Don’t get trigger happy!

So you’re all ready to go live on your chosen platform. You’ve spent days perfecting your pitch, your video looks slick, you’re all good to go. Or are you?

Crowdfunding is all about your crowd, the clue is in the name. Even the best of pitches is worthless if you haven’t spent any time working on your crowd. 

If people only find out that you are crowdfunding once you’ve gone live, they will take time to warm to your campaign, will likely be hesitant to invest and you’ll have a tough job getting them to make their pledge.

It is crucial to your success that you warm your contacts up to the idea of your campaign before you go ahead. 

People who are already aware of your campaign are more likely to engage with it than those who are not. And you need those early backers to build momentum for your campaign and get moving up the bar quickly.

So once you have your pitch ready (or before if possible), rather than rush ahead and press the “go live” button, take time to connect with your crowd and explain what you are about to do. Make sure as well that you are mentioning your upcoming campaign at every touchpoint to generate early interest.

Crowdfunding isn’t a short cut and it’s about more than just raising investment. People often choose to back winners, so strangers will only take notice of your business if it’s doing well so you’ll have to spend quite a fair bit of time at the preparation stage connecting with your existing audience to get them to invest before anyone else does. They are the ones who will provide validation and make your proposition attractive to the wider crowd. 

We’ve watched from the sidelines as so many campaigns have failed because they launched prematurely. The pitch looked good, but the company wasn’t ready. They didn’t warm up their existing network enough. 

We have helped our clients raise millions and we know that those who succeed are those who have been able to leverage their crowd’s enthusiasm before the campaign went live.