funding goal that they need to bring the product to market.
• They set various pledge amounts that backers can “pledge” in return for an early bird price.
• The more people “back” the product, the faster it will reach funding goals.

Once the funding goal is reached, the product owner uses that amount to start manufacturing the product and delivers to backers on the estimated delivery date.

With the help of crowdfunding, the project owner has achieved three key benefits:

1. Received funding from a community to kickstart product development.

2. Now has a community of early adopters and buyers who are also creating hype & boosting the brand image.

3. Now has the chance to take this audience off Kickstarter and to the owner’s personal store.

In some cases, these business owners also launch brick and mortar stores which is then visited by their backers who are in the same city/country.

It’s a win-win deal!

Sounds Easy So Why Isn’t Everyone Using Crowdfunding to Launch E-commerce Stores?

Because without an audience or a community, you are selling to crickets.

And an audience won’t come if they don’t trust you.

With crowdfunding, you’re essentially asking people to pledge/invest in your product without:

• knowing you
• any social proof of your product
• any experience of your product.

So as easy as it sounds, using crowdfunding to launch your e-commerce store requires a strategic approach.

How to Launch E-commerce Store Using Crowdfunding?

While there’s a lot of work involved in launching an e-commerce store using crowdfunding, you can begin by taking these basic steps:

1. Conduct a Market Survey of Your Product:

Never begin a crowdfunding campaign without conducting a survey to understand audience expectations of your product.

One of the classic mistakes most product founders do is launch directly without adequate market surveys to understand whether the intended audience will even pay for the product.

If you’re selling something for, say, $300 – $500, on a crowdfunding platform, you need to be sure it’s something people would line up to buy!

2. Conduct an In-Depth Research for Similar Products on Crowdfunding Platforms

Always make it a point to conduct in-depth research for other similar products on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

You can go on to the crowdfunding platform, type in the keyword (for e.g fitness smartwatch) and assess the results.

Go through each and list down key points in a spreadsheet as shown here:

This data is important for you to assess so you can position your price point, messaging, and USPs.

3. Build a Landing Page to Showcase Your Product

If you’re new and just starting out, build a landing page to talk about your project.

Don’t lead your crowdfunding audience to an online store yet.

The way it works is the landing page becomes a squeeze page where your audience can sign in so they can become part of your email funnel.

This way you can reach them directly with product updates and launch details.

Here’s an example of a landing page.

4. Start Driving Traffic to the Landing Page Using Free & Paid Mediums

Now that you’ve got the landing page ready, start driving traffic to the page using a combination of free and paid mediums.

Free channels include email marketing, content marketing, social media, word-of-mouth marketing, groups.

Paid channels include Facebook ads, Twitter ads, retargeting ads.

With all this, you direct traffic to your landing page where they can sign up to the deal.

5. Get Ready to Launch When You Have At least Over 200 Sign-ups

For crowdfunding to kickstart, you need to have at least, over 200 sign-ups.

But make sure you calculate this estimation based on your funding goal.

So, if your funding goal is $10,000 and you expect each person to pay at least $79, then 200 ready backers mean you’ll be looking at around $15,800.

That’s just an initial figure to start with.

During your campaign, you’ll be sending out multiple emails, invest more in retargeting and Facebook ads to direct people to the page.

A crowdfunding campaign is live for 30 days only. You have to make sure you meet or exceed your funding goals.

In case you don’t meet your goals, you won’t be able to obtain any amount from Kickstarter because the platform operates on an All-or-Nothing model. This means if you don’t meet your funding goal, you won’t be able to withdraw any money raised.

6. Moving to E-commerce After a Successful Launch

If your product is a hit and you’ve over exceeded your goals by making a 6 or 7-figure raise, you can now invest that money into building an e-commerce store (of course after making sure it’s spent on manufacturing and ensuring delivery on time).

At this point, you’re scaling.

If you’re still unprepared for an e-commerce store, you can raise additional funds using Indiegogo In-Demand, a platform by Indiegogo that allows successful Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns to continue raising funds.

