Expert Tips to Promote Your Crowdfunding Campaign

Crowdfunding helps creators reach a broad audience, but standing out in a sea of campaigns is a real challenge. Check out these tips and tricks from some of the most successful crowdfunding creators!

Funding Goal

People are more likely to support a campaign that is already fully funded. Your campaign has a better chance of taking off if it has already reached its funding goal within the first 24 hours.

Set a realistic funding goal - The goal that is required to produce the minimum amount of product. If your manufacturer requires a minimum order of 250 or 500 copies, that should be your bottom funding goal.
A smaller goal is more attainable in the first 24 hours. When your raised funds overshoot this goal, it can prove to new backers that your project is worth backing.

That’s why your first priority should be to focus on getting funded.

You can do this by building a pre-launch email list and connecting with influencers who can help you promote your campaign.

Build a Pre-Launch Email List

The importance of an email list cannot be stressed enough! In this day and age, with folks having the attention span of a strawberry, it can take up to 7x times to get someone to commit to buying your product or idea.

👏🏽 SEVEN 👏🏽TIMES! 👏🏽

Repetition is key, and having an email list means you can message your audience members over and over again for this project and all future projects you may create.

Check out our Webinar: How to Turn Social Media Followers into Backers

If you build this foundation of supporters, you are more likely to have a successful launch. Backed by data, we see the majority of pledges coming in on the first two days of your campaign. Building your audience up BEFORE you launch will ensure those first two days maximizes the pledge amounts.

It can take time to build your list of supporters, so we strongly suggest you do that immediately!

Landing Page or Teaser Page

When you create your project on BackerKit Crowdfunding, a Landing Page is automatically created for you. Update it with details and potentially an incentive for folks who want to sign up to back your project.

Example: "Sign up to get notified when I launch, and receive a free pin when you pledge!"

Add a few lines outlining your project, who it's for, and how it will benefit them.
- If you have photos, add those too!
Check off “List my landing page on BackerKit” which lists it on the “Coming Soon” section of BackerKit’s homepage.

Check out these powerful guides:

Connect With Other Creators

When launching on BackerKit, you are invited to our private creator community on Discord where you can connect with other creators. Here you'll be able to meet big and small creators and see what others have done in the past. It also helps to find creators in your specific niche.

On BackerKit.com, we have a dedicated page showcasing all creators: Top Creators of All Time

Here you can follow other creators and be notified of their upcoming projects, sign up for their landing pages and back their projects. We truly believe in community building, and that includes creators supporting other creators. If a creator backs your project, their followers will also be notified!

🔥 Hot Feature: If another creator backs your project, their followers will be notified! This can help bring new eyes to your project and is a great way for creators to support one another.

Social Media

Branding

Make sure your brand ing is consistent across your social media accounts. Do your accounts and profiles look professional?

Name - Create a name that is user friendly to search. If your name is too long, shorten it to be more discoverable and memorable.
Profile Picture - A logo is best, keep it professional. Any text in your profile picture should be legible on a smartphone screen.
Bio - Clearly convey who you are and what you do. Add a tagline, or hashtag specific to your work
Bio Links - This is the most important piece to turn your followers into backers. This is your only way to funnel traffic to your landing page or other sites.
- Create a social landing page that points to multiple links. Try Linktree, Lnk.Bio, Milkshake, Campsite and Shorby.
- When collecting leads for your crowdfunding project, put your project's landing page link in the number one spot. When your campaign goes live, swap the link to your live project page.
- Incentives - Create a quick incentive to get folks to sign up on your landing page (more below)

Call to Action: K.I.S.S. - (Keep It Simple, Smartypants)

Just ask! Don't be shy to ask for people's email address! The people who are willing to give you their email address, will most likely pledge to your project. If you can't get their email address, how do you expect them to give you money?

Click the link in my bio to sign up and be notified when my project launches. Receive a free gift when you sign up and back the project!

Humans will make a choice when given the option. If you don't ask, people won't know there is an option to sign up. When you ask folks to sign up, maybe offer a tiny incentive, if they sign up to your landing page and back your project, they will receive a special reward.

Do you have a large audience or lots of followers?

Check out our Webinar: How to Turn Social Media Followers into Backers

Consistently Post Content

You must appease the algorithm gods, and the best way is to post consistently! If you are starting from scratch, or have a following already, you need to post to your social media accounts frequently and consistently.

Use the Meta Business Suite to help schedule posts for Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok has a scheduler in the website now. Or use platforms like Hootsuite or Later.

Hashtags

Tips on how to use hashtags:

Instagram - Allows up to 30 tags, but go middle ground of around 12-15.
- Post your Hashtags as a comment:
  - This increases engagement for your post as there is now a comment
  - Keeps your description decluttered
- Follow other accounts that post content similar to yours and research what hashtags they are using.
- Use sites such as Best-hashtags.com, All-hashtag.com, Tagsfinder.com, or Tailwind.
TikTok
- Use 3-4 relevant hashtags per video
- Try a Hashtag Challenge - get new users to follow you if can do a trending challenge (be smart about this one!)
- Hashtag Tutorial - teach others how to create what you are creating
- Hashtag Meme - throw in a #catmeme or #dadjoke post to shake things up.
- Hashtag Storyline - Share personal stories with hashtags #throwbackthursday

Use a mix of popular and niche hashtags: Including both popular and niche hashtags can help you reach a wider audience while also targeting specific users who are interested in your project. The more niche a hashtag, the less competition you will have. Mix these with hashtags with larger audiences.

Incentives

Some call it an “incentive,” and some call it a “freebie.” This technique can bring in big results as a list-building strategy.

Giving something away for free can break through hesitations about handing over an email address.

What Not To Offer:

Percentage-based discounts. If you want to offer a discounted pledge level, you can set up the pledge level at a discounted price and HIDE that pledge level after the 'early bird' time has elapsed.
Free shipping — this is a lot harder to set up than one might think and is not recommended.

Depending on your project, digital rewards are the most cost effective incentive for creators who are just starting out. Creating a special wallpaper, or throwing in a PDF of past works can create a loyal backer fan base!

Leverage Your Existing Audience

Host a Launch Party

If you're launching your project on BackerKit, we recommend you set up a Launch Party after you've collected some leads and before you launch.

Post an update on each of your previous crowdfunding projects

Have you run a BackerKit Crowdfunding, Kickstarter, or Indiegogo project in the past? If yes, consider posting an update on each of your previous projects letting folks know about your current project! If they've supported you before, they're likely to continue showing their support and updates are a great way to share what you're currently working on.

Email the members in your Launch Account

Remember what we said about strawberry-sized attention spans? After your project is live, continue to email the folks on your list about the project. You can use this resource for templates/ideas of what to email.

Engage with your existing backers

If your project is live and you've brought in backers, congrats! But the work is far from over. If you want to keep backers on board, the best way to do so (and increase the chances that they'll spread the word) is to involve them in the project. For ideals on how to use BackerKit's engagement tools, check out this guide.