Success in crowdfunding comes in different shapes and sizes. It could be successfully distributing thousands of products or finally having enough money to make that documentary that you’ve been working tirelessly on. Either way, a successful crowdfunded project comes down to a few key elements. Here are some useful tips to help your crowdfunding project become a success.
Promotion
This cannot be understated. You need to effectively promote your project. You cannot rely on visitors to your crowdfunding platform alone. You need to be proactively seeking out new funders. One of the best ways to do this is through social media.
You should have social media accounts for all the major contenders such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google Plus. This way you can link directly to your crowdfunding project and allow people to share your project with others. Social media is also great for once you have been funded to show the progress of your project and interact with your community through the entire process.
You should also have a website.
This is where you can post about the process of your project and again link directly to your crowdfunding page. It is another place where people can learn about you and works great when combined with your social media accounts, too.
Research
Effectively researching is key to success in any field. It can make or break your crowdfunded project. Firstly you need to research if there is even a market for whatever you have decided to do, and whether you will be successfully crowdfunded. The last thing you want is to put a great deal of time, effort and money preparing to be crowdfunded only to realise there isn’t a market or space in the market for you. Secondly, you will want to research the best way to complete your project. Whether this is looking into the best way to get 10,000 board games printed or if a company like NorthernMat can provide you with the right kinds of timber. Researching thoroughly will form the basis for the plan of how you will execute your project, and poor research can lead to errors, unhappy customers or for the entire crowdfunding to be a failure.
Reduce costs
This ties into research, but it is so important that is deserves its own heading. If you manage to get crowdfunded, then that’s great, but you need to ensure that you can actually complete the orders. This is especially true if you are providing some kind of product.
For example, there was an incident where a Kickstarter was so successful that he almost triple his asking figure. However, it wasn’t all good news as this now meant that he had to contend with a massive amount of distribution that he hadn’t expect and the whole thing ended up costing him his house.
Small extra expenses can add up to a lot if you are shipping thousands of a product.
Everything needs to be planned and organized before the project goes live and you need to do everything you can to keep your costs down to a minimum because every unnecessary expense eats away at your profits and if they build up they have the potential to use up all of your funding.
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