You May Also Like to Read:

5 Essential benefits of crowdfunding: what exactly makes it cool?
How To Achieve Success With A Crowdfunding Campaign? Digital Marketing

Although crowdfunding is supposed to help you with funds for the project, you’ll still need to have some money for marketing and spending on creative assets.

And if you want the help of an agency, you’ll need to have at least $7,000+ set aside.

To Conclude

If you’ve got an amazing product idea but limited funds to get started, you might want to consider crowdfunding. If that proves a success, you can invest the money raised into building your online e-commerce store!

The post How to Use Crowdfunding to Launch Your Online Store appeared first on samitpatel.

What is Google Analytics & How Does it Work for Kickstarter Campaigns? 

Google Analytics is the most powerful weapon you have in your marketing arsenal for your Kickstarter campaign. It’s an analysis and insights dashboard that gives you key insights about your campaign performance, audience behavior, traffic sources, conversion rates, and much more. 

Without these abilities to understand your data, you’ll have a hard time directing your marketing efforts. Worse, your campaign may fail if you don’t know where your traffic is coming from, what’s making them convert, and how you can improvise your strategies based on this data. 

So if you’re launching a Kickstarter campaign, the first thing you need is a Google Analytics integration. This guide will cover everything you need to know about this.

How to Integrate Google Analytics into Your Kickstarter Campaign? 

1.       Set up a free Google Analytics account using the Google Marketing Platform (https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/#?modal_active=none) if you don’t own an analytics account.
2.       If you already have an analytics account, sign in, and create a new Google Analytics Property.

3. Once you set up a page, you’ll be getting a tracking ID. Copy that tracking ID. 

4.   In the About You section of your Kickstarter page, paste the tracking ID. 

5.  In case you are adding Google Analytics after launching your project, you can add your tracking code by going to the Dashboard of the KS campaign and scroll down to the Google Analytics Tracking ID to enter the tracking ID. It may take up to 24 hours for the data to show up in your GA account.

6. Under the ‘View Settings’ select, ‘E-commerce Settings’ and Toggle to ON. This will enable you to track your campaign’s conversion rate.

7. After 24 hours, your Ecommerce data will appear here. It will include important metrics as Product Performance, Sales Performance, Transactions etc. You can also get a real-time overview of your campaign -meaning- you can see the activity on your campaign in real-time. You can follow Realtime -> Overview to see this data.

Now go to your Google Analytics and check Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. You will see all your tracking link stats.

Measuring Individual Posts

Google Analytics gives you an overview of your landing pages and overall website. If you want to measure specific posts – such as a post on Medium, on your own blog or on social media, you can create custom UTM parameters to measure performance. 

To do that, follow the steps given below: 

1. Go to Google’s link builder tool:

Fill the fields with relevant information. The website URL is the link of the content you want to measure.

The campaign source is the platform where the content originates, which could be your blog or a third-party platform.

The campaign medium such as a CPC, an email, or an ad.

The campaign name could be the overarching campaign under which this post is being tracked. It will be shown in your analytics results. Once you fill all this up, you’ll have something that looks like the image below:

Now go to your Google Analytics and check Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. You will see all your tracking link stats.

Pro Tip: It’s important to keep your URL clean and your UTM name easy. You’ll probably end up having dozens of UTMs if you want to measure each post so it’s best to ensure they are easily identifiable and don’t get mixed up. 

Remember it can take up to 24 hours for this campaign to be visible in Analytics. 

Analyzing the Data 

Now that you’ve got it all set up, you’ll need to start analyzing the data. It’ll take some time to get used to all the information, but Google has made it really easy for just about anyone to analyze their data and get the necessary insights. 

Some key metrics to look out for are: 

Conversion rates from the E=commerce and Overview section: This is where you get to know your conversion rates, average order value, sales value and much more. 

Real-time Traffic: This comes in handy if you want to measure how many people are checking your campaign page in real-time. Meaning, how many people are on your campaign page right now. The report will also show where they were referred from, their geographical location, and conversions. At the time of the campaign launch, real-time traffic will help you measure impact. 

Acquisitions – All Traffic -Referrals: You can see which of your social media channels are sending the most traffic to your campaign. 

