5 People You Need For Your Crowdfunding Team

This is the crush crowdfunding podcast, the number one place for people who want to launch on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. My name is Nalin and I invite you to join me for tips, hacks and insights to get you launched and fully funded.

What's up everybody? Welcome to another session of the crush crowdfunding podcast. Today, we're going to dig deep into the five types of people you need for your crowdfunding dream team. I'm really super excited to have you here and to talk about this topic so that you can assemble your own incredible team to crush your crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. So to launch a crowdfunding campaign, you really have two options, right? Two really great options to move forward with one. You can work with a full suite agency where everything is kind of done in house for you. When this happens, you literally just kind of go up to them with your product, whatever your product is, and say, Hey, you know, can you help me get this thing launched, they take it in house and do literally everything for you, they copyright it for you. They take pictures and videos, they do all of this for you, right? So that's option one. Option two, is that you can do as much as you can yourself and bring people to help as you need. Right? And really, as wonderful as it would be to work with a Kickstarter or Indiegogo agency, you know, an agency that specializes in helping products launch, you know, this one stop shopping experience. The reality is that the majority of people will just not have the budget to do so because it's honestly pretty expensive to work with an agency and have them help you launch your projects, right? And guess what? It's okay. It's okay if you can't afford to work with these big one stop shop agencies. It's okay that you don't have 10s of thousands of dollars at your disposal. You know, just to hire an expert agency, I assure you that it doesn't make your project any less than the ones that actually do have big budgets and big funding. You know, the big picture here is that you can still achieve crowdfunding success working on the campaign yourself. In this scenario, you'll need to find, you know, different freelancers, consultants and specialists and experts in order to deliver a successful campaign. Because let's be honest, here, no one is truly an expert at every single thing. And if they are telling you that they're an expert at every single thing, they're probably lying to you and I would run the opposite direction. And the more expertise and guidance that you can get from all these people who are experts at their domain, the better off you really are For your launch, because you will have an expert to help you take you to that milestone to that next step that you want to go to. So let's kind of make this a little more tangible, right? Think about the Avengers. Right? The Avengers in the Marvel Universe, you know, there's Thor, there's Captain America, there's Iron Man, there's Black Widow, there's the whole, you know, they're all successful in their own careers. They're all experts at something or another right? Iron Man's, like the crazy tech expert. You know, Hulk is the really brilliant scientist, right? You know, they all bring various expertise to the table and come together to create pretty much a dream team, the Avengers, right? So when it comes to crowdfunding, you can actually do the same thing. You can create your own dream team, you can create your own Avengers, because there are five types of people that you can actually look for five types of expertise that you can look for Bring onto your team in order to create the most powerful and impactful team to help you meet your launch goals and just crush your crowdfunding campaign. So let's dig right in.

The first type of expert that you need is what I like to call the words expert in your campaign. There's going to be a lot of copywriting that needs to happen throughout the entirety of the project. So I want to make sure that you have someone who can translate your dreams, your aspirations, and your project goals into words, one of the two types of words experts that I would recommend you having, as someone who knows email marketing, so by now you probably know how important emails are. It's so important that if you don't have an email list, it's honestly best to not launch until you do. You really need someone who knows the ropes for email marketing. They'll be able to help you start your email CRM, set up your automated emails and write emails that nurture leads. So they're pretty primed for your launch. And throughout the campaign, you know, throughout the 30 to 60 days of your campaign, the email marketer will need to write emails to convert those interested into full fledged backers. And the second type of words expert that you need is a generic, you know, copywriter, there's really so much writing that needs to be done during a crowdfunding campaign. Everything from landing pages to social posts to little tweets to backer updates to the campaign page itself, right. So a copywriter is just absolutely critical to your launch. The second type of expert that you need is what I'd like to categorize as a digital expert. You know, as I mentioned before, crowdfunding, you know, it happens online, you need an online storefront, that digital storefront, that landing page, right. You need online marketing, you know, advertising promotions, things like that. You need online traffic. For pixels and debugging for your landing page and your tech sack, you know, you need to find someone for your dream team who knows the lay of the land. When it comes to the digital landscape, there's two types of people in the digital expert realm that I would actually really really recommend you finding or sourcing for your campaign. One is the ads person. And really, this is really about you building your audience and building a dedicated group of people who will be really excited to back you when you launch. The fastest way to get leads. And those emails and build a fanbase for your crowdfunding campaign is to run an advertising lead generation campaign. So far, the best platform to get the most qualified leads has been Facebook and Instagram, which are both managed through the Facebook business manager and really finding the right ads person, one who knows how to create appropriate audiences, craft the right messaging and just really robustly test your assumptions. will truly make or break your campaign as it means you find or don't find the right audience for your products and your launch right.

