Are you planning on promoting a crowdfunding campaign? If so, you may want to consider the costs of marketing. When it comes to marketing, you can spend lots of money and still not receive the results that you are looking for, so we would like to provide a general guide on what you may be spending for the campaign. These rates could vary depending on the type of campaign that you are running.
What does marketing include?
There are many factors that are included with marketing for your campaign. First, you may want to either use a crowdfunding platform to host the campaign or host the crowdfunding campaign yourself. Each option has its own costs which should be taken into consideration for creating a marketing campaign as it will impact how much money you will be spending.
Here’s what is included with marketing:
- Website
- Website builder or CMS
- Domain name
- Hosting
- Campaign
- Intro/featured video
- Platform fee or self hosting fees
- Outbound Marketing
- Social media platforms
- Search engines
- Influencers
- Press release
- Agency
These are the majority of costs that are associated with a crowdfunding campaign. Other expenses would be more focused on the product itself if you are going to be offering rewards or not. That could include the cost to produce the product, shipping, and more.
So how much could you be spending just on marketing?
Let’s take a deeper look.
Website
If you want to have a successful campaign, then building a landing page is essential. You may want to run a pre-launch campaign so that you are able to get lots of backers on the initial launch. You will need to bring those backers to a website of some sort.
For website building, if you want to utilize different marketing plugins, the most used website builder or CMS on the web today is WordPress, and it will most likely have all of the plugins and features that you could ever need for your campaign. The great part of WordPress, is that it’s free, so all you’ll have to pay for is a domain name and hosting for this setup.
Here are some hosting services that you can use:
- BlueHost – Starting at $3.65 per month
- WP Engine – Starting at $33 per month (one of the better hosting solutions)
- GoDaddy – Starting at $7.99 per month
Many hosting companies can also act as your domain name registrar. This means you can purchase the domain name from the host as well, so you don’t have to purchase that from a separate website.
Be aware that there are many domain names that have already been taken, so if you do not see the domain name that you would like, you can also try purchasing the same name, but with a different TLD (Top-Level Domain) at a better price.
Campaign
Let’s take a look at the cost to create a good campaign video. It will really depend on what kind of end results you are looking for here. But if you want good quality, like anything, you will have to pay the price for it. If you want something that’s cheap, you can easily find help by going to a freelance website such as Fiverr, Upwork, or Guru. This also goes for finding someone to help you with creating a website/landing page as well if you do not have the expertise to do it yourself. There are many freelancers that would be able to assist with this.
If you want high quality, you will likely need to hire someone to film the product and edit the video. It is best if you can find someone that can do both of those for you. From the research that has been made, you can expect to pay anywhere from $10k – $20k for a high-end professional job. You can always spend a fraction of the price if you want to film it yourself and get someone on the freelancing sites to edit the content for you.
Next, is the fees for the campaign. Depending on how you plan on hosting the campaign, the fees can vary. If you want to use a crowdfunding platform, you can be paying anywhere between 3% – 5% per transaction, which is not including the fee that the payment gateway is taking for each transaction as well. That is a separate fee which you will need to pay no matter what option you choose. Many platforms use Stripe which will charge a 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction depending on your region.
If you decide to host the campaign yourself, you may only be paying $9.99 per month to host the campaign yourself without any transaction fee (payment gateway will always take their transaction fee).
Outbound Marketing
The last expense is for outbound marketing. You can expect to pay about 10% of the funding goal for this portion of the campaign. Based on research, this is the typical amount for Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaigns. This goes for all aspects of the outbound marketing strategy, whether you are running Facebook ads, Google ads, retargeting ads, etc.
For the most part, those are the expenses, assuming you are to do the marketing yourself. If you hire an agency/expert, or if you would like a press release, this will cost extra. Remember, these are optional. You may find some success with a specific method, so you may not need to hire an agency or a company to help with your PR. These rates will also vary as well, so you will have to see what it will cost for your specific campaign.