It used to be that if someone needed some money to fund their big idea for a product or a business, they’d need to go to the banks or other financing services. Not anymore. More and more people seek out funding from the general public through crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding is, quite simply, the act of people from all over the world – usually via the internet – donating money to a project to see that project come to fruition. There are often perks for those who donate, such as early access to a part of the product, receiving a certain number of the product, and getting regular updates on the progress of the project.
It’s very popular idea both with regular backers who want to see an innovation hit the market as well as with people looking to get started. But, many entrepreneurs who simply opt onto a crowdfunding site and kick their idea into the space often come up short of their goals: the key is to cultivate an audience prior to the launch of the crowdfunding.
So, here are some of the fundamentals of building an audience for your crowdfunding.
Finding and basing your audience
Some people make the error of trying to reel in everyone that they possibly can before starting up a pre-launch campaign. This is a very costly practice in terms of time spent and its eventual yield. Instead, those looking to launch through crowdfunding should identify their audience before even starting their pre-launch campaign.
By identifying an audience to which the product will apply, you’ll find yourself with a greater level of interest as well as a higher success rate when the crowdfunding begins. Social media is the go-to tool for finding an audience as so many people use it. But, before even searching for your audience, you need to make sure that there’s something appealing already in place for when potential members of your audience come for a closer look.
You will need a landing page that boasts appealing images & convincing text that show off your product. When constructing the page, consider what your target audience would like to see and what would help to convince them to get on board. For example, if you want to appeal to a community of parents, being friendly in the text may be the best way to go. If you want to appeal to heavy metal-loving bikers, maybe opt for a black and silver color scheme over a pink and floral one.
So, create a base from which your newly found audience members can go to for more information about you
r upcoming campaign. Be sure also to have a news feed that has regular updates and, if possible, interactive elements such as polls to keep the audience engaged.
Social media is the way to Go
You don’t have to be a social media superstar as soon as you log in; the key is to learn from analytics & improve your approach.
Create social media pages that link to your homepage and produce regular posts and interactive elements to promote engagement with your product’s topic area. Then, with each post, compare it to other posts based on the number of clicks, views, and comments that it receives, as well as qualitative data from what the comments said, considering if the post was well-met.
For example, as crowdfunding has a global reach, be sure to schedule posts over the 24-hour cycle. Through this, you can see which nations find your upcoming campaign and topic area the most appealing – meaning that you can hone in on tailoring more posts to that audience.
Crowdfunding has developed into one of the key ways that you can get loans & financing for women, and one of the reasons for this could be the overwhelming presence of women on social media. As crowdfunding is a social act, social media plays a huge role. Female users dominate social media.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest boast audiences that are majority female. 62 percent of Twitter’s massive user-base are women, and 58 percent of Facebook’s 1.4 billion users are also women. On Instagram, it’s a 58-42 split in favor of females, with women engulfing the Pinterest space with an 85 percent majority. If your product audience is anticipated to be mostly men, then these social media sites are still a viable option but it’s been found that LinkedIn and forums like Reddit boast a male majority.
Seeing the user split on social media is important in itself when trying to find your audience as it shows the general preferences of the genders. A male majority is found at more text-oriented platforms whereas a female majority can be found at the more image-centric platforms. So, if you seek the attention of a female audience on a platform like Facebook, it’s probably best to avoid the text-heavy pages.
Creating posts based on your desired audience as well as the platform’s trends will help you to build an audience that responds to your output. By engaging with a campaign, people will then become more inclined to eventually back crowdfunding because they appreciate the content put out before launch.
Another great aspect of social media is that there are ready-made communities. Finding a group of people who your product appeals to couldn’t be easier as many of them gravitate to community pages or certain feeds, which makes identifying a large group of people for your audience even easier.
Takeaway
So, when setting out to find your audience, you must first identify your audience. Doing this will allow you to build a landing page which appeals to them. Next, get to work on social media to create posts that suit the audience and keeps them engaged.
Once you feel that your audience has been sufficiently cultivated and is to a size that you deem reasonable, launch your crowdfunding campaign.