Social Media is Not a Sales Channel

Speaker 1 0:03
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.

Speaker 1 0:20
What's up, everybody? So today I want to talk to you about what will actually get your project fully funded. It's a big question for people, right? A lot of it is not just, Hey, how do I launch my project on Kickstarter? How do I launch my product on indiegogo? But how do I even get fully funded? So I'm gonna talk today about what you can do just to get instantly funded for your campaign. So I've had a lot of people come to me and let me know that they've gone through the entire preparation phase that we talked about, right that previous Launch phase, where you find a crowd, you find your audience, you find people who really want your project and want your product and they capture these people. They tell me they've gone through this preparation phase and they have thousands of Instagram followers, and thousands of followers on Facebook or Twitter. And then they go to launch their campaign and these guys come back and they say, hey, why isn't this working? I thought it did everything right. I thought I did everything I had to do. I built up a social media following, I built up a following, I found my audience. Why is it that this isn't working? Why am I not getting any funding to my campaign? People on Facebook aren't even backing, my Instagram isn't converting, Twitter, you know, for whatever reason has always been a great conversation, but it's silent now. People just aren't replying, people aren't. I feel like my crowd doesn't really care about what I'm doing. So this is a conversation I have a lot with people actually. And it's kind of a big issue. And it's really frustrating, you know, especially because you spend so much time building up a social media following and then you realize that it's actually not converting into backers, not converting into buyers or into customers for your project and your idea. So why isn't it working? The main reason that this isn't working is, because social media really isn't a sales channel. It's true that social media is incredible for sharing content, for sharing a video, for sharing a photo, sharing an update and you know, a certain people will see that update. It's incredible for just keeping people abreast of what you're doing and things that are happening with the project, things that are happening with the team or you or the company. It's great for that, you know, a certain number of people actually engage with it, and some might even click the link to the actual thing that you're mentioning just to learn more. However, if you have a Kickstarter campaign or crowdfunding campaign, social media will actually comprise a small percentage of the people who actually end up backing it. That's something I really want you to take to heart from here. Social media, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, those social channels, all really comprise a smaller percent of people who actually end up backing your crowdfunding campaign. It's kind of what I've realized after years of working in crowdfunding, that social media is actually not a sales channel. It's not where most of the transaction happened when it comes to people supporting and buying into your project. So, you know, that kind of begs the question, right, like, okay, so if social media isn't the thing that equates to funding, you know, funding for my project, funding for my dreams, then what is that thing? If you said email, then you are spot on. Email definitely is king around here when it comes to crowdfunding. So when I say email is king, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that email is really the number one way that people make decisions when it comes to buying and backing and supporting campaigns in an instantaneous manner. So if you're gearing up to launch a campaign, rather than focusing on building up a social media presence, building up your followers on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Tick Tock Snapchat, whatever it is that's out there, you should actually be focusing more on email. Because when you look at all the crowdfunding campaigns out there, the vast majority of those backers are going to be from that email list that you originally had and that you originally gathered in your pre launch phase. So how do you actually build your email list? That's pretty much the automatic next question, right? If email list, you know, is the thing that I have to have to launch my project, how do I build that list? What do I do? Here, we're going to talk about what I like to call that formula for instant funding. It's honestly what every agency out there does, every single successful campaign that you see going to indiegogo.com right now or going to Kickstarter.com right now, every single campaign, this is what they all do, and it starts off with a three step process. Step one, you want to build an email list of individuals with buying intent, and all those parts are really important. So let's break it down. Build an email list of individuals of buying intent. So what people do first is they create like a Facebook advertisement, right? This Facebook ad makes a promise related to the benefits or results that your product and your projects conveys. You direct that Facebook ad traffic to a landing page. And a landing page just goes into a little bit of the benefits of a product. Going into a bit of the functionality, highlighting the benefits and the promise. And then you ask for an email address that gets stored in your email database so that you can continue to send these people you know, emails to keep them updated so that they know like when you're going to launch and what's going to happen, right? In this step, you want to make sure you're building an email list of individuals with buy intent. That's, that's, you know what we talked about in step one, build an email list of individuals with buy intent, right? So what is buying intent? Buying intent is someone actually who signs up for an email in order to find out where they can actually purchase the product. It doesn't mean that they want to make that purchase or that transaction right then in there. It could be, I really want to buy this someday I just read, I just want to learn a little bit more about it, or I want to buy it and I want to get this 30% discount or something like that. Buying intent is the thought that this person will actually want to spend money on this particular product. Because there are other people and other email lists that you can gather of people without buying intent. And an example of that is someone who signs up for an email list because they want a free thing, or they signed up for a giveaway, or they signed up for a survey because something looked interesting, you know, and they were bored that day. Right? So those people just don't have that buying intent. People who form an email list as a result of a giveaway or survey or something like that, they typically just want free stuff. They're not people by intent. They're not going to be whipping out their credit card to support your project on the first day when it really, really matters. You really have to build an email list of individuals with buying intent. So the second thing to get you funded is to actually conduct a pre launch with friends, family, followers and fans. So this pre launch is pretty much kind of a warm up phase, right? People usually kind of complicate the idea of the pre launch but it's honestly really simple. All a pre launch has to be, is basically just telling people that something is coming, that this launch that you have been working towards is coming. That this is really important to you. And this is what that product, that project that you've been thinking about this what it does. Just reiterate them and tell them, tell the people on your list, tell the people those friends, families, followers and fans, tell them that this is the way they can show support for you and your project. They can come to the sales page, they can come to the campaign page on the first day and will take out their credit card and contribute funds to you. It can be a set amount, like the price of the actual product, or it can be something that you guys decided before, right? If it's especially, if it's friends and family. Maybe you just say hey, you need $1,000 to me on that first date, I really want you to show support for me. Is going into getting you to go out there and warm people up, let them know that something is coming, conduct that pre launch rally people behind your project and behind your launch. Because a launch should be just that it should be just like a spectacle, right? Everyone should be flooding your project. Everyone should just be clamoring over each other. It should be like Black Friday for your project. Just imagine, just think to Black Friday and all the crazy videos you've seen a Black Friday. If you don't live in the United States of America, be sure to go to a video platform of your choice and type in Black Friday America shopping and see The types of videos that kind of pop up. You see people just like pushing down doors just to get in just to shop. And that should be what it's like for your project for your launch day. And the only way to do that is to prep them, warm them up that this is coming, warm them up and say this is why this is so important. This is why you have to be here right now on that launch date. This is why this project will make a difference in the world. This is what problem this product solves. This is why I'm doing this. Warm people up, let them know that something's coming and let them know how they can help you. And the third step in how to get funding, you know, that first step was building that email list of individuals with buying intent. That second step is conducting that pre launch that warm up with friends, family followers and fans. And that third step for you to get that instant funding, all leading from emails not from the social following, but from emails is to build value and create urgency. See?

