How to promote a crowdfunding campaign on social media

The promotion of a crowdfunding campaign is a complex operation, made up of many different activities, which must be included within a communication strategy, which is essential to achieve the set capital raising goal. One of these activities is the promotion of the crowdfunding campaign on social media: whatever the target audience of potential investors is for a company today, it is sure to be found (also and especially) on social media.

Those potential investors will not arrive on the campaign page built on the crowdfunding platform by accident (and no, <a href="https://www.turbocrowd.it/en/crowdfunding-platform-what-is-for/" target="_self"the platform itself will not bring them there): the company has to go get them. Since the best and most likely investors are a company's customers or potential customers, online social channels are a great place to find and attract them. They will, in fact, already be among the contacts or followers of company pages, or they may become one because they have an interest or need related to that product/service.

The social media strategy for crowdfunding

Promoting a crowdfunding campaign on social media cannot be improvised. Communication must be regular, frequent, consistent, logically progressive and targeted by successive goals.

The social media strategy for crowdfunding , therefore, needs to be set up long before the actual campaign launch, to be precise during the preparation of the precrowd phase, in which the strategy will already be tested and put into practice to gather expressions of interest in the campaign (read the article about precrowd to find out in detail what this is all about).

Here are the key components of this strategy:

• Identifying the target audience
• Choice of channels to be used
• Choice of content types (post types and formats, video, text, and images)
• Choice of communication style
• Creating templates for various types of content
• Identification of key issues to be communicated
• Creating the editorial plan.

We have already mentioned that the ideal target audience in which to find investors for a crowdfunding campaign are the company's customers or potential customers. For some types of business it may also be useful to target other stakeholders, such as suppliers or employees. Let us now look at the other points of the social strategy.

Where to advertise crowdfunding?

The choice of social media channels on which to publicize a crowdfunding campaign is crucial to avoid unnecessary waste of resources and to make activities efficient. It makes no sense to use all channels indiscriminately; it is better to concentrate efforts where they are really needed, based on two criteria:

1. Where is the target audience, i.e., which social media they use most. LinkedIn is where to target professional audiences, TikTok is where to interact with younger people, Facebook is across the board, but more used by mature age groups, etc., with increasing sophistication of analysis.
2. Which business channels are already developed, already have a following and regular publication.

If the target audience is very large and is on many channels, it is smart to choose those where users are more active, that is, they do not just log in, but interact more. 

If the company is new or has never used social media regularly and professionally, it will take a little extra time and work to set up the channels from scratch and nurture them to the point where they are influential: to be usable with any results, they first need to have been active for a while and have begun to have a following.

Content for promoting a crowdfunding campaign on social media: the shape

For each of the chosen channels, the types of content to be used to promote the campaign, i.e., the structures within which the messages to be conveyed are to be defined.

Ideally, you should alternate between publishing different types of posts and formats: graphics with text, carousel, video, etc. This avoids monotony and makes the social channel more engaging and visually appealing.

The important thing is that it is also visually consistent: to have a neat and eye-pleasing social channel, a graphic style should be devised to be applied to all posts, with different templates for the different types, but united by a clear common thread (colors, shapes, logos, etc.).

The graphic style, if possible, should be specific to posts about the crowdfunding campaign, so as to differentiate them from posts about other corporate activities, if the social media page is unique. Obviously, this specific style should remain consistent with that of the usual corporate communication.

The last formal aspect to plan for is communication style: tone of voice, language register, and level of confidence. Normally, it is advisable to favor simplicity and clarity, because there is nothing worse than not being understood by the people you would like as supporters or investors. In the case of a B2B company, where you are talking among insiders, you can use professional tone and technical language. Crowdfunding and its dynamics, however, should always be explained clearly and precisely.

Content for promoting a crowdfunding campaign on social media: the substance

As we began to anticipate in the previous paragraph, the substance of the content posted on social to promote a campaign must be essentially of two types:

• Informational content on crowdfunding
• Information content about the company's product/service.

The first category includes indispensable content aimed at explaining to people what crowdfunding is, how it works, why the company chose to use it, and why it is interesting and beneficial to participate. These are called “educational posts.” The approach must be top-bottom, so start with the most general information and gradually go down into more and more detail, complete with technical explanations of how to participate in a campaign.

This category of content should also include practical communications about the campaign roadmap: the announcement of the upcoming opening, the countdown to the opening, the announcement of the opening, updates on progress, the announcement that the minimum goal has been reached, and any campaign-related news useful in keeping audience engagement high.

The second category of content includes information about the company's business that is useful for conveying to stakeholders the goodness of the project, its qualities compared to competitors, and the advantages of being part of it. This is content of two types:

• Persuasive posts that enunciate the reasons for investing, explain the company's achievements and prospects for the future, explain the innovative aspects of the business and its advantages over competitors, etc. They are mainly textual or graphic content.
• Emotional posts, which introduce the team, the story of the founders, the origins and key events in the company's history, tell anecdotes, show interesting parts of production or product/service development, etc. Videos are a particularly congenial format for this type of content.

In every post, whatever the category and type, there should always be a final call-to-action, with a link leading to the landing page of the project or company, to the crowdfunding campaign page, to a form to leave data and/or download extra content, to a calendar to book a call and ask for more information, etc. It is also useful to invite people to ask questions or give their opinions below the posts to fuel interactions.

To discover the main techniques for making effective content, watch our webinar on copywriting.

How to create a publishing plan

The editorial plan is the schedule for publishing content on the various social channels. Preparing content in advance and determining in advance when it will be published and where it will be published helps to save a great deal of time, adhere to the regularity of publication, and automate the processes of promoting the crowdfunding campaign on social.

There are both the internal functions of individual socials for creating an editorial plan for each, as well as numerous tools that allow scheduling from a single interface to publish to several social medias at once (one example is PostPickr).

It is advisable to publish at least 1 post per week and gradually increase the amount at crucial stages of the capital-raising journey: just before and just after the opening of the precrowd and then the campaign, when the goal is almost reached and when there are only a few days left until closing, for example. When there are extraordinary events to be communicated, they can be added on the run to the editorial plan.

Monitor and interact on social media

Creating and publishing perfectly planned posts is not enough to promote a crowdfunding campaign on social media in a profitable way. It is also necessary to monitor how posts are received by users and how users interact with them. This can be done more easily by using hashtags, which are also valuable for spreading content within the right target audience. If there are few interactions (likes, shares, comments, clicks on links, etc.), you need to take the cue to change something in the communication.

If, on the other hand, there are many interactions, it is most important to take every opportunity to interact with those who show interest in the topics being discussed: respond to comments and private messages, ask additional questions to revive the conversation, send links to other content, but also delete pure spam comments, etc.

Monitoring activity on social media and interacting also means using CRM software that allows you to collect data from those who provide your contact after clicking on a post and to initiate a relationship through newsletters or other direct communication.

Strengthen the social media promotion of crowdfunding 

To promote a crowdfunding campaign on social media more effectively, some extra elements can be added to the activities described so far:

• Leveraging affiliate marketing to expand reachable audience through third-party promotion
• Engage the press and media to give institutional resonance to the campaign on their online social channels (here are tips for writing a press release)
• Doing Paid Advertising, that is, sponsoring some content on various channels.

Finally, relying on the support of experienced crowdfunding marketing consultants can be helpful in enhancing these arrivals.