Many entrepreneurs forget that crowdfunding efforts do not stop at the moment they successfully reach a funding goal. Growing and nurturing a robust network of backers needs time and dedication – and both could be scarce when you are putting all your energy into your primary product. However, with a little help from Crowdox and quizzes, you can maintain and grow your crowdfunding network.
One in three people manages to crowdfund their project on Kickstarter successfully. While odds may seem discouraging to the startup hopefuls, the numbers tell a different story – the one of a steadily growing market.
This statistic shows the cumulative amount of money pledged to project funding on Kickstarter from July 2012 to April 2018. In that period, financial backers sent more than 3.6 billion U.S. dollars to the artists, innovators, scientists and other people hoping to start their business. So let’s begin!
1. Organize
Imagine a scenario – when you started your crowdfunding campaign, you set up rewards and incentives for your backers. These backers come from all over the world, and there are a few hundreds of them. The money starts pouring in, you reach your funding goal, but what happens next?
Instead of focusing on creating the best product you promised to your backers, you are busy managing their addresses and shipping logistics. If it all gets too overwhelming, you’re likely to start dealing with complaints about late shipments, refund requests, and bad reviews. Once you go down that hole, getting a second chance won’t be easy.
Crowdox could prevent this scenario. It is the latest in the line of third-party backer management software, which includes BackerKit and PledgeManager. Crowdox is compatible with two of the greatest crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Crowdox dashboard
It enables you to process orders efficiently by collecting and verifying shipping addresses, as well as calculating shipping costs based on location and selections. This software also gives you an option to ask backers to confirm their pledges. Crowdox provides your backers with additional payment options – they can use credit cards or Paypal.
Dynamic surveys are an additional perk of Crowdox. You can create questions directly related to a product, allow selection of product variations, show previews of selected goods, and raise additional funds through upgrades and extras.
Crowdox allows you to upload your email contacts or import them directly from Kickstarter and Indiegogo. However, Crowdox only enables you to manage your existing backers and maintain an excellent reputation among them. There is so much more you could do using additional channels.
Majority of the backers learn about new projects on crowdfunding platforms – 65 percent, to be exact. But 26% look for new entrepreneurs on social networks or in other places.
Source: Crowdox
If we take into account that crowdfunding market’s growth has been following a steady upward trajectory, there is a lot of maneuvering space for reaching out to new backers. So how will you grow your list of contacts?
2. Gamify!
Rookie entrepreneurs are constantly told that what buys them a follower and a potential backer is a good story. That is true, but what additionally sets you apart is the way you tell your story. Also, ask yourself – what is a backer?
Bottom line, it is a customer who has faith in your product or service. Your story is supposed to appeal to this potential customer’s emotions – but you are also supposed to convince them that your product or service has a practical value.
While dedicated backers are scrolling the project page on Kickstarter, they are all set to hear your story – but what about all the other people who don’t even know that they may become your backers?
Inevitably, many of them won’t pledge thousands for your product, but that doesn’t mean you should throw away hundreds of people who might pledge $30 to your business on a regular basis.
Kickstarter landing page
So how do you find these people and grab their attention right away? How do you lead them to your landing page? Simple – turn it into a game! No matter how random or silly it is, if you are targeting the right audience, it can be effective.
For most businesses, Facebook is the cheapest source of leads. But if you advertise quizzes instead of the product, the price of one lead goes further down. Apart from grabbing attention and leading people towards your landing page, quizzes are also a sort of analytical tool in their own right.
You can use them to segment your leads, learn more about their habits, interests, and interaction with your landing page and project.
What would such a quiz look like? We found Rise Brewing Co’s landing page for Nitro Cold Brew Coffee Lattes.
Rise Brewing Co. operates a pop-up nitro shop in New York’s Lower East Side. Its business has been successful so far, and the company decided to experiment with the release of the world’s first cans of organic, nitro cold brew coffee lattes in three flavors.
According to the Rise Brewing team, these drinks are a great alternative to canned drinks packed with unhealthy ingredients. A unique twist – charging coffee with nitrogen, as opposed to carbonation, gives this drink a rich, creamy taste.
Based on Rise Brewing’s story, its target audience are people who care about the environment and fair trade, they are into organic food, and they may be vegetarian or vegan. However, they don’t want to give up on good coffee.
So, we went with a Buzzfeed-esque quiz – it is inviting and playful, but not too pushy. Pick your breakfast – a meal closely associated with your first coffee of the day, and we’ll tell you which cold coffee you should try this summer.
The first image communicates well with the product’s target audience – it looks radiant and lighthearted. You can find plenty of great stock photos like this for free on sites like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay. We went with several image questions that are likely to spark up people’s craving for something sweet and creamy.
We connected the answers with three possible outcomes – classic, mocha and oat milk latte. Those who were going for vegan, fruity flavors are directed to the oat milk result, those who went with chocolate are connected to mocha, etc.
The result page shows a picture of the product, along with its ingredients and a text containing a hyperlink to Rise Brewing’s landing page on Kickstarter. We made this relatively easygoing and straightforward, but you can always adjust your quiz content based on your product, project, and target audience.
Your quizzes can be more serious and inquisitive, but even in that case, keep in mind that it needs to be concise, visually segmented and not too long (our experience shows that 10-12 question range works best).
3. Incentivize
Once people are on your landing page, you need to give them a reason why they should give you their contact info or pledge money to your product or service. You know the lesson – there has to be something in it for them.
Offering rewards, free samples, and discounts will gain the interest of a potential backer. If you use quizzes to advertise your project, you can even turn these rewards into quiz results. For example – plan the party, and we’ll give you a discount for drinks.
Rise Brewing rewards
While quizzes are content that is likely to create a buzz and be shared, you can also add incentives for those who share your quiz on social networks.
4. Nurture
As we said in the beginning, all of this is for nothing if you don’t nurture your relationship with the customers turned backers.
This is where Crowdox comes into the picture once again. Your goal is to have as many backers as possible. Once their number grows, you want to be able to deliver on your promises to them and still develop your product. Third-party management software is one of the ways to make sure you can do both at the same time.
While Crowdox surveys are limited to your products and offer, you can still use your contacts on Kickstarter, Indiegogo or your email list to connect with your backers through educational or entertaining content.
Once you successfully fund your product and receive positive feedback, your backers, in effect, become your regular customers, and odds work in your favor with each new project.
If a customer bought something from you once, they are 60-70% more likely to buy from you again. This process puts in motion another process – word of mouth and referrals, and after a while, your backers will be doing your marketing for you.
Conclusion
As you nurture your network on Crowdox, you can simultaneously and effortlessly grow it using LeadQuizzes on social networks to generate leads to your landing page or build a targeted email list you can import to crowdfunding platforms.
You can try LeadQuizzes for free – you have 14 days to see the first results and decide whether quizzes will become part of your crowdfunding strategy. After that, for as little as $16 a month, you can create an unlimited number of quizzes and integrate them with MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, ConvertKit, etc.
This plan also offers segmentation for easier targeting, and it enables you to track conversions for Facebook, Pinterest, AdWords and Bing Ads.
With more advanced plans, you have access to advanced reporting tools, split testing for optimizing your quiz results, logic branching and guaranteed 500 leads a month.
Successful crowdfunding does not have to be a matter of luck or begging your friends to share your landing page – with the right tools, you can take this project into your hands and lead your potential backers towards your product.