I highly recommend going through Analytics and learning more about the insights you can receive from this powerful platform to prepare for your campaign launch. 

You will need to know the total number of users that visit your page, the number of unique or repeat visitors, the time they spend on your page, their most active hours and days etc. 

Over the years, we’ve helped dozens of clients tap into insights like user behavior on mobile and desktop and referral traffic to optimize and tweak campaigns on the go. 

Without Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics, you’ll be shooting a dart in the dark, causing your campaign to fail. It’s a really simple, free tool (both Google and Facebook Analytics) and with the data it provides, you can really capitalize on your marketing campaigns.

You May Also Like to Read:

The Framework of a Successful Kickstarter Marketing Campaign
How to Start and Launch a Kickstarter Campaign? | Samit Max Patel

These metrics and insights will help you take advantage of in-depth data that when combined with your social media data will deliver the information you need to succeed. 

Need help with your crowdfunding campaign? Reach out to our experts and get free consultation!

The post Using Google Analytics for Kickstarter Campaign – A Quick Guide appeared first on samitpatel.

This may seem like a good enough to give crowdfunding a try, but if you dig beyond the statistics, you’ll know that this percentage sets the bar for crowdfunding quite high. 

There is a common misconception that crowdfunding is free money! All you need to do is bring in a few hundred people, have a landing page ready, set up a campaign, run a few FB ads and the money will come rolling in. Well, sadly, that’s not how it works. 

I’ve spent years as a crowdfunding marketing expert, worked with dozens of businesses, innovators and creators interested in crowdfunding; I can tell you crowdfunding isn’t easy. There are some significant challenges that you have to be prepared for and even then, you may not necessarily be successful. 

Over the years, here’s what most of my clients have to say about the challenges of crowdfunding: 

Being Overwhelmed by the Number of Things to Do

One of the biggest challenges of crowdfunding is to get a dozen things done. If you’re a one-man army, you’re in for some tough luck. 

When you initiate a crowdfunding campaign, you have to do a lot of pre-campaign work which includes all of the following: 

• Building a landing page/website for your campaign and product/business 
• Creating an email list 
• Creating content assets for your marketing plan including videos, images, PR articles 
• Activating your social media channels 
• Hiring marketing specialists to manage your campaign 
• Working aggressively on your online reputation through networking & promotions 
• Creating an action-oriented plan for your campaign 

The list just grows as you get down to the nitty-gritty of things. Your pre-campaign work is important because it sets the precedence for your campaign success later. If you don’t put the work into your pre-campaign, you’ll have a hard time meeting your goals. 

I always advise my clients to have a solid plan in place. A plan that can cater to the various aspects of a crowdfunding campaign – the marketing, the PR, the content, the social media, the email list and so on. 

For example, let’s talk about social media. Your plan should include the number of posts you’ll be sharing in a week, the kind of posts you’ll be boosting or sponsoring for ads, the channels you want to focus on (Facebook is the best for crowdfunding campaigns!) 

The social media plan will take into consideration the number of resources you need to hire, your overall budget and whether you need the help of a crowdfunding marketing specialist to help you through the process. 

Taking Out Time to Build the Email List

The crowdfunding email list is a tough one to put together. In today’s world, people are not only busy but are also discreet with their emails and social media accounts. The challenge gets harder when the email list you’re building is of potential backers – people who will be supporting your business financially.

The challenge then is to make sure that you have excellent, genuine and authentic messaging while also making sure that you tell them how they can be of help to you. 

Remember to build your email list before the campaign and not during the campaign. You won’t have the time or the luxury to build an email list after the campaign. You’ll also be spending a significant amount of time researching and connecting with potential backers, so it makes sense to have a list ready before you launch the campaign. 

Waiting & Hoping that You’ll Meet Your Goals

Unlike other sources of investment, crowdfunding is unpredictable at best. Despite all your best efforts, you will still have to wait and hope that you’ll meet (luckily exceed) your funding goals. 

You are required to constantly “work hard” with your marketing, advertising, PR and communication efforts the whole time your campaign is running. You have to be on your feet to get the funding rolling in.

