Launching a crowdfunding campaign can be an exciting and transformative experience for your business. However, without a solid sales plan in place, your campaign may fall short of its objectives. As business coach and speaker Malla Haridat elucidates, unveiling the hidden reasons behind the necessity of a sales plan can propel your crowdfunding efforts to new heights. Here’s a detailed exploration of her insights.
Understanding Your Numbers: The Importance of Warm Leads
Identifying and Leveraging Your Network
The backbone of any successful crowdfunding campaign begins with a meticulous understanding of your numbers. According to Maya, it’s not about having a natural affinity for math or accounting, but about grasping the critical role of your network—your warm leads. Start by creating a comprehensive list of:
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Friends and Family:
These close connections are often the first to support your initiatives emotionally and financially.
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Past Clients and Customers:
Engage those who have previously believed in your product or service.
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Networking Groups:
Associations you’re part of can be a goldmine for support.
Once you have your list, critically evaluate what you can realistically expect from each segment. This step is crucial as it sets the foundation for reaching cold leads—those who don’t know you. Cold leads are more likely to contribute if they see that others are already supporting your campaign.
If you prefer to read the summary, you can view everything below.
What are your numbers in your crowdfunding campaign?
Ask yourself: How many people do you need to reach out to? A common mistake is assuming that a social media post will suffice. In reality, personalized communication is far more effective. Ensure you have a robust system for reaching out to your network individually, enhancing your campaign’s credibility and initial momentum.
The Power of Presales: Laying the Groundwork
Communicating Early and Effectively
A misconception about fundraising efforts is that they begin the day you launch. Maya’s second key point dismantles this myth by emphasizing the value of presales. Similar to how Girl Scouts prepare potential customers before cookie season, business owners should begin engaging their networks weeks before the campaign launch. This preemptive communication can include:
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Emails to Warm Leads:
Inform them about your upcoming campaign, what it’s for, and how they can help.
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Social Media Teasers:
Generate interest through sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes content.
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In-Person Conversations:
Direct talks often yield the most substantial commitments.
Highlighting Benefits for Contributors
It’s essential to transition the conversation from why you need funding to how contributing benefits them. Whether it’s an exclusive product, heartfelt gratitude, or the joy of supporting a meaningful cause, potential contributors should understand what’s in it for them. Tailored messaging that highlights these benefits makes your presales pitch much more compelling.
Planned Persistence: Preplanning Your Marketing Strategy
Creating a Communication Timeline
The third reason a sales plan is indispensable is the need for a well-thought-out marketing strategy. It’s not enough to send out an initial blast and hope for the best. Thinking of your campaign’s duration as a relationship-building period, preplanning includes:
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Scheduled Updates:
Keep your audience informed with regular progress reports.
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Engaging Content:
Videos, stories, and testimonials can sustain interest.
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Reward Announcements:
Introduce any new incentives for contributing.
Maya shares an anecdote about a crowdfunding campaign that sent magnets as part of a direct mail campaign—an inventive approach that successfully grabbed attention. Think creatively about what keeps your campaign top of mind for potential backers.
Continuous Engagement
The dialogue shouldn’t end at the initial ask. Follow-ups are vital. Personal touches, like thank-you notes or shout-outs on social media, can make a significant impact. Frequency matters—don’t let weeks go by without a word. Use the full extent of your communication channels to maintain and build momentum.
Applying the Lessons: Strategic Execution and Customer Insight
Strategic Thinking for Better Results
Success in crowdfunding and sales isn’t about casting the widest net; it’s about casting the net smartly. Maya advocates for a strategic approach to execution, focusing not just on reaching people, but reaching the right people in the right way. This precision can make the difference between a mediocre campaign and one that exceeds expectations.
Understanding Customer Psychology
Finally, delve into customer psychology. Understand what makes your contributors tick. What motivates them? Align your campaign’s messaging to these motivations to create a natural synergy where supporting your cause feels like the obvious choice.
In conclusion, crowdfunding success doesn’t happen by chance. It results from an orchestrated effort of knowing your numbers, engaging early, and maintaining continuous, meaningful communication. By integrating a robust sales plan into your strategy, you elevate your chances of not only meeting but exceeding your crowdfunding goals.
Stay tuned to Maya Haridat’s “Small Biz Coaching by Malla” podcast for more transformative tips on maximizing your business’s potential.
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Don’t surprise people – start pre selling the benefits
Start even a couple of weeks before you actually launch, so that when you launch, people are prepared, you have a sense already about the people who might want to contribute and what they’d be willing to be able to contribute.
It’s about benefits for the customer – not for you
And and here’s the key when you start pre selling, make sure that you focus on the benefits for the customer. We’re all clear about what the benefits are for you. You’re going to get money to do acts. That’s great.
But how does this help the other person who’s contributing?
There are all types of creative options for benefits for the buyer
And I know there’s a whole host of crowdfunding platforms that are out there. Some of them allow you to give prizes and rewards, or the actual product. Some of them, it’s just to help you get loan money.
And so it’s, you know, towards the better good of why a person would actually do it either way, sell the benefits to the other person, make sure they’re aware and they’re clear why they would want to be able to contribute to you.
Because it’s really, really easy to get hit with five of these types of requests for people at the same time. And I want you to stand out. Alright, so don’t miss this one. This one is a big one.
Even if you started a crowdfunding campaign, you can do this
And then the final step that I want you to think about is to also pre plan the marketing and by the way you can do this even if you started your campaign 10 days ago and now you only have 20 more days left, you can literally still do this step. So don’t worry if you already got your campaign started and what do I mean by pre plan the marketing.
Typically we talk about the launch and then stop communicating
So here’s the deal. It’s really easy when the campaign is going on to do that initial email that initial launched on social media and then nothing else. Crickets, we don’t hear from you. We don’t hear updates to hear how many people have contributed.
We don’t hear updates to here. Are there any new rewards or prizes that are happening?
Explain why we should care – Consider how to build an ongoing story
Everybody that’s involved. The real deal with crowdfunding, you have to consider is you want to consider it from the other person’s point of view.
I think a lot of people would be interesting and wanting to help you and help your business.
But a lot of times they don’t know why they should open their wallets like what’s the benefit going to be for me.
An example of pre-planning your marketing
So if you sit down and you think through your marketing you think through what you’re going to send out on social media, you think through what you’re going to send out an email. I’ve seen a crowdfunding campaign where they actually sent a direct mail campaign 20 days before they launched. It was brilliant because I had [10:00] a cute little magnet that they sent out in the mail advertising about the campaign. And then from there when they launched it was really easy to find the U. R. L. And to be able to actually engage with the opportunity.
Make sure you take action from these ideas
But as you see here with the three tips that I gave you, this is not you going out in the middle of a busy crowded intersection and just asking everybody there to do business with you because that’s too intimidating.
That doesn’t feel comfortable and that’s honestly not going to get you the results, the results that I want to help you get our ways of thinking more strategically about your business, finding ways to execute more effectively and also getting more into the mindset of your customer and understanding how they think, what makes them by what gives them the insights as to why they want to connect with your company so that it becomes the natural choice when you show them and present them what your product is.
