Quit speeding! When is the best time to film a crowdfunding video

You don’t order your dessert when you arrive at a restaurant (unless you’re at a backwards dinner party - they’re a thing, trust me) just because it’s your favourite part, so why would you film a crowdfunding video when you don’t even have your lead investment confirmed? 

It may seem like the fun part, the exciting bit, the part where you can show off your product or service, your team and your accomplishments to date - but that doesn’t mean it should be your primary area of focus. 

Here’s why - 

1. MONEY: Videos are expensive. You need to allow roughly £1,500-£7000 for your video. Depending on your budget, our videography partners do have different packages available, but you’re unlikely to spend less than a couple of grand for a good quality video and a few edits. Therefore, we never recommend spending money on a video before you’re 100% sure your campaign will be launching strongly in the near future - things will change if there’s a large gap between filming and launching.

2. TIME: Throughout your campaign multiple elements are subject to change: your raise targets, valuation, how you articulate your proposition, what you want to spend the funds raised on, key milestones in your business, team accomplishments, team members, business achievements, the time period you’re planning to raise in. If you film too early and then need to change a large % of it, you’ll need to fork out more money and time to get it changed & edited ahead of launching. You want to avoid the need for changes by filming closer to launching the campaign and making sure the video is aligned to the rest of the campaign.

3. ALIGNMENT TO CAMPAIGN TEXT: Your campaign text is more important! On each of the platforms we work with, you’re required to write a campaign text. There will be back and forth between you and our team on this to make sure it’s fit for purpose. It’s important that your video script is closely aligned to your campaign text, because you don’t want to be saying one thing in the text and something contradictory in the video. We once saw a campaign where the video included an interview with an investor, but in the campaign they were listed as a team member. Perhaps they came onboard during the preparation of the campaign, but it’s not a good look to show contradictory info as the video and the text will sit on the same campaign page and both will need to be signed off by the platform.

4. EVIDENCING YOUR FINANCIAL PROMOTION: Both the campaign text and video form part of your Formal Financial Promotion, which are approved by the platform’s legal teams. Therefore anything you say in your text and video must be able to be evidenced. Once we’ve agreed your text is in a good place, you’ll submit this to your chosen platform for them to carry out due diligence. The platform will ask you to provide evidence for certain claims, facts and figures. If you can’t prove something, you will need to either remove or rephrase the claim. Assuming you have made the same claim in your video shot months previously, you’ll be responsible for updating the video which could incur costly edits. Therefore, it’s important to do things in order.

5. PRIORITIES & FOCUS: Keep your focus where it is needed. Don’t rush ahead, don’t get distracted by the ‘fun parts’ and devote less time to the real nitty gritty pieces; the documents you absolutely need to nail before you proceed. Your investor deck, your early stage comms, and confirming your lead investment are all the absolute essentials to any successful campaign. Without lead investment confirmed and support from your network you won’t be able to launch a strongly validated campaign. You could film the best video in the world and it ends up not being used because you haven’t built your foundations for a strong campaign. 

Campaign creation can be viewed like building blocks, it’s important to do things in the right order. You need the bottom row to support the top blocks, without them they’ll fall and you’ll potentially need to build it all again. 

Written by India Gilling, Senior Account Manager at ISQ Crowdfunding