The second type of digital expert that I would really recommend you kind of onboarding to your team is, you know, the really general tech person. You know, if you're not a techie by any means, you really need someone to help you set up kind of the basics for your crowdfunding campaign for one landing page is absolutely critical to collect leads for a crowdfunding launch, you can either spend time learning how to set it up for yourself or hire someone to build an easy solution for you. This person will also help set up your Google
Analytics in order to best track your website performance. The next expert that I would really recommend you having when you're collecting your dream team is you know people who are visual experts. A lot of crowdfunding is visual in nature. You know, there's videos there's gifts there's product images, lifestyle images, right effects you know, you name it, right? Get someone on your team who knows how to show your project and its vision, visually. Alright, some of the people that I like to kind of categorize into this visual expert realm is one a designer, right? A good design just honestly inspires trust. A beautiful curated look is incredibly important to build trust and encourage people to actually spend money online for your products. Everything from the landing page, to email templates, to social media to advertising all needs to have a cohesive and just beautiful design language that makes it all fit together. No one trusts a campaign that looks like a three year old through paint at the computer and no one really honestly wants to pledge money towards a campaign that looks like a monkey putting it together. Right? Another person in kind of this visual realm is the photographer. A photographer will need to really understand what types of images are core to your key audience and product niche. That way they'll be able to produce image content that best sells your product. Since everything on a crowdfunding campaign needs a corresponding image, you'll need a lot of pictures, everything from, you know the product image itself, that's usually taken on a white background, right to lifestyle images of the product being used in the right environment. Right on Kickstarter. There are even special rules that dictate that projects must only use real product images to protect backers from scammy projects that only use 3d renderings and pretend that a project is actually real and actually will come to life. The last type of visual expert that I would really recommend you, onboarding for your team or working with is a videographer. Video is a very powerful tool when it comes to telling your crowdfunding story. The role for this videographer is huge for any crowdfunding campaign and usually something that campaigners just hire for. The video is the first thing people see when they come to your credit. Page, it's also the best way to pack a lot of information into a short amount of space, especially for more complicated products. Beyond the main video, you know, there's other things you can also record like how to videos, or testimonial videos or these other videos that will help people just understand the product even more and believe in you and the credibility of your product and your project even more.

