No, you cannot do everything by yourself. You’re bound to need help. Everyone does. So consider your options to launch: crowdfundingagency or crowdfunding team?
- Work with a full-suite agency where everything is done in-house for you.
- Do as much as you can yourself, and bring people onto your crowdfunding team to help as you need.
As wonderful as it would be to work with a Kickstarter or Indiegogo agency for a one-stop-shop experience, the reality is that the majority of people will not have the budget to do so.
And guess what? That’s OK!
You can still achieve crowdfunding success working on the campaign yourself. In this scenario, you’ll need different freelancers, consultants, and specialists in order to deliver a successful campaign.
Think about The Avengers. They’re all successful in their own careers, but together, they bring various expertise to the table and create a Dream Team.
If you want to create your crowdfunding team (aka your very own Dream Team), here’s all the people you will need.
1. Words Expert
A lot of your crowdfunding campaign will need copy. Everything from emails to landing pages to Instagram posts to backer updates and (obviously) the campaign itself. As such, if you’re not a strong copywriter, here are the two people you’ll need.
Email marketing person
By now, you probably know how important emails are. So important that if you don’t have an email list, it’s best to not launch until you do. If you’re thinking “huh? What?” I’d recommend you going to read this article before moving forward here. I’ll wait!
Now that you’re back, we can definitely agree how critical emails are.
You’ll 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 primed for your launch. Throughout the campaign, the email marketer will need to write emails to convert those interested into full-fledged backers.
Copywriter
There is so much writing that needs to be done during a crowdfunding campaign that this person is absolutely critical to your launch. They’ll need to help you craft landing pages, social posts, campaign pages, and more.
2. Digital Expert
Your crowdfunding campaign happens on the internet. As such, you’ll need people versed in all things digital on your crowdfunding team.
Ads person
The fastest way to get leads for your crowdfunding campaign is to run an advertising lead generation campaign. Thus far, the best platforms to get the most qualified leads has been Facebook and Instagram, which are both managed through the Facebook Business Manager. Finding the right ads person – one who knows how to create appropriate audiences, craft the right messaging, and robustly test your assumptions – will make or break your campaign.
Once you have launched, there are different needs you’ll have depending on what platform you’ve launched on.
If you’re on Kickstarter, I’d recommend onboarding only people who explicitly know how to use Kickstarter. This is because Kickstarter doesn’t allow for pixel-tracking, the main way ad managers analyze the effectiveness of ad campaigns. You’ll need someone who knows how to track the ROI or else you’ll be spending money into a black box.
Indiegogo is much more like an eCommerce site and allows for pixel-tracking so even ad managers who are inexperienced with crowdfunding can still effectively use the platform.
Tech person
If you’re not a “techie” by any means, you’ll need someone to help you set up the basics for your crowdfunding campaign. For one, a landing page is critical to collect leads for a crowdfunding launch. You can either spend time learning how to set it up 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.
3. Visual Expert
Since crowdfunding campaigns are done over the internet, backers usually won’t have a chance to touch, feel or test the product before they back it. This means that crowdfunding campaigns need to be incredibly visual to illustrate the idea.
Designer
Good design inspires trust. A beautiful, curated look is incredibly important to build trust and encourage people to actually spend money online for your product. Everything from the landing page to email templates to social media to advertising all needs to have a cohesive and beautiful design language. No one trusts a campaign that looks like a 3-year-old threw paint at the computer and no one wants to pledge money towards a campaign that looks like a monkey put it together.
Photographer
A photographer will need to 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 product images (usually taken on white background so that you can remove the background and use the product image in multiple places) to lifestyle images of the product being used in the right environment.
On Kickstarter, there are special rules that dictate projects must only use real product images (rather than 3D renderings) to protect backers from scammy projects.
Videographer
Video is powerful when it comes to telling your crowdfunding story. The videographer role is huge for any crowdfunding campaign and usually something that campaigners hire for.
The video is the first thing people will see when they come to your crowdfunding 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, how-to videos can help better illustrate how products work and dive deeper into its use cases.
Not only is video so important during the crowdfunding campaign, but shorter cuts are also critical within advertising as video tends to get a higher clickthrough rate than still images.
4. Community Expert
A crowdfunding campaign can only be successful because of the crowd. If you’re an online community builder at heart, keep this job to yourself. However, if you can’t tell Instagram from Twitter, it’s time to onboard someone to your crowdfunding team who knows a thing or two about building community and keeping people engaged.
Social person
I’ve said this before and will say it again: social media is not a main driver of sales for any crowdfunding projects. However, social media is still incredibly great at increasing brand awareness, educating people about your product and getting your brand to stay top-of-mind. As such, it’s so important to have someone who knows the platforms and can create the type of content each platform needs.
If you’re not sure which tools to use to manage all of your social channels, check out my in-depth review.
Customer service person
Once a crowdfunding campaign goes live, it’s safe to say that you as the creator will be inundated with questions from every single channel. People will be emailing you, writing comments on the crowdfunding page, responding to your ads, and liking/sharing your project everywhere. If you’re working another full-time job, it can be helpful to onboard someone else to help manage the influx of questions you’ll get. I find it useful to have a built-out FAQ sheet so that everyone can stay on the same page while responding.
5. Crowdfunding Expert
During the entire process, you’ll also want to have someone versed in the art and science of crowdfunding by your side.
Crowdfunding expert
A crowdfunding expert will know all the ins and outs of crowdfunding, be up-to-date on all the crowdfunding trends and understand what works (or doesn’t work) for each project category. They’ll also act as the Project Manager for your campaign, ensuring that everyone on the team is on the right track for a launch that meets your goals.
This is where I come in. I’ve worked at crowdfunding agencies, launched products on crowdfunding and now help people successfully launch products for a living. Before we go on, I’m going to be frank with you – Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been around for over 10 years now so I’m not the only one; there are a lot of crowdfunding consultants out there. However, if you like what you’re reading, maybe we’ll be a good fit to work together. If you’re interested in working together, feel free to get in touch.
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