You May Also Like to Read:

10 Game-Changing Factors For Crowdfunding Success
Top 3 Reasons to Hire a Crowdfunding Marketing Agency
Top 5 Expert Tips For How to Write a Crowdfunding Press Release

This is why it’s so essential to do all your prep-work and planning prior to launching the campaign so that during the campaign you’re just focused on driving more traffic and backers to your campaign. 

Gaining the Trust of Your Backers

In essence, crowdfunding may be considered as a form of donations – which means you need to build that trust with your audience if you want them to fund your project!

Although this may seem challenging, it is possible to gain the confidence of your audience as long as you ensure you have: 

• A product that is market viable 
• A strong story/message that explains why you need crowdfunding 
• Transparent and honest communication 
• A clear breakdown of your timelines
• Meeting of your timelines/deadlines 
• Effective communication with your audience 

The more authentic you are, the better your chances of gaining the trust of your supporters which will eventually translate to more funding! 

Quick and Effective Communication

When you’re busy managing your campaign, you sometimes lose out on communicating with your audience. This could result in a huge setback for your campaign.

When people inquire about your product, post comments on your FB ads or reach out to you for more information, they expect your prompt response. Not being able to respond to your audience means you’re not available and that would deter them from actually funding your project. 

To overcome this, I highly recommend having a team member dedicated solely to answering queries, posting updates and engaging with your audience on a daily basis. 

Crowdfunding was an easy venture years ago, but today, the bar has been raised quite high. People are more specific as to who they are funding (due to a large number of scams!) and need strong reasons to trust you enough to support your cause. 

If you don’t have a clear roadmap of your project, if you don’t have prototypes, if you don’t have resources to create professional content, if you don’t have a solid plan, you will not be successful with crowdfunding. 

Want to know if your project is a good fit for crowdfunding? Hit the contact form and my team will get back to you!

Check out the videos below for more.

The post 5 Challenges of Crowdfunding You Need to Know Before You Take the Plunge appeared first on samitpatel.

Although crowdfunding is a great way to receive investment for your business or product, it does not come without its additional costs. From platform fees to bank fees, credit card processing fees to taxes, you have to pay a significant amount from your pledged amount. 

Other than standard fees, you also have to take into account additional costs for photography, marketing, campaign page creation and a lot more. 

This article aims to give an overview of Indiegogo fees along with other costs so you may have a clear idea of how much money you may have to spend to get your campaign rolling. The costs of a campaign should be factored into your total campaign pledge. 

Indiegogo Platform Fees

Similar to Kickstarter fees, Indiegogo has a 5% platform fee which is deducted from the funds you raise. Remember, fees are only applicable to the funds you have and not on the goal you set. 

Say you raise $25,000, you’ll be paying $1250 as platform fee. 

If you’re using the InDemand program (moving from another crowdfunding platform to Indiegogo) you’ll have to pay 8% platform fees. 

You are not charged any fees if your goal fails with fixed funding. Backers are refunded so no one loses any money if the campaign fails. 

You May Also Like to Read:

How Much Does it Cost to Run a Crowdfunding Campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo?

Transaction Fees

You will need a payment gateway to receive the funds. Indiegogo uses Stripe as a payment gateway and the transaction fee is 3% + $0.30 on each transaction. There may be additional fees charged by the credit card networks and payment processors if contributions are made via a non-local credit card. 

So again, with the $25,000, you’ll be paying $750 as transaction fees. 

The above was merely your platform and transaction fees. Next, you need to evaluate additional costs to manage and launch your campaign. 

Content Production Fees

When you run a crowdfunding campaign, you’ll need to invest in content production. That would mean creating: 

• Hiring a copywriter to write your campaign page content 
• Hiring photographers and video editors to manage the multimedia of your campaign
• Hiring marketers to market your campaign on social media 
• Hiring a consulting agency to help you through the phases of your campaign. 

Here is a rough estimate for the costs you’ll incur on these content products. 

✓ Copywriters:A good sales copywriter could cost you from $35 to $125 an hour. Assuming they take 5 hours to finish your page, that’s around $600 for your copywriting costs. 