The fourth type of expert that I would recommend bringing onto your team, you know, to create that Avengers dream team for crowdfunding is someone who is an expert at all things with online communities, this person will have a lot of experience building, maintaining and just activating a strong community because that's so key to crowdfunding success. Honestly, it's even part of the name right? It's the crowd in crowdfunding is really just the community, that community that you're building, so find someone who knows the ins and outs of hyping up a group and getting them to buy this house, I kind of break it up into two parts. One person is kind of the social person, right? I've said this before, and I will say it again, social media is honestly not a main driver of sales for any crowdfunding project. However social media is still incredibly great at increasing brand awareness, educating people about your product, and getting your brand to stay just top of mind as people go about their day. And you know, browsing Facebook, browsing Instagram, you know, and as such, it's so important to have someone who knows the platform and can create the type of content that each platform needs. The second type of you know, community expert that you need. I kind of categorize as a customer service person. Once a crowdfunding campaign goes live, it's really safe to say that you as the creator will just have tons of questions from people from every single channel, right people emailing you writing comments on the crowdfunding page responding to your ads and liking sharing your project pretty much everywhere. If you're working another full time job, it can be really helpful to onboard someone else to help manage the influx of questions you'll get. I find it really useful to have a built out FAQ sheet so that everyone can stay on the same page. All responding, especially since you will have someone at the frontlines of responding to people's questions and increase and just doing general customer service. The last type of person to kind of round out your Avengers, crowdfunding Dream Team is what I like to categorize as a crowdfunding expert. Just like any other platform, right, when you're thinking of Amazon, Shopify, eBay, any other online platform where you are just doing something and have conversions and goals, right. Kickstarter and Indiegogo have their own kinks and their own quirks. All right, make sure that you have Someone who knows exactly how it all works together so that you're set up for success with your launch. A crowdfunding expert will know all the ins and outs of crowdfunding, there'll be honestly it's just really up to date on all the crowdfunding trends and understand what works or doesn't work for each product category that you'll be launching. They'll also act as kind of a project manager for your campaign, and really ensuring that everyone on the team is on the right track for a launch, you know, that really meets your goals, whatever your goals may be. Okay, I know that was a lot of information that I just went through just now, a whole bunch of information actually, there's like list after list after list. So, to recap, let's look at the big picture. To recap, there are five types of people you need for your crowdfunding Dream Team. And the five types are one, the word expert, someone who just has a way with words, figures out email and figures out copywriting, right? The second is the digital expert. This person knows everything from landing pages to advertising to pixel to Google Analytics, the digital expert, someone who just lives and breathes all things tech and digital, right? The visual expert, someone who has an eye for a product, has an eye for design, has an eye for graphic design, has an eye for what the video should like, someone who just works with all things that you can see. Right. The fourth type of expert is the community expert. This person just understands community building and community maintenance. They know everything from how to rally a crowd to build a crowd to excite a crowd, make a crowd convert, right it's a community expert, someone who can relate to the people your fan your fan base, and the fifth is the crowdfunding expert. This person has all the knowledge that you need for the platform to make sure that you are set up for success as you go to launch, and also can manage the timeline and the framework for work for each of these other team members for you, too. So let's kind of talk some more about this from like a 5000 foot view. Yes, there are all the experts out there ready and willing to work with you, but only onboard people you truly need. What I mean is that if you're incredible at working on your product, and also incredible at building a community, you know, being social or responding to people and getting people rallied behind an idea, then honestly, you're the expert that you've been looking for. Don't think that because I go through all these five types of people that you can't be one of these types of people.

You can't do any of this work, you can do actually more than one of these roles, right? Because the more of this work that you can actually keep to yourself, the more that you can do and you can be confident in, do confidently. The more money that you can save from hiring people and just invest into your project in other ways, be it promotion or otherwise. And the second thing to really keep in mind is that some people are just expert at more than one thing and that's okay. Okay, let's, you know, at the beginning, I know I said, People can't be experts at everything and I still hold true that you can't be an expert at everything, but some are experts at more than one thing and that's completely okay too. You might have someone who is you know, a rock star ads, and also incredible at product photography. There's no reason to try to hire two separate people for the job if they can do both things. So thank you for being with me here today. I hope that you enjoyed this session about the five types of people you need for your crowdfunding Dream Team, and just learned a bunch from it. If you need a crowdfunding expert, feel free to get in touch. You can get started by heading to crush crowdfunding calm Lastly, I would be really grateful if you could leave a review for the podcast because it will really help others who want to learn about crowdfunding just more easily find out about the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me, and for subscribing to the podcast and for continuing to listen and just being here with me to go on this journey to crowdfund your product and your idea. I will see you guys in the next session.

Thanks for listening to the crush crowdfunding podcast at crush crowdfunding.com. Tune in the same time next week for more ways to crush your launch.