Are you looking to own and operate your own Crowdfunding platform? Are you having issues with getting more Crowdfunding campaigns and backers on to your platform? This article is going to help you with creating the right strategy for more campaigns, and backers on to the platform.
Gaining your first Crowdfunding campaigns can be hard, especially if you do not know anyone that is running a Crowdfunding campaign. Your first avenue to utilize is your personal connections. If you know of anyone trying to start a campaign, it is best to talk to them first to see if they are willing to run the campaign on your platform. If none of your friends or family want to run a Crowdfunding campaign, then you have to resort to finding those people online.
Reaching out to online communities
If you need to access online communities for your first Crowdfunding campaigns, it is best to take a look at Forums and Social media groups. Below are some links to social media groups and forums that may be helpful:
LinkedIn:
- New Routes to Funding – ICOs, Crowdfunding and Beyond
- Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs
- Crowdfunding360
- Crowdfunding Promotion Club
- EQUITY and ROYALTY CrowdFunding for Entrepreneurs & Investors
- Crowdfunding Panel
- Crowdfunding Backers
- UNLIMITED FUNDING Projects
Facebook:
- The OFFICIAL Crowdfunding Forum
- Crowdfunding USA
- Crowd Funding UK
- Crowdfunders Corner: Kickstarter Indiegogo Et Cetera Promotion Center
- CROWDFUNDING4all
- CROWDFUNDING
- Crowd Funding
- Crowdfunding
- CROWDFUNDING
- Crowdfunding & ICO Pitch
Forums:
Those links should help you with your first couple of Crowdfunding campaigns on your new platform. In addition, those links will only take you as far as a couple of new campaigns, the goal is to get as many campaigns on to the site without having to message people on all of the different sites listed above. You want traffic coming on to your site, with as little work as possible. That is when you need to start creating a marketing strategy.
Learning your audience
Before developing any strategy, you need to know who you are trying to target. Is your Crowdfunding site for niche Crowdfunding campaigns? Or are you running a general Charity site? All Crowdfunding sites are going to be different. Prior to developing the marketing strategy, you need to create what is called a user persona. Below is an example of a user persona:
Once you understand the type of person that you are trying to attract on to your website, you can figure out ways to reach them. For example, if your user persona is aged 50 – 60 you don’t want to use marketing avenues such as instagram or snapchat because they are not using those platforms. You would have to target the platforms that your audience is already using.
After you create the user persona, you need to use the strategy that is best suited for your needs. This can vary greatly from platform to platform, and is not a “one size fits all” type of solution.
Marketing Strategies
There are many strategies out there that can be used for your platform, and there are online courses that can be taken in order to follow the best practices. Below are free online marketing courses that can help you excel your platform by following the best practices for online marketing today:
Before choosing the course, you need to know the strategy that you want to learn and deploy. There are 2 major strategies that websites are using today to gain more traffic to their sites. The strategies include Outbound marketing and Inbound marketing. What is the difference between the two strategies?
Outbound Marketing: This is a very traditional method of marketing where companies interrupt potential customers by promoting their product. You can see these types of methods being used on television programs, cold calling, and trade shows.
Inbound Marketing: Uses the power of attracting new customers to your product or service in the form of offering content. This way, potential customers receive value before making a purchase. This can help turn customers into promoters as well.
Out of the above mentioned strategies, the Inbound marketing strategy is the most recommended among the marketing giants. This is because of the value that you can give to potential customers, by utilizing content as an onboarding tool, rather than interrupting them with an offer to your product or service, however, both strategies can be useful for your Crowdfunding platform. This all depends on your user persona.
After you choose the right strategy, it is best to dive deeper into how to reach your target market by taking an online course. You will gain a wealth of knowledge, absolutely for free.
Using data
During the deployment of the marketing strategies, it is best to collect as much data as possible. You can add tools to your platform that will track what your users are doing on the site, as well as where they are coming from. Such tools as Piwik and Google Analytics are great for improving marketing strategies. If you are not collecting any data, how will you know which strategies are performing best?
Be sure to use best practices and collect as much data as possible when deploying the marketing strategies. Do not be discouraged if you are not receiving results in the first couple of days. The most popular Crowdfunding platforms that you see today took years to develop. Please feel free to ask any questions about marketing your Crowdfunding platform in the comments below.