✓ Photographers or Video Editors: Professionals will cost you from $1000 – $3000 depending on the length and complexity of the video. 

✓ Marketers: If you’re hiring a marketing agency, expect to pay from $1000 to $10,000 depending on who you’re hiring and what kind of services you require. 

So in total, you’re spending around: 

$1250 + $750 + $600 + $1000 + $1000 = $4,600 out of $25,000 pledged. This leaves you with $20,000. 

It is always a good idea to start early and create an estimate of your total costs in running a crowdfunding campaign. If you begin hiring people after pledging a goal or creating a page, you’ll be losing money and setting yourself up for possible failure. 

Avoid the ordeal of losing money on a crowdfunding campaign and talk to an expert as early as you can to ensure a smooth campaign. 

The post Indiegogo Fees and Additional Crowdfunding Costs You Need to be Aware Of appeared first on samitpatel.

To capture a chunk of that audience is every marketer and business owner’s DREAM.

The only way you can achieve that dream is by mastering Facebook ADVERTISING.

Facebook advertising is one of the most challenging features of digital marketing after PPC ads. It’s competitive. It’s complex. It’s nerve-racking. Yet, it’s also one of the most powerful platforms that offer you the ability to reach your target audience directly. Since it’s so extensive in nature, we’ll be covering this in three parts. You can read the first part here to get a preliminary understanding of how to use Facebook as a marketing funnel.

Setting Up Your Facebook Page

The first step to running a successful Facebook ad campaign is setting up a successful Facebook page. It is highly recommended that your Facebook page is active with regular posts and engagements, ‘before,’ you run an ad campaign. Why do you need to do this? Because your audience wants information about your business before they decide to do business with you.

Here are a few things to do before you initiate a Facebook advertising campaign.

✔️ Setting up a page: To run a Facebook ad campaign, you need to have a facebook page. Setting up a page is just a matter of seconds. All you have to do is click the Create Page option in your personal profile, enter your page name, choose your business category, upload your company logo and cover photo. Done! You now have a page ready.

✔️ Uploading business profile & cover photo: Use a 360×360 pixels profile photo size. If you’re a business, your logo is your profile picture. Your cover photo can be a graphic with your business tagline or caption. It can also be a short video that introduces your business.

✔️ Create a complete profile: Nothing is more annoying than incomplete information. Make sure you have your address, About Us section, Photos, Demo videos, and every other information ready on the profile before you invite friends or share information.

✔️ Create consistent branded posts: Facebook content is mostly image-based, so, you should either have a designer on board who can help you with branded posts or you can try your hands at Canva, a free design tool. Ensure consistency in terms of fonts, brand colors, and other design elements.

✔️ All relevant links/CTAs: Make sure your phone number, landing page URL and CTAs are ready and are connected to your FB page. The most important is your landing page or website.

✔️ Put up some posts: As soon as you have your page active, begin posting. Use an editorial calendar to plan your posts for at least a month in advance of running an as campaign. You should ideally have 4 to 5 posts a week divided into various types – a blog link, a quote, a meme, some inspirational stuff, etc.

✔️ Use Facebook’s Schedule Post Option: Now that you have your content ready for all the days, it’s time to post it on Facebook using the Schedule Option. Initially, you’d have to use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule posts on FB, but now, the channel has a pretty good and easy-to-use schedule option. You can schedule posts in advance. This leaves you free time to monitor and measure your posts.

✔️ Posting schedule: Experts recommend a posting schedule of maximum two times a day, focusing on when your audience is most active. You can obtain information about your audience from Facebook Insights.

✔️ Invite friends: Once you have a few content pieces ready, start inviting your friends to like your page and share your posts on their newsfeed. The more people share your page, the higher your chances of getting likes and engagement.

✔️ Super Important: Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY FAKE FOLLOWERS. They are ineffective and can even possibly drag your engagement rates down.