Speaker 1 11:00
So what do I mean by that? So by building value, all I mean is making it so that when someone comes to the page, and they see that reward that you have listed on your page right there and sees that the reward cost $100, they feel like they're getting a lot of stuff for that. They're aware of the value that they're getting. Because ultimately crowdfunding is that exchange of value. You are creating that product, you're bringing that idea to life, you're solving that problem in some way. That's the value that you're bringing, and people are going to attach a monetary contribution to it. You need to make sure that the amount of money people are willing to pay is the value that you're offering, or is comparable to the amount of value that you're offering by offering this solution, this product, this project, this reward that you're putting out into the world. So you need to build that value. You have to make people aware of the value that they're getting. You have to make people know that you've done the work to show that this thing that you've created is worth the money, is worth people contributing their hard earned dollars, contributing their disposable income because without money, you know that to pay rent, they have to eat food, they have to pay for electricity that's paid for water bills, but everything that's left over, they can choose to do anything with it. If you are able to show that value, then they'll want to use their money, their hard earned dollars, the hours of work to produce that money, to put to you to bring a project to life. And the second thing I talked about here is also creating urgency. By creating urgency, you want to show that there kind of a limited number of different reward tiers that this campaign is happening for a limited amount of time. Because really, people are just driven by the emotion of urgency. It gets people to take action, right? It's the scarcity, the urgency. For example, if it's a Summer Sale, and people say, This Summer Sale only goes until July 30 and goes to the July 31, people are going to be running in the door not one day just to get access to those sales because there's urgency there, they need to get the item at the best price. So that's that's kind of basically it. Right? You don't need a big social media following in order to get funding on Kickstarter or funding on Indiegogo. Really, what you need is that email list. What you need is to know your audience, to be able to capture the right audience, be able to prepare them and warm them up in the right way and to be able to show them that value so that it's exactly what they want to pay money for. And really that three step formula is just what is behind all the crazy crazy funding quick, crazy funding that you see on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And all the campaign's out there that are on the front page right, you see campaign say You know, hundred thousand funded in 10 minutes. It's not something that they wish and hope after getting 1000 followers on Instagram, it's prepping that email list, letting people know when they're going to launch, driving that traffic of people to their page. And showing so much value that people just can't wait to just find their wallet and take out their credit card and type in those numbers. That's really what everyone is doing. This is what's happening behind the scenes for any of the campaigns out there. You're seeing campaigns like they're just getting funded out of nowhere, campaigns that get a lot of funding and get fully funded. It's because they implemented this exact same system. It's the same system that big brand name agencies like you know, launch boom or jellop or cross or nuke or, or inventors partners rain factory. It's the same system that these big brand name agencies use and you can do the exact same thing, right? I'm giving you the exact blueprint here, step one, two and three. And you know what the best news is too? Not only that you can do the exact same thing but the best news, is that this actually works and works for literally every category out there. No matter what type of product you have, you have a tabletop game, do you have a new soft book or quiet book to produce? Do you have a new hardware product like a Smart Water bottle? Do you have a new cool thermos type of mug? Do you have a cool remote that you want to introduce to the world, you have like a new type of desk lamp, whatever you have, you have like a new type of like rate improve bands. This system works for all of it. No matter what type of product you have. So go out, get out there and start collecting emails and start
implementing this three step process.