✔️ Familiarizing Yourself with FB Page Manager: The FB page manager is a full-fledged business tool. It has an extensive list of options. From assigning page roles (important when you hire a social media manager to handle your account), to monitoring and measuring insights. Familiarize yourself with the options of the page manager given in Settings. For example, cross-post (posting one piece of content across several channels) without using any third-party tool. There are some great functionalities you can use to optimize your page. All you need is to spend time exploring each option.

✔️ Page Insights: One of the most important features is the Page Insight. These are metrics that give you insights on page views, page likes, page followers etc. What’s the most crucial is you can actually see which of your post has been the most popular throughout the week. This information can help you get a very accurate idea of what your audience prefers to see on your page.

✔️ Delegating social media management: Facebook management is a full-time job and if you were to do this with other channels, it will eat up your whole day. My best advice? Hire a social media specialist from Upwork, share your goals and expectations, assign them a role on the page, bring metrics on an excel sheet and use your time to focus on business or product building.

Beginning with Facebook Advertising

Right! So you’ve got your page set up, great posts going out and have a fair amount of engagement. Now you want to grow and you’re venturing into Facebook ads for crowdfunding.

Let’s go through it step by step.

Creating Ad Objectives

It’s always important to narrow-down your business goals before you start an ad campaign. You have to know why you want to run a certain ad type and what is your end goal.

For example, if you’re a new business and want to gain traction, Page ads may be a good choice. If you’re an established business, you may have deeper business goals, such as attracting leads or increasing sales.

Facebook categorizes most business goals into three broad or common objectives which are:

✔️ Awareness: If you’ve launched a new business or project, your first goal or objective may be to help your target audience know about your business. For example, you’ve launched a new bookstore in town and want to inform your audience. Your first campaign would be an awareness post informing your audience about the bookstore and the benefits of buying books from you.

A narrower goal of awareness is maximizing your brand visibility and reach. This means running a campaign that caters to a wide audience demographic just to get the initial buzz going. So again, back to the bookstore example. This time, your goal may be to attract a national audience with online ordering. Awareness is a fundamental objective of any new business, product or service. It’s the first step you can take to attract your target audience.

✔️ Consideration: The second objective is to help your audience find out more information about your product. The consideration objective uses your website or landing page to help people find the information they need to consider buying from you.

Narrower goals of consideration can be driving traffic to your website, getting your app installed, getting people to engage with your posts, collecting leads and signups, connecting with customers and encourage their interest in your business.

✔️ Conversions: The most important objective for every business investing in Facebook ads is conversions. This is the phase where you want people to make the purchase via your website or online shop. In the case of crowdfunding, this is where you want people to fund your project.

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Carry Out Research for Your Crowdfunding Campaign – Part 1
How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 3

For conversions, you could have goals as getting people to buy from a discount offer, leading people to specific products in your store, or giving them incentives to purchase from your brick and mortar store.

The narrower your objectives, the better you will be able to create effective ads.

Eleven Types of Facebook Ad Formats

Facebook ads can be categorized into eleven main elements (as of 2019). You can employ multiple formats depending on your ad objectives. Each ad format forms an ad set which is tied to the ad campaign.

✔️ Video: Smartphones have allowed people to create high-res videos seamlessly. This has led to an increase in video consumption with nearly 45% of people watching more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week. Video ads are one of the most powerful ways to attract your new audience, provided it is creative and thought-provoking.

✔️ Images: Image ads are super popular with e-commerce stores. There are the easiest to make and do not take more than a few minutes to execute. One powerful image can play a significant role in traffic generation and lead conversion. Facebook allows for normal JPG and PNG images as well as 360 Panorama images that you can use to give your audience an immersive experience.

✔️ Collection: Have a variety of products to show? The collection ad format lets you display your product catalogue when you run the ad. This means if you want to showcase your new arrivals or the different versions of your product in one ad, you can easily do so with the Collection format. You can combine the main video with these products and the ad will be displayed in the form of a grid. This kind of ad is highly effective in getting your users to convert!

✔️ Carousel: Want to showcase ten images or videos within a single ad, each with its own link? The carousel ad format does exactly that. This is a perfect ad for businesses that want to show a process, a collection catered to individual tastes or simply a sequential story.

✔️ Slideshow: Slide-shows are basically a collection of your top-images turned into a video format. So if you don’t have the budget to create a professional video, you can use the Slideshow option to gather your best images and turn it into a facebook video. The perfect solution for those who cannot create a video.

✔️ Instant Experience: Known previously as Canvas, Instant Experience uses the mobile’s full screen to display the ad. This ad format supports all of the formats above – be it a carousel, a collection, video or images; it’s main purpose is to grab the attention of the user and give them an enriching brand experience.

✔️ Lead Generation: Want to get people to sign up directly to your website? Use a lead-gen ad. You can create an ad with a basic form that asks for name, email address, and zip codes. This is the right ad to use if you want people to sign up for your newsletter or to avail a seasonal discount etc.

✔️ Post Engagements: Post engagement ads are simpler and more classic forms of Facebook ads. You can use these to promote a post on your page to get likes, shares and comments. Most businesses use post engagement ads to gain traction over a specific post.

✔️ Offers: Have a special deal coming up? The Offers ad format lets you create an offer right on Facebook itself. You don’t have to use any landing page or website to create an offer on FB, although you can make it creative by using a carousel or slideshow to make the offer attractive.

✔️ Event Responses: Have a special event coming up? Use the Event Responses ad format to create ads that specifically gives information about your events including time, date, location and any other important information. This is a great feature for social causes like marathons, walk-for-a-cause, and any other local activity.

✔️ Page Likes: This is the most basic form of Facebook ads. To do this, you simply go to your page and Promote it using the Promote option. Your FB page will appear as an ad. If you’re new to Facebook ads and want to experiment with how it works, you can start off by first promoting your page to the relevant target audience.

With so many options and features, Facebook ads are complicated, but they also offer a world of opportunities through strategic advertising. It is highly recommended that you spend time learning about each of these ad formats and how they can cater to your fundamental goals.

Follow us as we continue the discussion on Facebook ads in Part 3 of the guide or Need help to boost your crowdfunding campaign? Hire our crowdfunding marketing agency today.

The post How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 2 appeared first on samitpatel.

My answer to this question is always a set of five important questions. I’ll elaborate on them in a while, but before you read the rest of the article, try writing down the answers to these questions.

1. Is your idea good enough for people to support?
2. Do you have the support of a large network of backers (before going public?)
3. Do you have clear and transparent milestones?
4. Do you have enough knowledge of the crowdfunding platform you want to use?
5. Do you have strong knowledge of how crowdfunding works?

Tough questions eh?

Don’t worry. I’ll elaborate on each of the questions above to help you find your answer.

Idea:

Crowdfunding is tough.

You’re asking the public to financially support your project. What is the one thing that would attract people to invest in your project?

The idea. The product. The end result.

The public will only help if your idea or your product is innovative and exciting.

But we all know, having an idea is not enough. You need to build your reputation. You need to build a list of people who want to support you. You need backers to make crowdfunding work.

This leads to our next question – do you have backers?

Backers:

Statistics of 2019 show that 16.01 million backers had supported 439,891 projects on Kickstarter.

There are millions of people out there ready to back your project. Getting their attention and their support though is one of the most difficult challenges of crowdfunding.

The only way you can get backers is when you have an audience of supporters from your local community. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc play a critical role in helping you build your brand.

If you don’t have local supporters, you can try connecting with influencers and people in the industry who can support your project.

To kickstart your project, you should ideally have 100 people willing to contribute. Say, each person contributes $20, 100 people would mean $2,000. Once you achieve this on the platform, other people would be interested to support you further.

Backers are also your first customers, your beta testers and much more. Convince them, win their trust and they will continue to support you!

Milestones:

Any project that opens itself for public funding must have clear milestones.

An unspoken rule of crowdfunding is transparency. Keep your supporters updated about your milestones, your setbacks and your progress. You need to win their trust if you want their support for long-term.

This is why, it’s particularly important to breakdown your project deliverables in achievable milestones (these are displayed in a separate tab on the platform). Each milestone is assigned a funding goal, so if you have your numbers ready, you’ll have greater success in meeting your goals.

Platform:

Choosing the right crowdfunding platform is important.

Depending on the type of crowdfunding model you’re using (link to crowdfunding model article), you need to know about how the particular platform works.

For rewards-based funding, Kickstarter and Indiegogo (link to Kickstarter vs Indiegogo article) are the top platforms, but they are also quite different from each other.

If you’re opting for rewards-based funding, it’s necessary to know how these two platforms operate and what are their distinctive features.

Crowdfunding:

The premise of crowdfunding is simple – get the crowd to fund your projects.

The execution is tough.

The first step to crowdfunding is research. Conduct in-depth research of your industry and the platform that best suits it.

Also try to research on similar projects. Comb through top projects and study every detail. The more knowledge you gather, the better your chances of running a successful campaign.

Crowdfunding is one of the most innovative methods to earn capital without having to visit banks, lenders or investors. But it requires work. It requires a significant investment of time, planning and smart marketing.

You May Also Like to Read:

5 Challenges of Crowdfunding You Need to Know Before You Take the Plunge
How Much Does it Cost to Run a Crowdfunding Campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo?

If you have a great product, all you need is a solid strategy and crowdfunding can work wonders for you.

Want to know if your project is the right fit for crowdfunding? Let’s talk! SAMIT PATEL crowdfunding marketing agency.

The post Is Crowdfunding the Right Choice for You? Here are Five Questions to Help You Decide appeared first on samitpatel.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is, by far, the most popular and widely used crowdfunding website in the world. The platform helps artists, musicians, designers, filmmakers, and aspiring entrepreneurs find resources and support they need to turn their ideas into reality. More than 16 million people have backed some Kickstarter project and that’s absolutely amazing. Since the launch of the platform, in April 2009, over $4.3 billion has been pledged and 161,981 projects have been successfully funded. The popularity of the platform, ease of use, and the number of users are some of many reasons why you should take Kickstarter into consideration when choosing a crowdfunding site where you’ll present your campaign.

Indiegogo

What many people don’t know is that Indiegogo is, actually, older than Kickstarter but not too much of course. The platform was founded in 2008 and it is present in 235 countries and territories. Over 9 million backers are on the platform and that’s an outstanding accomplishment. Founders of the website were inspired by their own experiences when they were trying to turn their ideas into reality. They decided it was time to make it easier for others to achieve the success they deserve and for which they work hard. The rest has become history! Most Indiegogo users create campaigns for tech innovations, community projects, and other creative works.

Causes

Not all crowdfunding platforms are for profit. Bearing in mind that many people want to raise money for a project that will benefit the whole community the platform Causes was founded in 2007. In fact, Causes is the largest platform of this kind and its primary objective is to provide people the website and tools required to make this world a better place. The platform focuses on social, cultural, and political issues and is ideal for non-governmental organizations and, basically, other people and groups who want to do something about injustice, cruelty, and other negative things in the world.

You May Also Like to Read:

How Crowdfunding Is Changing The Way Companies Raise Money

Patreon

Patreon is an ideal crowdfunding website for creators. The platform was established back in 2013 by a YouTube musician Jack Conte and his roommate Sam Yam. Patreon is particularly popular among podcasters, vloggers, and YouTubers who want to get the most out of the technology and internet to turn their dreams and ideas to reality. What makes this site so useful is its unique structure that allows artists to form strong relationships with their fans and other creators. Creators can also deliver exclusive content to their Patreon subscribers. If you belong to digital creators category, then Patreon might be the platform you need.

Fundable

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur you’ll love Fundable, a platform that focuses on helping startups, entrepreneurs, and companies raise capital from the public through business crowdfunding. Users of the platform offer either equity or rewards in return for financial support from their backers. It’s a great site to get started and establish your place in the business world.

Many people think they will never turn their ideas into reality, but that’s far from the truth. With support from community and backers online you can turn your campaign into an outstanding success. This article highlighted some of the best crowdfunding platforms for different types of campaigns. Now you just need a strong strategy and start working on your campaign to make your dreams become reality. Need help? Hire our Crowdfunding and Kickstarter marketing agency today!

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